Oswald Letter

The Importance of Good Habits

A colleague shared this poem with me the other day:

The Habit Poem
I am your constant companion.
I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden.
I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
Half of the things you do you might as well turn over to me and I will do them — quickly and correctly.
I am easily managed — you must be firm with me.
Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons, I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of great people, and alas, of all failures as well.
Those who are great, I have made great.
Those who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine though
I work with the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a person.
You may run me for profit or run me for ruin — it makes no difference to me.
Take me, train me, be firm with me, and
I will place the world at your feet.
Be easy with me and I will destroy you.
Who am I? I am Habit.

It serves as a great reminder of the importance of good habits — and the danger of bad ones. Good habits can make us more productive and effective. Bad habits can cause us to fail.

The problem with habits is that they become so ingrained that we don’t realize we have them. And when you have a bad habit that you’re unaware of it can be your undoing.

So it pays to take stock of your habits. What good habits do you have and which bad ones? How do your good habits help you succeed? And how do your bad habits inhibit what you accomplish? (If you have trouble coming up with a list, just ask someone close to you. A spouse, friend, sibling, or parent is, more often than not, willing to point out your habits — especially the bad ones!)

Write your habits down. Make two columns on a sheet of paper. At the top of one column write “Good Habits” and at the top of the second column write “Bad Habits.” Be honest with yourself and get them all down on paper.

Then, with your list of good and bad habits in hand, it’s time to reflect on how you might capitalize on your best habits and break the worst of them. As the poem points out, habits can be your servant or your failure. So make sure you’re making good use of your good habits and do whatever you can to eliminate those habits that are standing in the way of your success.

Come up with concrete steps you can take to eliminate the bad habits. Give yourself a deadline for getting rid of each of the bad habits that are on your list. It’s not going to be easy. We accumulate many of our habits over a lifetime. Some will take real work to get rid of, but it’s worth the effort.

Make a conscious effort to take command of your habits today. Manage them as you would the people who work for you. Make good use of the ones that can help you succeed and eliminate those that are standing in the way of greater accomplishments. You’ll be better off for having done it.

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