I have a truly bad habbit of calling in to work sick, and procrastinating.

After being broke for the last couple of years due to college I have just been hired at a wonderful job that pays great. I have already called out sick this week. I don’t know why I do this but I have done this in the past at other jobs and when I feel like I am just about to get into trouble or people are looking down upon me I shape up in order not to lose my job.

I want to break this habit and build great work ethics.

I always feel so guilty when I take the day off that I never even enjoy the time off work.

This is a great post and a lot of what you say lines up with what the research shows. I can’t emphasize enough, one habit at a time please. Rushing head-long into an ‘orgy of self-improvement’ is bound to lead to failure.

I started reading your articles few days ago after first finding “10 ways to improve your energy” at Google. You have a very good view point in almost all areas. I really appreciate it and enjoy reading your articles, and it is very rare that we find some one like you.

When it comes to changing habits, I always try to change a particular habit, but some thing else impacting the progress of the new habit. As you mentioned in your Habitual Mastery series, we need to replace the habit, we cannot change the habit. That is an excellent point I realized.

Now coming to the point, I wanted to mention that if you change one or two habits, in your life, other habits that depend on them will also automatically change. For example, you want to feel energetic. So you start exercise. After a few days you will not only start feel energetic, you will also feel motivated towards your day, you will enjoy spending more time with your loved ones. Apart from this, depending on your diet, you will also reduce weight or build mussels. I started doing yoga in Jan, 2006. Till now I reduced 10 pounds, with out paying any special effort on my diet. I eat almost every thing, but in a limited quantity. Apart from this I also have some BY PRODUCTS. I also find myself more productive in my work, having more fun at home and office, able to make quick decisions. My objective of starting the yoga was to stay physically fit. I did not or never anticipate all the other BY PRODUCTS doing yoga for longer period of time.

So for those who are serious of changing any habit, please start working on the root cause of your motivation. In my situation, I want to stay fit, so started doing yoga. When you master one thing and start enjoying, you will find other UNWATED habits, or thins will fade away from your with out any conscious effort from your side. This is my personal experience. By the way to start experiencing the fruit of BY PRODUCTS, I had do yoga continuously for nearly a year.

To explain further, I will give one more real life example of smokers. I found a guy who comes to the same yoga center that I go. He used to smoke a lot. His objective of visiting the yoga center was not to quit smoking, but to stay physically fit. Once he observed certain change in his physiology, he quit smoking, reduced the amount of meet in his meals, he reduced alcohol in take. After seeing the change in this person, several of his friends enrolled in the yoga class.

The point I am trying to make here is, instead of think about all the habits that you want to change, just concentrate on improving your over system, not a single habit. That will definitely take longer time than changing a habit, but the rewards are profound. You will be amazed. Let us assume that your habit is like a weed in the pond. You feel like getting rid of the habit, then you just take away the weed and feel good for some time. Then one fine day you will find the weed coming up again. For this you should identify the root cause, then work at the system level. It may be longer than expected, but the results will amaze you.

By the way, to change any habit, we are usually asked to practice for 21 days. The reason for this is that humans take 21 days to form a new neural pathway in our brain.

Lot more to share,

Hari Emani