Watching younger kids can tell you a great deal about how you used to be. You are now a lot more capable. You can do much more than you could before, and you can do it better. This is true physically – pre-teens are simply no match for teens in sports. And it is true mentally – teenagers can easily handle more difficult information and problems than those younger than themselves. To a large extent, someone who is 16 has everything going for them that a 25, 30 or 40 year old person has except for practice, and the time it takes to run into the thousands of possible life experiences, and to learn a little something from each one of them.

By the time you are in your teens you are well into having the abilities that allow you to deliberately control much of what you do. But how much of our behaviour do we actually control, and how much can we control? How much of what a person does is not what we want to do, but just something that we do whether we want to or not.

Let me give you an example. Do you know anyone who talks so much that it drives everyone else crazy? They go on and on so much you want to strangle them. My question is "why do they do it?" My answer is "because it is such a strongly built-in habit for them that they have lost control over that part of their behaviour". They probably don’t even understand how much they talk, or what it does to make people dislike them. This person may have started their excessive talking because they felt insecure or for some other emotional reason, but often these things become habits. They are not thinking that they want to talk so much, or that they should talk so much. They are just doing it. They may even want to talk less, but the behaviour is controlled more by habit than by logic or reason.

The point I am making is that much of what people do is habitual. It has to be. Can you imagine how little we could actually do if we had to stop and think about everything before we could act? Life is very complex, and having a lot of our behaviour built in as habits and patterns is a necessity. Driving a car is largely a complex set of habits, hopefully combined with some careful thought. When we meet people we usually respond automatically with gestures and things to say. Imagine if you had to stop and figure out what to do every time you ran into someone new.

A second point about habits is that some are good, and some are bad. We usually like people who smile at us and seem open and alive. If your usual response when meeting someone is to smile and be friendly, people will most often like you. If your usual pattern is to shyly look away and be quiet, people may feel hesitant about trying to get to know you better. The right habit at the right time works for you. The wrong habit at the wrong time works against you.

Point number three is that there are many different types of habits, and some are very, very powerful. Imagine the heroin addict shooting up day after day. He gets straightened out for a while at a treatment program, and then he’s back at it again. How can anyone continue to do something that hurts them when it is so obvious to everyone else that they need to stop? Maybe you’ve wondered about someone you know who is an alcoholic. They drink so much, so often that it is ruining their life, and hurting those around them. What is it about these people that makes them so different from the rest of us? It does seem hard to understand.

But how many other people do the same type of thing? Many people are smokers. They, like everyone else, know it’s bad for them, but they just keep puffing. Thousands of people are seriously overweight. They suffer because of it, but most keep eating too much and struggle endlessly with trying to control it. In all of these cases, people are repeatedly consuming too much of something, and having trouble getting their own behaviour under control. In fact, if you add up those who make a habit of repeatedly consuming too much of something you get a majority of the adult population.  It suddenly starts to look almost "normal".  

Wait a minute you say! Is this person trying to say that addiction to alcohol, heroin, cigarettes and food are all the same thing? Not quite, there are important differences. However, I do think that they are basically similar types of behaviour.

Habitual behaviour is part of all of us. It can be trivial or important, good or bad, fairly easy to change or extremely hard to change. Most importantly, good habits are worth building, and bad habits are worth avoiding.

Summer is a great time to work on habits because the usual routine of life is interrupted, and bad habits grow out of routine. It is a good time to think about some good way of doing things, and to gradually build it into your life. How would you like to be different? Maybe you’d like to be more active. Perhaps you’d like to eliminate something you don’t like – maybe smoking. Heading for the fridge every time you’re bored, or parking yourself in front of late TV re-runs that you hate anyway.

Working on habits requires patience, but the good times and good feelings that come from starting to move you want to go are worth the trouble.