Jenny and Erin have tagged me from their blog, along with several others who’ve recently been placed on the “Personal Development List of Resources” at Priscilla Palmer’s Blog. Jenny and Erin’s blog is, in their words, a “tongue-in-cheek quest for understanding“. There is a lot of good and insightful posts on the blog, and as such, it has earned entry into my Bloglines “Personal Development” feeds list. Check it out

Interestingly enough, Jenny and Erin have decided to have a contest on their blog for all the tagged bloggers. The contest (as I see it), is basically to see which of us can best answer the following question:

How big of a role do habits play in your daily life? Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

So, if I may, I’ll answer the question one part at a time.

How big of a role do habits play in your daily life?

I think this is a loaded question, because habits play a HUGE role in everyone’ lives. Show me a person without habits, and I’ll show you a person who has to read a driving manual each and every day before even getting behind the wheel.

Habits are a necessary outcome to the way our brains function. Without habits, life would be nothing more than a constant mess of signals all competing for our attention. As far as habits in MY life, I strive to develop good habits, as I’m sure we all do deep down.
I have been working on developing the habits that form the basics of Lucid Dreaming. I am not yet where I’d like to be as far as the frequency of my lucid dreams. My ultimate goal is to be able to have a lucid dream each and every time I go to sleep, if I so choose.

My deep belief in the power of building habits out of the basics is why I wrote the posts that are listed as “The Basics of Lucid Dreaming” in the sidebar. If you haven’t yet read those, I recommend it. It will change your life. Promise.

Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously?

Both. Habits are ALWAYS being formed unconsciously. We do, however, have the option of forming habits consciously as well. Great care must be taken in forming habits, that we forming habits that will empower us to live the lives we choose. A great deal about habits has been written on some of the excellent Personal Development Blogs on the original list at Priscilla’s blog.

What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?

There are several. For the past 5 or 6 years, off and on, I have been learning as much as I can teach myself about Neuro-Linguistic Programming. To me, NLP is a promising technology and an awesome tool. I totally fell off the bandwagon for the past couple years. I finally decided to get back into it more more hot and heavy, and am now re-reading “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins. As far as specific tools to develop and shape habits, one NLP Pattern I’m particularly fond of is the “Swish Pattern”. This is an awesome tool because it takes a bad habit, and simultaneously replaces it with a more empowering habit. Two Birds, One Stone.

Another tool I’ve come into contact with lately is the NLP Pattern called the “New Behavior Generator”.

If you are open to developing great and empowering habits in record time, I recommend you read the following sites for NLP Information.

NLP 101

NLP University

Well, I guess that about covers it