90 Days | It's All About Habits

"Habits are to life as rails are to a train." -Charlotte Mason

This is the very foundation of these 90 Days

What is 10 + 10 + 5?  Chance are--you got the right answer! 

It's Hard Work to Get Good At Something
I watch my seven-year-old struggle with his math homework. He's pretty good at adding and subtracting, but as soon as we put multiple columns and stack more than two numbers together, his brain freezes.  He knows 10 + 10 and he knows 20+5, but when you put 10+10+5 in front of him, he gets noticeably anxious.  It looks big and scary to him. 

Should it scare him?  No.  It's simple, right? 

But he hasn't mastered the simplicity of it yet.  Something hasn't clicked in his brain.  And in order for it to click, he needs to practice those kinds of problems over and over again.  

Jude struggles to do math.  But he won't always struggle in thiås same way.  With proper guidance and practice, one day he will look at 10+10+5 and, without even needing to think, he will know the answer is 25.  

It's All About Habits
I think sometimes we look at healthy people and say, "They're just naturally healthy."  Or we see our own abilities and say, "That comes naturally to me, so I don't need to spend time on that."

Habits don't come "naturally"--even if people say they're a "natural" at something.  Everything requires practice.

How Can We Adopt Habits of Health?
A habit is a propensity to respond to a given situation in a certain way.  The more deeply ingrained a habit, the more consistent the response.  Because an action or thinking pattern is habitual, we don't need to think about the response.  It happens automatically, because a neuromuscular habit has been formed in my brain.

For 20 years, I had some really terrible habits of health. 

• I ate a lot of junk food and developed a love for it.
• I overate constantly
• I ate in secrecy, in darkness
• I hid wrappers so no one would know how much I ate (I lied)
• I finished every meal with a dessert
• I sat in front of the TV and stuffed my face
• I ate in the car--cramming cheeseburgers and french fries down the hatch in 5 minutes flat
• I didn't do any activity and spent my days sitting
• I got very little sleep, staying up as late as I could for "me time" and hitting the snooze for an hour every dreaded morning
• I didn't manage my stress and habitually had panic attacks

Did you know that when a habit is formed it actually changes the gray matter in your brain?

The more you repeat an activity, the network of brain cells (neurons) that work together to perform that activity fire more frequently and easily the next time.  Hebb's law.  Brain cells that fire together are wired together.  So, the more often I repeat an activity, the easier that activity becomes.  If I do something once (eat ice cream OR walk away from the dessert table), the neutrons want to do it a second time.  If I do it again, then it's easier to do it the third time.  We are in the process of getting a new brain every time we learn something.

Huh.  I didn't know that. I learned that through the educator Charlotte Mason and Bill & Maryellen St. Cyr with Ambleside Schools International.

So, is it normal to think that we will gravitate toward  familiar habits over the next 90 days?  Yes.

In the past, I would have called this FAILURE.

But what IS failure?

We're Here to Practice Habits
As we start this 90 days together, let's be certain of one thing.  We are here to begin PRACTICING the habits we want in our life.  The more we practice them, the easier they become.

As Bill St. Cyr points out in the video I've included today, "If I frame the poor behavior as a habit, then there is something I can do about it.  But if I frame is as a medical diagnosis or a disorder, then I am stuck.  I become a victim of my neurobiology.  We may have a brain that isn’t well-tooled for healthy habits, but if we practice habits…we can retrain our brain."

So today, we are practicing habits that we are learning one at a time.  

Today, we will either enjoy or struggle through the day with the support of all of us here on this blog, the people who love us and those who can encourage me to keep going.  

We will not speak poorly of ourselves and tell ourselves that we are stupid (or made-to-be-fat)--because we am not.

We will practice!

Today's Challenge:

TO PRACTICE...

• Eating 6 small, healthy meals a day
• Drinking water
• Getting activity into this day
• Going to bed in time to get 8 hours of sleep
• Saying "no" so I am not overwhelmed and overly stressed
• Breathing
• Love

For me, when I look at it this way, it doesn't matter how long it takes me to make these habits stick...I know I can keep practicing them and valuing their importance in my life.

Let us know where you've succeed today and where you see that you will need much more practice!  Check back to the blog comments often, because we'll all be chattering away today, I hope!

For more information on "What is A Habit" by Bill St. Cyr--here is his 8 minute video: