What Are Your Best Habits?

When I meet new people around my age, I am fascinated by their response to the following question:

“What are your best habits?”

It is a very open-ended question filled with unpredictable and incredulous responses. One time I (Brendan) heard someone say to me with a straight face that their best habit is taking a “fat” nap. Nothing like waking up in the morning and looking forward to that daily nap. Like I said, it’s an unpredictable response but you certainly can gauge an insight into someone’s values.

Habits are not meant to impress others but are a way to assure that you’re maximizing each day's opportunity. 

Without beneficial habits it is harder to live with a purpose because we can be left wandering throughout our day with no direction. This hinders our ability to get stuff done. Oftentimes, we find ourselves most fulfilled when we have very efficient days, and our productivity is optimized. You’re either a GSD (Get Shit Done) type of person or you’re not. Habits can create a framework for your daily attack that transforms you into one.

Similarly to how we are reticent emotionally or with our fears, honestly assessing the value of our habits can be challenging. The uncovering of our weaknesses can be revealing, and often leaves us feeling vulnerable or insecure. These realizations are paramount to the embracement of our imperfections and our growth past them. A big step toward uncovering our weaknesses was admitting that we were spending too much engaging with social media. We realized that social media traps you into a new world, warps your perception of progress, and has deleterious effects on maintaining a lifestyle shaped by positive habits.

We’re not here to decipher good and bad habits; that’s up for you to measure. But we will say one of the best habits you can adopt is a consistent and honest appraisal of the utility of your habits. Constantly refining our habits brings us much closer to the mastery of our own lifestyle, enabling us to fulfill our potential. It isn't in our nature to want to look deep inside and criticize who we are and how we live; it feels very uncomfortable and unnatural. However, if we build a resistance to this discomfort and accept the imperfections of our current lives, we can make tremendous progress in our lifestyle and embrace our journey. 

There is no timeline on forming new habits, but the sooner we do so the higher our ceiling becomes. Time can work for or against us. Wasted time can leave us feeling regretful about the opportunities we missed. The feeling of regret always lingers inside us, however; if we seek to grow our habits, we can find security in knowing we are seizing the daily opportunity to become our best self. Create new expectations for yourself and go get it!!!

Thoughts become Ideas.

Ideas become Actions. 

Actions become Habits. 

Habits become Lifestyle. 

Lifestyle can become Greatness.

Elevate your habits and you’ll maximize your potential. 

Brendan McNamara

MTD-Co Founder

Rowan Paoletti-Newton

MTD Blog Writer