When I hear the word ‘habits’, the associations that come to mind
involve self-destruction: hard drugs; drinking; smoking; public
masturbation; picking up junk you don’t need from the side of the
road on hard rubbish day; and so on. This is because, in my life so
far, the only ‘healthy’ habit I’ve ever been able to maintain long term
is brushing my teeth. Even then, as the hour of the pre-bed brush
looms closer, I have to silence the voice in my head that sounds like
evil Elmo and whispers in its distorted little Muppety voice: “Don’t
get up. Who needs teeth anyway? Baby food comes in convenient
pouches now. Women in the olden days used to get full-mouth
extractions and dentures when they were newly married so their
husband didn’t have to spend money on dentistry,” and the like.
This still happens every single night, even though I’ve barely
skipped five brushes in the past 20 years. It’s like my brain
wants me to live in total chaos, skating on the edge of disaster,
MacGyver- ing together the shreds of my life into ad hoc, barely
functional solutions for continued existence. Forming new habits
that would help me stay healthy or sane? Haha! Forget it!
Over the years, I’ve gathered this is not how most people – or
at least, most comfortably functional people – live their lives.
Habits, even small ones like a cup of tea at a particular time,provide mental comfort and security. Bigger habits, ones that
seem daunting and borderline impossible to me, like exercise, are
performed with regularity by many people. I once saw a montage
video on YouTube of a guy slowly training his cat to use a human
dunny. If you can teach a cat to shit in the toilet, surely I can teach
myself to do 10 minutes of yoga in the mornings.
This problem has become acute for me recently. I’ve realised
the reason I can’t form any good habits is because nobody ever
taught me how. If I can’t teach myself, how am I going to teach
my (as yet non-existent) kids? Little Bobby (I promise I won’t
actually call my child Little Bobby) is not going to learn the
benefits of regular self-care and self-improvement if his mother
spends five minutes every night screaming, “Shut up, evil Elmo”
at teeth-brushing time, and he’s not going to practise his soccer
moves or shitty recorder scales if he can’t see me practising my
own soccer moves or shitty recorder scales.
So, at the start of this year, I began doing a truly minuscule amount
of regular exercise. One of the ways I have (so far) stayed motivated
to do this is by selecting the funniest and easiest program I could
find – 5BX, which the Canadian Air Force invented in the 1950s to
stop their airmen becoming unfit while stationed at remote bases
in Canada’s north. Every morning I huff through the extremely
short repertoire of exercises in the lounge room, while imagining
Canadian pilots getting told off by their superiors for putting on
“ice weight” and becoming “arctic disgraces”.
That’s the big thing I’ve learnt over many years of habit-formation
failure: you have to start small. When people say, “You have to start
small,” they’re not just saying it because they like the sound of
their own voices, which is what I assumed until I disregarded that
advice and failed miserably many times. Evil Elmo can’t be allowed
to anticipate any kind of intense discomfort. For me, that means
treating myself like the YouTube guy treated his cat – just placing
it next to the toilet every day for a fortnight before he even started
putting it on the seat. One day I’ll become as good at my habits as
Toilet Cat is at shitting in the toilet. I will make Toilet Cat proud.back in the habit
ELEANOR ROBERTSON IS DETERMINED
TO MAKE A GOOD ROUTINE STICK.
PhotoClaudia Fernandesrant