Old Habits 

Shared from Karin Denes-Collar with KU Medical Center

Happy New Year! As we start the new year, we often start thinking about habits we want to change. Habit is a funny word—it encompasses both habits we want to break, like eating sugar or smoking, and habits we want to make, like exercising or flossing our teeth. If you’re thinking you want to [do] more or less of something in 2024, a good place to start is to take inventory about something you "got out of the habit of". Maybe it used to be part of the regular routine, but something changed and the habit was broken. If this worked for you in the past, you may want to start here. Once you’ve identified that habit, ask yourself how you got derailed as this can be a path to starting it back up and sticking with it again.

For example, many of you may have noticed that this tip stopped reaching your email inbox a few months ago. This happened because of a change in my habits. For over two years, almost without fail I wrote two tips a week, with a system to remind myself to send them. In October, I traveled for work and timed a few tips to send while I was gone. When I got back, life was busy, but the real reason the tips stopped was because the routine had changed.  Now, I’ve recommitted myself to writing this email at least once a week and have scheduled the writing into my week just as I did before (in the hopes that the old routine will still serve me well).

Consider if there is a similar change that led to the loss of your routine, and your habit. This may be an easy-ish place to start when you want to make changes in the new year—you don’t have to do something altogether new, you just have to remind yourself how you did the old habit in the first place and make a plan to recommit yourself with the steps that will help you be successful.