I often have a debate (sometimes with myself, sometimes with other people) if habits are a good thing for us or not. The conventional wisdom is that they are, that is why we see so many books and such covering the topic. The idea being that there are strategies, approaches, tips, and/or tricks we can use to build habits so that we can do the things we wish we would want to do. That is where it gets funny for me. Why do we need strategies or tricks to do the things we supposedly want to do? Doesn't that have to mean something? Don't get me wrong, I do believe many of the strategies and all that do work, I practice some of them myself, but what are they working towards? As you ask these types of questions, you start to get into some the philosophical areas I love to think about. 

That is why I enjoyed this conversation so much with my guest, Jason. He is a leadership coach and a podcast host (Happily Ever Habits) who chose "generosity" as his most important value. We used that as the launching point to get into the broader discussion around habits and what we really want out of life. Jason believes life is kind of designed for generosity to allow us to reach our happiest, most joyful states of being. If we can impact the lives of even a few of the closest people around us, that would see to him to be the best we can hope for out of life. He gave a bunch of examples from his personal experience as well, which helped to make the concepts more tangible.

As we did that we started to ask if helping improve the lives of others was really the epitome of our purpose? We tried to understand what it was about relationships that mattered so much to us. And eventually we got to the topic of habits and why we need to work so hard to get ourselves to be the people we think we should be anyway? It was a really interesting conversation and Jason brought a ton of insights to consider about some important aspects of human nature.