How Relationships with People Affect Your Habits
It may not be so obvious, but many habits we exhibit do not depend on ourselves. It also depends on our relationships with people like our parents, family members, friends, and spouses. Those you spend the most time around have the power to influence our habits in the following ways:
● How you spend money
●How you eat
●Unhealthy addictions you pick up
● How much sleep you get
● How goal-oriented you are
In most cases, you don’t purposely emulate these individuals. Instead, you subconsciously pick up cues from these individuals around you to inform your habits and behavior. This may not be a problem if you hang around positive people. However, if the individuals you spend time with have unhealthy habits, it is easy for you to adopt these habits. The more identity you draw from people you spend time with, the higher the possibility of you upholding their beliefs. This is the case even when you are not around these individuals.
For instance, if you have a group of friends who believe there is nothing wrong with smoking, the easier it is for you to validate the habit. The same also applies if you grew up around parents that see cursing as a norm. Subconsciously, you register this bad habit as normal behavior.
This means to eliminate your bad habits, you need to know how those around you trigger them. In this chapter, we will be looking at how your core groups affect your habits and how to do what you love instead. You will also learn how to help others change negative habits and cope with what you can’t change.
Your Parents and Your Habits
The people you share close relationships with will strongly affect how you see yourself. This is the case with your parents too. Your family plays a crucial role in grooming the qualities you possess. If you are dealing with problems as an adult or have a few bad habits, it may be because of what you picked up from your parents.
They are the first set of people we pick up habits from. This is the case regardless of if these habits are healthy or not. For instance, if you are prone to using foul language or cursing a lot, it might be due to the influence of your parents. As kids just starting to understand the world, it is effortless for us to pick up language skills from those around us. We pick up languages as kids faster than any other point of our lives. In addition to repeating words you hear as kids, you also tend to group these words. If your parents raise you using negative words around you during your upbringing, they will be significantly normalized and you will most likely use these words yourself.
The same applies to kids who project in life. When they continuously have to deal with their parents yelling at them or each other, they may repeat the words they hear using the same tone. If you find out your projection or yelling comes with ease for you as an adult, it might be due to what you picked up as a kid.
Besides, kids can also pick up addictions from their parents with ease. This is why many parents who smoke or drink tend to have kids who pick up the same habits. If your parents were alcoholics, and you grew up seeing them drink each day, you are likely to emulate them too. This is because you grew up seeing this behavior as normal and they were your role models.
The same applies to parents who abuse drugs too. Children usually experiment with them at younger ages compared to kids who don’t experience it in their homes. This addiction tends to stick and follow them into adulthood.
If you grew up around parents who always put you down, it will affect the way you see yourself. It will also become evident in your habit as you may become closed off, shy, and consider it a norm to portray low confidence.
Your parents can also affect the way you spend money. Many people adopt many financial habits from their parents. This includes the habit of spending, investing, and saving. They do this by imitating the financial decisions their parents take.
For instance, if your parents are very frugal and taught you the importance of saving, it will likely reflect in your habits. The same applies if they are extravagant spenders.
If your parents were abusive, it will most likely affect the kinds of relationships you get into. You may see abuse as normal and even go for relationships with abusive partners. Exposure to this sort of behavior from parents can also affect your self-esteem. This is particularly common in kids with parents who constantly belittle and berate them at every turn.
This sort of verbal punishment can create feelings of self-hatred, self-doubt, and worthlessness in kids. They then carry these feelings into their adult life, and it later becomes evident in their habits too. If you were exposed to this sort of situation as a kid, you might need to seek expert help to break these beliefs and habits.
In the next post we’ll ll discuss how your friends and partner affect your habits. So save this post so you don’t miss the next one!
