B.S justifications for behavioral patterns on auto-pilot

We often let our behavioral patterns run on autopilot without really questioning them. One of my behaviors is to sit down and watch a movie or some TV-series when I get home from work several days per week. I’ve been telling myself that I needed this in order to keep up motivation. The other day I chose to take care of a few things that needed fixing instead and finished the day off with reading a bit. And I discovered that this gave me much more energy and motivation.

This might sound trivial. But is it? How often do we tell ourselves that we need something that we don’t really need in order to function properly, just because we have gotten comfortable with it?

And we keep on telling ourselves this or that to justify why we cannot or should not change. “This is just who I am”. “I need this to function”. “My life would be boring without this”. You know the deal. I’m not saying that these might sometimes be valid reasons to hold on to a bad habit. Sometimes the bad habit fills a function that we cannot do without for the time being. I’m only talking about my particular experience here, knowing that I cannot be the only person in the world with this type of experience.

I’m also not saying that we should beat ourselves up because of our bad habits. God is with us no matter what our lives look like and I if anyone knows how hard change can be. It’s the stories about why we cannot change that I want to get at. Because these stories make it so much harder. Because our beliefs have a tremendous effect on our emotions and our actions. And we have the power to question our beliefs. And we have the power to change them if we come to the conclusion that they are based on faulty premises. Oftentimes it is as simple as finding an example from our experience of life, where our current belief proves faulty. 

As for the habits, unless we have a valid reason for believing that we need them, we can just simply acknowledge that we have a hard time breaking a certain habit. Period. And then we can work from there. 

Perhaps we come to the conclusion that we simply don’t feel like going through the trouble of breaking the habit in question. Or there may be other valid reasons for holding on to it. But whatever we do, I think that it is important to be as honest with ourselves as possible as to why we do something. Because since our attitudes affect who we are and how we behave, just simply committing to being as honest with ourselves as we can be, will have a tremendous effect on us and our characters, no matter how we finally decide to approach a certain issue in our lives.