Haven’t Realized Greatness
“My spiritual life is on point, but my physical life is off the rails.”
“I seem to have great habits in my nutrition, but I need more community in my life.”
“I’ve got so many areas of my life squared away, but just need to fix these other two.”
Have you heard any of these phrases before? Better yet, have any of these phrases come out of your own mouth? This kind of talk is super common in the world of health. We all hope to be a little better in one area or another. I think that is part of being human. To grow, evolve, and be slightly better than yesterday. The problem I find is we try so hard to make this a reality that we tend to over complicate the process towards growth.
The problem starts when we begin to compartmentalize the different areas of our lives. When we do this, we tend to keep everything about the result in those given areas as well, whether good or bad.
Here is why you should not follow that trend.
Every time you have a certain habit, goal, or rhythm succeed or fail, you have the opportunity to learn something. No matter how long the success took or how little the failure came about, with some intentional reflection, you can find out the culprit to the victory or defeat.
Maybe it was something out of your control
You needed more time.
There wasn’t enough structure.
Not enough accountability.
Whatever the solution may be, there always is an answer that can be found. When we find that answer, we shove it right back into our “physical” or “mental” or “spiritual” box and stop thinking about it altogether. We just leave it there and label it “pass” or “fail” in our minds.
When we continue to compartmentalize, we continue to open and shut these boxes without letting them help the other areas in our life. This is where your greatness can be revealed.
Realizing Greatness
Do you know you’re already really good at developing habits?
Oh, you didn’t know?
Well, you aren’t just really good, you’re great at them!
Whether you like the habit or not, we are constantly living within the limits of the habits we have created over time. Hopefully we all brush our teeth before we go to bed (I will pray for you if you don’t). This is an easy example of a habit we have all developed that we don’t even have to think about anymore. Other examples would include when you leave for work, how you tie your shoes, how late you stay up at night, and what you watch on TV.
Our whole lives are directed by the habits we have formed.
And whether you like it or not, you’re really good at them too. The big question is, are you happy with the habits that you have developed up until this point? After some contemplation, you may realize that you are not quite where you want to be with all your habits. To that I say welcome to the club. I too am on this journey, which is exactly why I am writing on this topic. Let’s break this down and turn the greatness we already have, those habits we already are living within, into the habits we want.
To start, find a habit that you have been doing for at least over a year (or a considerable amount of time). Then start breaking down what has made this habit stick for this long. Once you have reviewed the keys that have made this habit stick, take those and start implementing them into the habit you want to change. You will start to notice that in most cases the process for habit achievement is nearly the same across the board.
This is why compartmentalization can be harmful to our growth.
When we do this, we let a successful process just stay in that box, never getting a chance to enter into the other boxes. When we do this we need to literally start thinking outside the box. That process can effect the other habits in other boxes. Will every process be able to transition over smoothly? No. There will be tweaks made no doubt. If we can start to train our minds to think this way though, we are well on our way towards dominating habits that we choose.
Continue to learn from other areas in your life. Don’t let them stay separate. We are a whole person, not just separate entities within a body. Start living from this perspective. Let’s see what growth comes out of it!
