Habits: Your Environment Matters

People usually ask me whether I have a diet to accompany my training. Well, I wouldn’t say that I have a diet but my environment doesn’t allow me to eat dirty either.
Let me give you a first person perspective of a typical scene in my life :D

I was hungry mid afternoon, merely an hour after lunch>< As usual, I would automatically walk towards the dining table in search for snacks, repeatedly opening and closing the fridge. I would do that a few times in hopes of something different appearing the next time I open it.
But fruits were all there was, apples and oranges cut up by my mother and grandmother, as well as a container of grapes. I settled for the grapes.

I understand from many conversations with family and friends that this isn’t normal. For most, snacks are easily available. Some even have a snack compartment near their beds! They a snack out and just munch on it while lying down><

The simple difference here is our environment and the friction it creates to form a good or bad habit.

They say it is difficult to prevent a bad habit such as incessant snacking but it is as simple as changing your environment. When you replace snacks in your house with healthier fruits, the friction to get even one snack is so high that you might not even do so, while at the same time, you are cultivating a good habit of eating fruits by making them easily accessible.

The Freedom To Choose

However, there are only so many environments that you can control.

When I was in national service, snacks were abundant and the offer for supper and bubble tea is always on.
This is where you might fall for the temptations and fail. But as I learnt from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Regardless of the situation we are in, we always have a choice. The environment only helps us make the right decision more easily, it always leads up to us being able to make the decision. This book really puts things into perspective. If man can go through the worst of sufferings and choose to live and do the right thing, I can definitely choose to eat healthy and not give in to grabbing that bag of chips.

Delayed Gratification

To make the right decision, we need to have a long term perspective. We derive instant gratification by having that bag of potato chips now or we can remember our initial habit of no snacking and the goal we were building towards, a healthier self, to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain date.

Keep your goals in view and don’t give in to short term benefits.

I will write more on this in a separate article because this is very important, it impacts every facet of our lives and choosing this over instant gratification can lead to a very different outcome in life.

A very important principle I’ve set for myself is:

My Word Is My Bond

Anything I say, I will do. This is simply self-respect. If you fail to keep the promises you give to yourself, how do you expect others to rely on you to get things done?

It’s normal for us to fall short on our own promises. I mean, no one else knows about your promises to yourself, it won’t hurt to just break them right? Well, you might not see it but you become less and less reliable with every promise you break. You will become more complacent and give in much easier. Even worse, this becomes a habit and eventually creates a weak mindset.

Beyond the environment, the freedom of choice and delayed gratification, I think this is the most important idea I would like to bring across.

Do as you say you will.

That brings us back to our environment. We are at least somewhat responsible for creating or contributing to the environment which we live in. If you are set on eating healthy, simply saying so will not do you any good. Following through with our promises and decisions by creating an environment which facilitates this change we are determined to see in ourselves is what will truly lead us onto the path of breaking our bad habits.

Apply these to your life and you might see a change :)