The holidays meant taking time off work, forgetting about my laptop, and eventually getting frustrated with one of my sisters.
(I won’t tell you which one, especially because they are readers… If you’re one of my sisters then I’m just kidding. Totally kidding.)

When January 5th rolled around, I’d nearly forgotten how to go about my work. I felt like I was re-learning myself.

The break did what it was supposed to.

But in the re-learning, I saw things I’d gotten used to ignoring.

Between two meetings, my hands opened Instagram before my mind could stop me.
And I felt it crawl on my skin.
I flipped from Gmail to Slack for another ten minutes.
I don’t know why I didn’t get up if I needed a break.

Seeing the habits was infuriating because I only saw them once they’d already begun.
Like being unable to wake from a nightmare.

What scared me most wasn’t the apps.
It was the mindlessness underneath them.
Like I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Or if I did, that choice was long in the past.

And then it hit me.

The habit didn’t hurt. It wasn’t why my skin crawled.
It was the quiet knowledge that I was the one agreeing to it.

A great teacher once told me that in order to break a habit, you must first become a witness to it.
If you are not a witness, your patterns are unconscious.
And when your patterns are unconscious, your habit is doing you.
When a habit is doing you, you are not free while you are doing it.

That line has been echoing in my head all week.

So I started writing my habits down.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just noticing.

And I’ve been asking myself one question:

Is this habit taking me closer to my mission?

If the answer is no, I write down the habit that I want to replace it. As a trade.
Because I’m starting to see this clearly…

The smallest, most ordinary moments of the day are votes for the life I am building… or the life I am avoiding.

So if you catch yourself opening something you didn’t mean to open today,
if you feel that familiar itch to disappear for a minute,
just watch it.

No shame. Not to win some productivity contest.
Just to take your choice back.

Until next time,

Live your light.