What Emotions Are Attached to Your Habits?

You don’t want to spend your life doing things that you don’t find fulfilling. It’s not fun to work hard to reach a goal only to realize you’re not really enjoying yourself. There are many people who feel that something’s wrong, but they can’t put their finger on it.

That’s where journaling can come in handy. When you journal, it allows you to see just how fulfilling what you’re doing with your life is. When you share your emotions in your journal, it allows you to see the connection between your emotions and your goals.

By doing this, you’ll see if what makes you happy is the too-high cost for the financial rewards or any other kind of success. If you’re not happy and you don’t feel fulfilled, then you’re just going through the motions in life.

Your emotions are linked to your habits and the reason why so many people fail to change their habits is because they don’t face whatever emotion is behind that habit. If you address the emotion, you can change the habit.

You’re not a robot, so obviously, you can’t turn off your emotions. But, if you want to find satisfaction with goals and your life in general, then you do need to determine if they’re behind why you’re doing whatever it is that you’re doing.

The thing about journaling is that you put your authentic self on the pages. You’ll open up about what your fears are. You’ll talk about what’s worrying you or making anxiety create knots in your stomach.

You’ll share how the ups and downs of your emotions might make you feel one way, when your behavior suggests something completely different is going on. If you want to be happy and truly successful, then you have to deal with the emotions.

You might have the habit of not being as productive as you could be. You put off doing tasks because the emotional link there might be fear. You’re afraid you’ll handle something the wrong way, so you keep putting it off until the last minute.

Then this procrastination makes whatever you’re doing a rush job, and it doesn’t turn out well so the failure feeds right back into the emotion of fear. Journaling allows you to see that your procrastination is rooted in fear of failure.

You’re hesitant to start something new - wary of going after what you really want. By facing those emotions, though, you can change or refine your habits and make the kind of progress with your life that you do find fulfilling.

Dig deep when you journal to see how you’re feeling whenever you’re engaging in certain habits. See if those emotions are attached to some kind of experience. See if the way that you feel betters your life or hinders it. By understanding how emotions guide your habits, you’ll be able to use their influence when they’re good for your success and appropriately respond to the ones that aren’t.