The One Habit

What hasn't been said about habits?

Ever since Atomic Habits came out, habit has become a self-help buzzword.

The book has sparked a lot of interest in mindfully developing habits. But that's a sort of synthetic habit building. You have a vacuum of time and you want to use a seductive three/four/five step framework to Build A Habit™️. Great, maybe it works. And maybe it does not.

It's a top-down approach. You start with the concepts, then translate them into behavior, then you become a habit master with a spreadsheet, an app, and a whiteboard with checkboxes.

If we follow frameworks, we get wrapped up in focusing on certain activities: reading, exercising, running,...

We compile a list of things that would sound good when we say them to our friends. We latch onto a couple and try to do them. I need to do X, Y, Z every day.

The issue is that while this approach appeals to our forebrain, the lizard brain scoffs at it. So the spreadsheet fails, the app is uninstalled, and the whiteboard ignored. I've seen it happen so many times that I think this is the default life cycle of this approach. Short-term results and long-term dissappointment. Concept infatuation high that doesn't last.

So what then should be said about building habits? Is there anything worth saying?

Perhaps there is.

To me, there's only one habit that is worth cultivating. And I say cultivating not in the self-helpy way. In the way that a garden is cultivated.

The way my dad does it. He spends a lot of time in the garden. He sits on his stone bench and looks at it. He walks around. He looks at it from the windows. He observes, then based on that observation, he thinks about what should be done, what feels right, what should be moved around. He takes into account the weather conditions, the aesthetics, his idea of what would be pleasant to look at and live in. And based on that, every day, or every other day, he does a little something here, a little something there, and over time, the garden takes shape. It's not an architected garden, it's not designed and executed, it's grown and shaped (something described in books like the Timeless Way of Building.) The result is a unique garden that reflects my dad's sense of self. It feels natural. It feels good to be in it. That's the kind of cultivation I think should be applied to habits.

And there's one habit worth cultivating like that: awareness.

Awareness is the one habit to rule them all and into goodness bind them.

I could say meditation, I could say mindfulness, I could say constant observation of the present self, but that would be too buzzwordy. So I'll just stick to awareness.

Put simply, every moment in time, you can pay attention to what's happening and what you're feeling.

As a part of that, you observe your existing habits and how they make you feel. You see what's generating negative emotions and what's not. Your mind is connected to your body and your body to the world. You're one with everything, in a very mundane sort of sense.

If you have that awareness, you're able to stop yourself in the moment from following through with a bad habit, or to do something new that you know would be genuinely good for you. Over time, bad habits dwindle and good habits arise. There's no framework, just awareness. That's the bottom-up natural way.

That's it.

There's one habit worth cultivating and it's awareness. Paying attention to your mind, your body, and the circumstances around you. Do that, and the rest will follow. It's not magic, it's not glamorous, it's not a one-time stroke of inspiration. It's a gradual everyday process of the above described cultivation.

Awareness is the one habit to focus on. Everything else stems from it or lack of it.