Can good habits evolve from Crisis?

The Shilthorn - Swiss Alps.

How many of you have taken time to sit back and analyze the different feelings and emotions you experience in any given day? Let’s go even deeper. How many of you have paused to identify the reasons you are having a certain emotion or feeling? Next, if some of these emotions are undesirable for you to be experiencing, have you considered what thoughts or actions you can implement to modify and alter those feelings? I would like you to be self-introspective and discover your own calls to action to overcome your own undesirable emotions.

What are emotions? Emotions can range from anger, fear, loneliness, inadequacy, failure, and despair on one end of the spectrum, to excitement, empathy, happiness, positivity, joy, and love on the other end, with all the other feelings you can think of in between. Feelings can be described as either brief or elongated and involve either intense or casual mental activity. All the emotions we have are instinctive or intuitive and derive from our experiences, reasoning and knowledge or intellect. Many times, these emotions and feelings we have are based on the knowledge and understanding of the experiences of others we know.

While reading a book on behavior, regarding keystone habits with incremental and small wins, I read some text that communicated the following message: “Good habits often evolve from crisis.” I am confident that most, if not all of us have experienced crisis of some kind. Think back and consider the good habits you developed from that crisis.  I presume that most of those good habits probably involved techniques to control our most undesirable emotions, brought about with our crisis.

Let me give you an idea of one of the habits I am in the process of working on after my crisis. I recently read in the Foreword of a book of one of my good friends, the phrase, “many are intrigued but few are perceptive.” Reading this phrase gave me a good jolt and I have become obsessed with observing my shortcomings in this area and focusing on ways to evolve from a person who is just intrigued, to one that is perceptive and empathetic to the needs of others, followed by actions to be positively influential in their lives. We are all sentient beings, meaning, we all possess the ability to perceive, but many times feel inadequate in following through with actions of displaying empathy and understanding. How do we advance past the level of intrigue and become perceptive to the needs of others? I believe we all accomplish this in our own ways, once we have committed to making changes to bring efficacy of these attributes in our lives. We can all make it happen! Ultimately, the drive to inculcate characteristics patterned after the teachings of Jesus is imperative to real happiness.