stop renting your life

How many habits do you own?

When you own a car you can park it in the garage, stop paying insurance on it and not use it for a while, you don't even have to keep plates on it.  It just sits there.  It literally doesn't cost you anything. Then take it out get insurance back on it, slap some plates on it and drive wherever you want.

That's what it's like to own a habit.  You probably want to use it every now and again so it doesn't get spoiled gas in it or flat tires, but you own it free and clear.

Think about a habit you rent like a payment on a car.  It cost's extra money to protect that habit because it's fragile, at any moment you might just stop doing it.  You have to make payments on it all the time or it will be taken away (payments of time and energy and money).

Most people don't own very many habits, they rent them or borrow them.

I work out, but only with my personal trainer.

I eat healthy, but only when I can buy expensive pre-made organic fresh squeezed juice.

I give money to a charity/church, but only when they reach out to me and ask and my heart feels something.

The problem with this is you don't own it and not owning things is expensive.

1) Know how little you NEED.
2) OWN everything you need.

I know I need to be in shape.  If I've got a gym membership great, but when I'm travelling and I own my health I just wake up thirty minutes early and go for a walk before everything starts.

I know I need to be spiritually recharged.  If I go to church great, but some Sundays I miss and it's ok because the rest of the week I'm still reading and praying to get spiritual replenishment.

I know I need to have a good relationship with my kids.  But instead of renting that relationship from our soccer league sometimes I just take them out to lunch and sit and talk face to face.

I lot of self help movements and motivation blogs are shortcuts for how to rent a habit or an emotion.

Buying a habit is expensive, it takes quite a huge amount of time before you own it. But once you do it's yours.  Peace is not a breathing exercise that takes five minutes (although that is a great way to rent peace immediately).  Peace takes years of having trust in the right place and living with integrity.

Think about buying a car, for most of us that is a lot of money (even if you are wealthy you just want a more expensive car).  What I find is most people want a car that cost's somewhere around six months of their total salary, almost no matter how much they earn ($500k is usually the break point).  To buy that car with cash takes a ton of work, but owning feels great.

Owning a habit of having the nicest clothes no matter how much you are currently earning or what your closet is already full of is a habit not worth owning.  In the white trash neighborhood I grew up in, when a car died and you didn't want to own it anymore you got drunk with your friends, pushed it down the road to the empty lot and lit it on fire.

I'm not sure you can do that with a bad habit but something close will suffice.

Know how little you need, then work hard at owning that.  Make a list and then realize it's expensive and you can probably only afford (again in time/energy/money) to start to aggressively buying one habit at a time.

Maybe you rent to own up front, but the best thing in the world is to just throw everything at one habit and work until you own it.