I began by slowly changing some of the bad habits that I knew I could easily get rid of, for example, I began to not look at my phone first thing in the morning, and instead, I changed it to drinking water and making my bed. I changed a very simple bad habit to a very simple good habit, I did this because in the past I have tried to change my habits but it didn’t work and it just became a hassle. The problem was that every time that I wanted to change multiple bad habits of mine I would change them all at once, and because of that, I ended up finding myself with the same bad habits a month later. This time around, I knew that I had to change my approach towards changing my bad habits, but first I wanted to know how I could do that so investigated how habits work. I listened to the audiobook “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, and it helped a lot to understand the patterns behind habits. It turns out habits have four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. This ultimately becomes a feedback loop because the reward gets associated with the cue. For example, the cue was that my alarm went off, the craving was to know if I got any messages, the response was that I checked my phone and the reward was to know if had gotten any messages and answering them.
Realizing this behavior was very meaningful because I never realized all the actions that I do automatically, and because some of them are self-harming, it shocked me even more. I began to understand more about myself, and from then on, I went to assess what I wanted to change. Once I began to understand the logic between these patterns, I went and put into practice what I had learned, after two weeks I had changed many of my small bad habits into good habits, then, I went into adding new good habits. My first new good habit was to drink tea in the morning, and I made myself the rule of not looking at my phone until I had finished my tea. Around the same time, my flatmate told me that he began meditating, at first I only felt happy for him, but as he would talk more about it, I began to be curious and he taught me his technique for meditation. I decided to try it and I like it because, when I would finish my meditation I felt calm and relaxed in a new unique way. A few days into my habit of drinking tea, I realized that there’s a span of 10 minutes that I need to wait until my tea is at the right temperature to drink. At first, I would just stare at the window and think, but then it occurred to me that I could meditate while I wait. So, I began to meditate while I waited for my tea to cool in the mornings. I purposely made tea the cue for the habit of meditation and the reward was to simply enjoy the tea in a very relaxed state. Shortly after I got into the habit of meditating daily every morning, I began to experience the benefits and they directly helped me with my current struggles from my school assignments, and also I got back into making music.