The Age of Habits

Originally posted here.

First comes innocence, then comes adolescence and then comes youth. We never care much about the age which comes after youth because we have made ourselves believe that there can be nothing better than the time you are young. Rest of phases which comes next are not given the love they deserve, they are merely compared to youth and overlooked and never lived with your heart and mind.

Straight out of college, I believed now is the age of chasing your dreams. I had the focus and right attitude required for my dreams, but what I also had, was the backlog of habits which I developed in college. I overlooked that backlog for a long time before realizing that I can’t even start chasing my next goal if I don’t clear the backlog before it. Some of us never realize this nor are ready to accept them as backlog. Some consider themselves lucky as they don’t think they have any backlog, but I don’t come in that category because I lived my college life neither as a scholar nor as a failure, but as an average college going student who gets in fucked up situations and mess ups every once in a while.

Let me try to generalize and get some clarity on the idea of backlog of habits. Custom of not planning, doing everything only when it is required and only when it is not possible to postpone it any further. We strongly believed that any damn project or a task could be completed if we gave two nights in a row to it. We managed pretty well with such attitude as they didn’t require perfection from you, not even getting A’s. Next comes inadequate sleeping hours. Not sleeping for 2–3 days in a week and then sleeping for an entire day on a weekend, that doesn’t work anymore. Because you might have planned to use that weekend to do something fun, or do learn something new, but they are all used up just to recover your sleep quota. Adding to it, days with less sleep are not productive, it’s not that you are attending lectures anymore, you are working on something important, and you need to get it done quickly, else you end up giving more hours to a simple task. Some other general ones are watching Friends/HarryPotter again and again, getting addicted to smoking cigarettes for every good and bad reason possible and blaming entire world for not allowing you to quit smoking; having pizza, chicken and beer every now and then, etc. I hope you got the idea and you will be able to figure out what is your backlog.

23–25, is the period which I call the “Age of Habits”.

I came to realize this when I understood the fact the dream is not a few days or month’s task, it is getting up every morning day after day, month after month, year after year and doing each thing again and again, till you get better, till you achieve your dream with blink of an eye and you owe that day to all days before it.

I was not able to do what I knew was needed, I was gaining weight, losing my energy, my self-confidence was depleting and I was beginning to think I am getting old and my youth is coming to an end. No stamina used to be left when I began to work on my passion.This is when I made a decision to get my life in discipline and in order, to prevent my dreams from dying.

There will be days when there will be no motivation, at that time there will be habits you develop which will keep you going. The habits which you develop with love in this age will define who you are in the future. You can do it now, it’s easy, it’s doable but if you start late, the struggle is going to be more.

To get up every morning with a new hope, even though life brings you down every night before going to sleep is what this journey is all about.