Let me say that I’m not some Puritan that thinks you shouldn’t enjoy yourself over a beer or cigar. That’s really, really not the point of what I’m saying here in this article. I want you to define your habits yourself. For me, the habits that control you—the ones you can’t easily get away from—are the bad ones. I could tell you a dozen stories about drug and alcohol addiction, but I believe you already know that these habits will destroy you and everything and everyone around you. It’s the subtle habits that can sneak up on you.
When I got my company up and running at full speed, we decided we wanted to fulfill a long-time dream and move to a house on a lake. We found the perfect spot in Lucas, Texas. I could hook my boat up to the truck and be on the water five minutes after leaving my driveway. But for the first six years we lived in Lucas, I don’t think I got to the lake more than six times total. My office was on a direct line between the airport and the house, and I’d make it habit to stop and check just one more thing at the office when I came home from a trip.
That “one more thing” usually became two or three more things, and I routinely rolled in at seven or eight at night. Working too hard—or too inefficiently—is definitely a bad habit. I finally got the message from my wife, who asked me one night why we even bothered to move to the lake since we never saw it. Afterward having this heart to heart discussion with my wife, I moved my office so that it was in the complete opposite direction of the airport. We saved up some money and bought a new ski boat, and I committed myself to be home in the afternoons when my kids got back from school so we could go skiing. In the summer, we’re on the lake three to four days a week.
To assess your own habits, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. You might have something you’ve been doing in your day-to-day life that was “okay” for a long time because you were younger, stronger, or more focused. How you eat is a great example. Your metabolism changes as you get older, and just because you consider yourself a healthy eater—for a 35-year-old—doesn’t mean you’re going to be a healthy 50-year-old. If you don’t monitor your habits, those sandwiches you eat for lunch when you’re 30 and fit could turn you into a chubby middle-aged person.
By taking care not to let your habits control you, you will do a better job keeping your life in balance and in proportion. It’s not about eliminating all the things you enjoy out of your life and following some grim no-fun plan. I like wasting time as much as anybody. I’ve just figured out a mix of habits that works for me.
Let me use alcohol as an example. I’ve got some serious alcoholism in my family, and I know that “drowning my tears in my beer” is something that would get me into trouble pretty fast. But I don’t believe that making a rule that I won’t ever go to Germany and enjoy a beer at Oktoberfest, or taste a fantastic wine from a friend’s cellar is the solution. I could be a regular drinker and get to the point where I was going to have to take the drastic step of cutting all alcohol from my life—like some of my friends have had to do. Or, I could be honest with myself about my limitations, and set a system in place that would allow me to enjoy myself in moderation. I decided to eliminate hard liquor from my life and restricted my drinking to “non-school” nights—Friday and Saturday. You know sometimes the greatest control of a habit is understanding that you might lose the opportunity to enjoy it if you don’t manage it.
The key to the Good Life is to stay in control of your habits so they don’t control you and force you to do something drastic later. People develop diabetes in their middle-age years partially because they couldn’t control their intake of food. Would you rather eat an extra slice of pie now or stop eating it forever when you’re 55? To me, it’s an easy choice.
But the truth is that the opportunities that make it so easy for us to live in America also make it easy to keep a hold of whatever habits we have. No society in the history of the world has had as much access to food as we do right now. Grocery stores are bursting with every kind of food you could imagine—and some our parents even couldn’t imagine, thanks to food science. And while it’s great that frozen food can remain edible for months and your kids can enjoy green ketchup if that’s what they really want, millions of people in this country are obese because their idea of a meal is something you pick up at a fast food restaurant.
The second part of that equation is the fact that we just don’t need to expend as much energy to live as we used to. We spend the majority of our lives in cars, planes and elevators. A lot of people aren’t even doing something as simple as walking behind a lawn mower anymore.
This might explain what’s happening to many people today, but I don’t think these are valid excuses. Not any legitimate ones, anyway. As I said, The Good Life is about gaining control over your life and habits are one area you can focus on. Do you want to change those habits? Do you wish you could quit habits that waste your time, hurt your health, or otherwise get in the way of The Good Life? Regardless of your motivation, if you want to work on your habits, make sure you read next month’s e-Zine. The main topic will be “Building a Better You by Choosing Your Habits.” I will show you how to make the process less of a struggle for you and how you can help others as well.
Thanks for all your support. I hope you make it a habit to listen to my radio show each Saturday on WBAP 820 AM at 5:00 pm. This is our second season! You can listen to online—just go to www.bryandodge.com and click on the WBAP link to Listen Live. Feel free to call in with your questions or your feedback or if you just want to promote
your business. Thanks for being you.
The Good life Rules – 48 hours at a time!
Bryan J. Dodge