Habits. Our whole life is just a series of exchanges between habits and spontaneous actions. It’s such a pity that we are not aware of it, but our habits are one of the most important elements of our lifestyles. They tell a lot about us, about who we are, and also they make the most part of our lives. Habits are our autopilot system.
Our habits dictate the whole economy.
Wait, what? That’s right, our habits dictate the whole economic cycle. What you do every day, what you eat, where you shop, when you sleep, everything you do on a daily basis dictates how the world goes round.
How aware are you of your habits and what effect they have globally? How aware of how your morning rituals of washing teeth, drinking coffee, eating (or skipping) breakfast, morning “beautification” routine etc. affect the starving children in Vietnam, Uganda, China and Uruguay? Yes, I’m talking about the butterfly effect. Of how your small everyday actions dictate how other people you’ve never and will never meet live their life.
I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make you feel bad about yourself and remind you how your actions are not just your actions, but those of a global community. I know you have strong values and that you want to bring positive change into the world!
So how do we change our habits to align them to our values??
In his 2012 TEDx talk, BJ Fogg talks about how we can make big changes just by altering our small habits.
Now I’m going to show you how you can make a HUGE change with just one small habit: bringing your own non-plastic bag, and your own stainless steel bottle and stainless steel straw to the….well….everywhere. In Japan, for some reason, they’re called MYbag, MYbottle and MYstraw. I find the name rather cute, don’t you?
Every day, before going out the door, you make sure you have your wallet, smartphone and keys. Only one little habit change will make a huge difference: making sure you have your wallet, smartphone, keys and MYbag, MYbottle and MYstraw.
That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. With this one small change, every year you can help prevent, on average, over 300 plastic bags, 450 PET bottles and 100 straws from going into the seas or landfills, 1.5 animals from dying from ingesting plastic bags, a couple thousand fish from ingesting microplastic, a big living room full of CO2 from entering the air and the many many other effects of extracting oil and producing plastic. This seems small for you, but multiply that with the number of people living in developed and developing countries and you get a trillion benefits.
MYbag, MYbottle, MYstraw. Such a small change, yet such a big benefit for me, for others and for nature.
I don't know about you, but I like to change the world with small incremental changes.
Do you?
