Who hasn’t smoked or eaten sweets to excess, wasted nights, wasted time in front of the TV, binge eating or drinking, or gotten excuses not to go to school sports, raise your hand!
We all have less useful habits, we know about them, we know they don’t bring us value, they affect us in the medium and long term, and yet it’s hard to give them up.
Here are a few of mine:
– I don’t walk enough, even though I know it’s important. Inactivity has long-term negative effects on our bodies, and on our mood.
– Late at night, when I’m tired, I binge-watch some movies on Netflix, contributing to that company’s rising stock. I don’t always find something interesting, so I get bored flipping from one to another. What I could do: read a few pages of a book, avoid my laptop screen, my phone screen, chances are I’d improve my sleep quality. Plus, a good book has a positive impact on the brain, according to neuroscience studies.
– I eat too many sweets, especially when my stress levels go beyond a certain level.
– I let the TV run in the background while doing various activities in the morning and while listening to podcasts. The TV is jamming me, I should turn it off; we’re not multitasking, say all the recent studies. On the contrary, it turns out that this penchant for multitasking harms the brain.
– I’m compulsive when it comes to perfume. Yes, I love them. In another life, I’d like to be in the perfume business. Until then, though, I might visit niche perfume shops less often, otherwise, I risk opening a mini shop at home. Oh, and I might even put up a ‘Here’s your money!” sign. I exaggerate, they are not just there. They are also on shoes, sunglasses, and books.
Although we know what would be good for us, it’s hard to set boundaries and priorities. Often, even if we set them, we don’t stick to them. Personal self-discipline is not always within reach of the man subject to mistakes.
I know people who stay in relationships where they are not doing well at all, they know it themselves, they complain, but they cannot or will not change. I had an acquaintance who said they prefer the devil they know, to the devil they don’t know.
Others impose superior standards on themselves, leaving no room for error, which torments them, grinds them down inside. It is okay to accept that we are not perfect, that mistakes are also part of the process of learning, of evolution.
At the moment, these mistakes give us some satisfaction. But after a while, we feel bad about ourselves. We didn’t take care of ourselves! We have ‘built up’ precisely to the progressive destruction of self-esteem.
We would do well to pay attention to what gives us energy and what takes it away. What do you do if you resonate with any of the above habits? How could you rethink your day so that you focus on something that brings you value and energy and dramatically reduce the ones that are hurting you?
I’m not advocating rigorous, continual control but a life in which we seek both well-being, those pleasures, basal joys, interactions with others, and the happiness that comes from living meaningfully, with care for others and our surroundings. Or, as Aristotle said, to combine Eudaimonia with Hedonia.