Its been a while since I am working from home. During the times of pre Covid-19, when I am at work, I get up from my desk precisely at 10.45 am and start walking towards a cafe to grab a coffee. Its not even a conscious decision. It just happens. Its like I don’t have any control over my body. Its 10.45 am and I start walking! One of the reasons for this behaviour could be that around same time, everyone starts getting up from the desk to smell that coffee.
Astonishingly, while working from home, its been more than 8 weeks since I had a cup of coffee! And surprisingly, I have not even tried to achieve this outcome. It just happened organically.
So what does this tell me? Quite a few things.
Your surroundings have profound effect on your behaviour patterns and thus, on lot of your habits. You eventually become your surroundings. I realised that coffee is not even my thing! I just kept drinking it because everyone around was drinking the same thing. If I were really into coffee, I would not have survived 6 weeks without it. This also made it very clear what I truly love, which is Chai (Indian Masala Tea). I don’t remember a day in my life without a cup of Chai. Coffee is just something I picked up from people around me.
It makes me wonder whether lot of our likes and dislikes are really our own?! They may be heavily influenced by our surroundings.
People put enormous efforts to change their habits but fail to see that it won’t work if the environment is highly conducive to a particular habit. If you charge your phone on the bed side table, you are bound to use it before sleep. If you remove your phone from the bedroom, you automatically drop that habit.
Sometimes, you just change your environment and you change your habit.
Without even trying…!
