Habit Formation Through Journaling

This time, we like to share our observation about keeping a daily journal and why it is one of the most important and critical things that guide us through the virtuous path.

1. It keeps you honest.

2. It shows patterns of behaviour.

3. It reinforces good habits.

Behavioural studies have confirmed that we can create and change a habit by deeply analysing our routines. Habit is an automatic routine that resides in our deeper consciousness. There is three important part of the habit cue, routine and reward. Once, we identified the cue and reward(craving) of a bad habit we can simply change our routine to overcome the bad habit. Read this following passage from The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg[1]

“Most alcoholics, smokers, and other people struggling with problematic behaviours quit on their own, away from formal treatment settings. Much of the time, those changes are accomplished because people examine the cues, cravings, and rewards that drive their behaviours and then find ways to replace their self-destructive routines with healthier alternatives, even if they aren’t fully aware of what they are doing at the time. Understanding the cues and cravings driving your habits won’t make them suddenly disappear — but it will give you a way to plan how to change the pattern.”

Our memories get changed each time we remember something, just barely the next day we will alter our memories to make them more positive or negative. We will look back at them with hindsight, we will just forget them. We will let the routine bad habits slip from our memory. This is why you need to write down how the day went each evening. Once you do it for a few weeks/months you will notice that you keep writing down some of the same things, you will look back at previous entries and see the patterns. Maybe you constantly succumb to the same vice or maybe you are getting constantly better. No matter what, you will see patterns that will enable you to reflect and change if necessary. This is why you need to keep journaling constant.

When you have a record of your behaviour that you can analyse, you can learn from it, you can create a plan of action to tackle any problems and then start tracking how you…