“We’re either making good habits or bad habits. We’re either training our minds to be unfocused and unhappy, or we’re training them to find peace and happiness within.”― Todd Perelmuter

One of the benefits of not working in a city is the numerous animals that frequent our workplace. My current employment, has some extraordinary visitors. Or in many cases, it feels more like we are visiting. I had on occasion had to patiently wait for kudus to cross the road. I have not been offered the same grace.

Last Friday, on the 1.3km walk from gate to site, beneath green faded water pipes were quite the sight of the general southern African python. Apart from the fact that it was probably about 3m long, it was lying very still.

Was it dead? Nope. Was it an overindulgent and gluttonous idiot? Oh, definitely. Smack in the middle of the normal, oversized 3m long python body, was something that we were pretty sure was alive the previous night; and it possibly fell under the hog or small buck classification. We considered a medium sized baboon for a second, but the baboons in our environment are smart, conniving and slightly evil, so highly unlikely. (I will dedicate one blog purely on ‘Kees’ in the future)

So here we had the snake on full gluttony exposed to all curious eyes. It’s easy to not be scared of something if you know you are safe. I do not even understand how that small mouth can open over something of that size. I have never worked that hard for my food.

Now, I’m sure that if the python had some common sense, it would have figured out that this is not a good idea. Due to this over eagerness, the snake couldn’t move, people started to notice it, which lead to the environmental officers being notified to safely remove it, which then caused the snake to stressfully regurgitate its catch (small impala) and that was the end of it.

We as humans do things like that as well. Habits. Bad habits. Things that are bad for us, we know it’s bad, we know we won’t like the consequences, yet we still do it.

Why?

Whether it’s self-sabotage, self-pity, over-thinking, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, manipulating situations to get what we want, play on other people’s emotions. And dealing with this in all the wrong manners, sometimes liquid – sometimes just head-in-sand syndrome…

We all have our go-to bad habits when we are cornered or we feel trapped. Did it work for us in the past?

No…

Will it solve our problems now?

Probably not.

So why do we do it?

I suppose the only reason that we do it, is because it feels good right now. And mentally we work out the risk and consequence matrix – and to date, the risk has not been something bigger than what we could handle. Or, we just adapted to it over time.

However, since our bad habits are not really good habits – do we actually deal with the issues behind our habits? Or do we just cultivate our habitual inventory and we get to the point where we are stuck and we don’t know how to get ourselves out of the situation? Situations that we so skillfully created ourselves over some extreme repetition.

Are we really ignorant of the fact that we can hide or run from it forever? And do these continuous behaviours only leave us feeling slightly unfulfilled?

How do we get out of it though? How do we recognise our bad habits of self-sabotage and self-pity before we put it in effect? And even from the recognition phase – how do we fix it?

Can an over-thinker suddenly stop thinking?

No, but you can choose what you are thinking about and focus more on your immediate surroundings.

Can you help yourself out of the mud-pit of indulgent self-pity – or can you take your mind off yourself and focus on how you can help someone else?

Can you stop the obsessive-compulsive behaviour? Or can you calmly remind yourself that it’s okay that everything is not within your control?

Can you suddenly stop playing on people’s emotions – if that’s what you have been doing for so long and it has worked every time? Or can you remind yourself that other people are allowed to feel the way they feel – without having to carry guilt on their shoulders – because of what you want.

Can we be honest with ourselves, instead of hiding or running away?

Now, because I can get upset sometimes for no apparent reason – including the fact that people still can’t read my mind – the bad habit I sometimes carry on my shoulders and absolutely DO NOT want – is to lose the ability to laugh at myself.

Of my entire suitcase full of bad habits – being upset all the time and losing my sense of humour – is always the one thing that makes me re-evaluate all of my habits.

It is the good habit I will habitually go look and pray for. The lightness off my shoulders.

We all have bad habits. It is rarely as simple as swearing or smoking or drinking or gambling. It’s sometimes things that we subconsciously do – that causes so much more harm to our sense of stability.

Yet – it’s replaceable with good ones.

Would the snake have learned his lesson? No. It’s not human. It has no sense of self-awareness or need to grow as a person. It’s primal and act on instincts only.

Can we learn from our bad habits and change it for good? Absolutely – but maybe always with a little bit of Help. We can learn to distinguish between a character trade and a bad habit.

Happily and habitually unpack those habits, friends! Or at the very least – try again each day!