Habits

Habits are simply part of animal life. Spend several days with a cat or dog. You will get the point. Habits are hard-wired behaviors, developed from genetic program or environmental conditioning.
 

As humans, we have the ability to initiate or change intentional habits, or repetitive thoughts/behaviors. Our frontal lobes allow us to construct habits for various purposes. Our less evolved brain areas still carry unintentional habit commands as well. This causes inevitable conflict within our minds. As I inspect my habits carefully, I am amazed at the complexity of motivation that goes into the simplest of repeated thoughts or behaviors. 

Habitual living can range from the mindless roving of the drug addict to the ascetic contemplation of the monastic. Quantitatively the junky and the monk may have much in common, in terms of material poverty. Qualitatively, they have widely disparate life experiences. Slavery to the unintentional habituation in the one is a sharp contrast to the mindful submission to discipline of the other.

As a person with a manageable form of obsessive compulsive disorder, I have had to sort out the intentional and unintentional habits in my own life. This was an early chapter in my discovery of daily personal practice for greater personal health and peace. Learning to wrestle with my genetic and conditioned responses to stress was a very profound personal journey and educational experience. Incorporating this learning into my work as a psychiatric nurse and later as a hospice nurse was very helpful to my personal and professional practice.

Habits are too often equated with addiction alone. Habits of hygiene and exercise keep all animals healthier. Unaddressed addiction is a conscious or unconscious surrendering to genetic predisposition and conditioning. Intentional habits of mindful self-exploration bring tremendous benefits. Intentional habits of learning and understanding my environment brings a sense of secure identity within my own world.  Intentional habits of compassionate generosity bring love and peace.