Let’s reframe “Bad Habits,” shall we?

Meta much?

Just after I posted this to IG I noticed the glaring typo on the first slide. Ugh! Maybe it’s time to take some of my own advice?

The signs have been piling up: I’m starting to get things wrong on my calendar, mixing up time zones, missing appointments. I’m losing stuff more often than usual. Avoiding certain unpleasant tasks. In a previous iteration of my life, I would have said “I’m slipping into my old bad habits.” I would have thrown my hands in the air, indulged in a lot of highly critical self-talk, and then I would have given up. I would have just dismissed all my recent growth and success on IG and as a peer mentor and teacher as yet one more failed project that I got started but couldn’t sustain. Instead, I’ve been paying attention to this re-emergence of “bad habits” and trying to figure out what in my environment has changed to make it more difficult now to keep up with the details of my work. What I know is that I need to slow down. That I’m doing way too much, and I need to get more patient and take a longer view. This is what I know.

But what did I do? Ha! What I did is more work: I made a post about it on IG, of course. That’s what I do: I observe my life, mine the insights it has to offer, and then make posts about them. But this time what I probably needed to do was NOT make a post. But I don’t always listen to my own advice, which almost always comes back to bite me in the butt.

This time, irony of ironies, my post on bad habits and my need to slow down is the very thing that came back to bite me in the butt. Note the glaring type on the first slide. Ugh! I’m an editor, ffs!

But I decided to just leave it, as embarrassing as it is. Because it’s so damn meta, isn’t it? Lesson learned: I’m paring back my to-do list as we speak!

Here is the original post:

Often in my peer mentoring work, and just in general in the neurodivergent community, I hear people say some version of "I was doing so well! But suddenly everything is falling apart again. I'm slipping into my old bad habits."

The implication is that there is some badness inside of us, some character flaw we've been able to suppress for some small amount of time, but that eventually we always revert back to form. Back to our true selves, which is our badness, manifesting as a return to our "old bad habits."

What if instead, we began looking outside of ourselves, rather than always defaulting to our intrinsic "badness"?

What if instead of this "bad habits" narrative, we acknowledged that under certain circumstances, we ARE capable of behaviors and habits that help us move toward our goals? And that when we are no longer able to keep up with those behaviors and habits, perhaps it's not that our inherent badness has re-emerged, but rather that our external circumstances have changed?

When we focus on our habits as intrinsic character flaws, we also largely excuse ourselves from taking responsibility for our lives and for exercising agency we do have.

"This is just who I am. Disordered. Flawed. I'll never change, so I might as well just give up."

But if you are sometimes capable of habits that move you toward your goals, then when those habits "slip," it seems to me a more empowering way to think about that is to ask: what changed out side of yourself?

If sometimes you can keep on top of your calendar and not miss appointments; if sometimes you can keep your work space organized and move forward with projects; if sometimes you can maintain a routine around eating and movement that is nourishing and healthy . . . 

. . . then when those behaviors start to fall apart, ask yourself "what changed"? You are still you, you still have your same intrinsic abilities (which, by definition, include all those "good" those habits, because look! You've been doing them!) So it must be something outside of you that has changed.

For me, the answer is almost always that I am doing too much and going too fast. That I need to slow down and get more rest, both for my body and for my mind.

This is rarely the answer I want. It is so frustrating.

I have so many ideas in my head, so many visions of the contributions I want to offer the world, of the art I want to make, of the business I want to build in order to gain some financial security.

My impulse is always to speed up! Do more! Rush! Fit in just one more thing!

But when I do that, things fall apart even more.

I start missing appointments. I begin losing my wallet, keys and phone again. I procrastinate and avoid unpleasant tasks. I lose myself in hyper-focus, I go down rabbit holes, but with no capacity to regulate or moderate my work or my impulses.

I start to feel frenzied and my impulse—in the face of "slipping back into old bad habits"—is to double down on my effort, and my critical self-talk: try harder! Do more! Pick up the pace! Stop being so lazy! All in an effort to get back to those "good habits" I enjoyed for such a brief moment.

But I have learned to resist that impulse. That impulse is a lie. It is a lie that has been drilled into me by years of being shamed for my need to rest, to be still, to be alone and quiet and "unproductive."

Rest may not be the thing you need (thought it probably wouldn't hurt). But I bet there is something—some condition external to your character—that made it possible for you to do the things you want and need to do in order to have a satisfying and meaningful life . 

Whatever that thing is—when you figure it out and consistently reestablish those conditions every time things start to fall apart?

That’s the sweet spot.

That’s the good life.

And beating yourself up for "bad habits" is never going to get you there. I promise.