Habits

I recently read the book The Power of Habit and it has me thinking a lot about my habits, and how they are forming my life.  According to this author, every habit (which includes much of our behavior) consists of a cue, a response, and a reward.  Sometimes it’s hard to tease the three apart, to figure out what the cue is that triggers the habit, or what the reward is from a seemingly unrewarding behavior (for example, why do I yell at my kids?  it doesn’t make me feel any better when I do, and it rarely elicits a good change from them).  Today I noticed that by changing my habits just a little—taking a shower before eating breakfast rather than after, switching up the order in which I do things in other, even smaller ways….I ended up feeling energized by the change, and found myself changing other more damaging habits (usually I somehow end up sitting on the couch all morning, instead I was up playing with the baby, cleaning, and I came up with six different ideas for blog topics too).
Another habit I’m trying to change is my tendency to do things unrelated to the boys’ lessons during lesson time, in the between minutes when no one needs me.  I get swept up in reading my current book, checking Facebook, trolling Pinterest.  I want to try to only do things related to lessons during lesson time (in terms of reading, writing, using media)- I have been less successful at making this habit switch so far, but when I do succeed with this to any extent I find that I’m more patient with the boys when they get frustrated at a difficult lesson, or when they lose focus.  Instead of having to pull myself away from something wholly unrelated to lessons straight into a crisis already in progress, I find I either sit thinking quietly and notice right away that they are getting into difficulty OR I read or do research related to lessons, and their crises don’t feel unrelated when they interrupt what I’m doing, it’s all part of the same project.  It was easier when I could still knit, that was something I could do with half of my attention and I never felt the need to ask them to wait longer than it took me to reach the end of my row, before I was ready to help with the tricky bits of their work.