When Good Habits Go Bad

We all want to develop healthy habits and patterns in our lives. We start our new habits with excitement and vigor. As we witness the positive changes our new habits create we become more inspired to stay the course. 

This can also be where we start to get too rigid with our new habit. We can become obsessive about it and then the question becomes, is the new habit serving us in a positive way? Is our rigidity keeping us stuck or allowing for continued growth?

This question has popped up for me in several different areas of my life. When I first started practicing yoga I was so excited about it that I would practice twice a day. Often, I wouldn’t take even one day off a week. Over time I began to follow the prescription of 5-6 days a week. However, if I didn’t do my entire practice, that sometimes was over 2 hours, I would feel like I had not really practiced. I was all or nothing. It didn’t even matter if I was sick or exhausted; practice had to get done. 

I also did this with healthy eating habits. When I found out I had autoimmune diseases, my doctor told me not to eat gluten, dairy, or sugar. I followed my prescribed eating habits to a T. Every now and again I would have a craving for bread or something sweet. I would try to ignore it, but as we all know cravings don’t go away just because we ignore them. Eventually, I would break down, eat a bunch of bread and sugar and then feel like a total failure. I would keep my crappy eating habits until my autoimmune diseases got out of control and my doctor would tell me to clean them up again.

I was constantly striving for perfection. It was unrealistic and it did more to hurt me than help me. I took something good and turned into something rigid and inflexible, which was far from sustainable. 

Luckily, I was committed to creating good and sustainable habits. I kept getting up, brushing myself off, and trying again. It took a lot of trial and error, but I finally realized that all habits have to be adaptable. They have to meet you where you are on any given day.  There were many things I had to unlearn and re-learn so that I could see that the effort I put in every day was important. It didn’t matter how long I practiced, just that I practiced. It didn’t matter if I wanted to eat something sweet, it just mattered that I didn’t let that set me into a cycle of shame and blame and a sweets extravaganza.  

As I learned to let go of the all or nothing attitude, I realized how much happier I was. I didn’t allow my worth to be determined by the length of my practice or my eating habits. I found more compassion, acceptance, and joy in my life. 

Isn’t it ironic how we can turn something “good” for us into yet another tool to make us feel less than? Let me know in the comments if this is something you struggle with.