4 Reasons Why Your Personal Habits Determine Your Future

Have you ever suddenly woke up in life and realized, “How did I get here?” It is so easy to drift in life without even realizing it. Your habits determine your future.

It is a universal law you cannot avoid. It is as strong as gravity in your life. The sum of your present life is wrapped up in your past choices. While most of us know this to be true, we often live as if this reality doesn’t exist.

“The sum of your present life is wrapped up in your past choices.”

Why Your Personal Habits Determines Your Future

I want to offer you powerful reasons as to why our personal habits will determine our future. Maybe some of these will connect with you and encourage you to start paying attention to those daily habits in life.

Because we are creatures of habit

Whether we want to admit it or not, we govern our life by habits. In fact, experts tell us that 90% of our daily behavior is based on habits. You have habits for your morning routine, your daily commute, how you pay your bills and what you do with your free time. The sooner we accept that we are in fact creatures of habit, we can begin to identify those personal habits that are not taking us in the direction that we want to go.

Because you are the sum of your past habits

Your habits determine your future because of the law of sowing and reaping. In fact, the present “you” is a sum of your past choices in life. The most obvious example is if you are overweight. You are overweight because of the past choices you made to eat more and exercise less.

It is painful for us to admit that the responsibility lies with us. We often want to point to our environment, bad luck, and how we were the victim when it comes to the negative things in our life. The sooner you accept responsibility for your life, the sooner things can begin to change for the better.

Because your direction (not intention) determines your destination

This is a powerful principle that I first read in the Principle of the Path by Andy Stanley. You can have every intention in the world to accomplish something, but if your daily choices are going in the opposite direction, you will not end up where you want.

If you live in the Midwest and decide to go to the Florida Keys, you do not get there by heading north. It doesn’t matter how well you have packed, how great of a map that you have, heading north doesn’t work. Your intentions in life mean nothing. The actual direction you take (i.e daily choices and personal habits) determine your destination.

“Your intentions in life mean nothing. The actual direction you take determines your future.”

Because you always end up where you put your focus

This is why it is so critical to have a life plan. My life plan paints a clear picture for where I want to go in life. It works like a GPS. The more I review it, the more I have to re-align my actions, thoughts, behaviors, and habits to meet my life goals.

Where do you put your focus? Sure, you can say you have no real goals for your life, but that isn’t true. What goals you have not set, someone else has set them for you. You are heading somewhere in life, you don’t have a choice.

Jonathan Milligan Jonathan has been blogging since 2009 and is still in awe that the Creator of the Universe desires to have a relationship with him. His passions include spending time with his kids, reading, March Madness, surprise get-a-way trips with his wife, and watching funny YouTube videos.