“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”
-Mark Twain

After thirty years of life, I’ve picked up a slew of bad habits – persistent behaviors that I don’t like at all, that serve me in the moment, perhaps, but never in the long-term.

And what I’m finding is, almost tautologically, those bad habits are bad habits because I revert back to them without thinking, without even realizing what I’m doing. I catch myself in any of them, and it almost seems a surprise – how did I end up here?

So, recently, and on more fronts than I can count, I’ve been trying to break those habits. Trying hard. And, frankly, I’m still doing a mediocre job overall. On many days I make the same mistakes I’ve made on many days before.

But now, increasingly, I see the mistakes as I make them. Not always. And even when I do, I can’t stop myself 100% of the time. Still, I’m starting to see those habits with new eyes. To really pay attention to them. To puzzle over how I built them, and how I can unbuild them.

Imperfect as my attempts still are, I take them as big progress. Because Twain, I think, is right: the only way to leave a habit behind is the way it was built up – one step and one step and one step at a time.