Whether you are cleaning out your closet, your shed or even your filing it can be hard to throw things out. Why? It's comfortable and familiar; We might need it some day; It cost a lot of money, who cares if it doesn't fit anymore! Out with the old and in with the new - it's not as easy as it sounds. Or, is it?

It's amazing just how much of a challenge it can be sometimes just to get rid of something we no longer really need. Oh we think we need it, but if we take the time to look close enough or hard enough we know we don't. The same is true of our habits.

“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” ~Samuel Johnson

It's somewhat easier to think of bad habits when it comes to our health - smoking, eating too much junk food, driving when you could walk etc. What about other habits like - Always cutting someone because you think you 'know' what they are going to say? Being prepared to be angry at someone because you just know at some point they will do something to upset you? Always being late because you have things to do and others can wait? Constantly working through lunch instead of taking a break? Putting yourself down to others all the time? These are all habits because they are automatic reactions or actions.

Like cleaning out your closet, shed or filing it's good to take stock of your habits. Look at some of the ones you are hanging on to because they make you feel safe and the ones that really don't serve you anymore. What habits do you have that it's time to throw out? What will it take for you to create a new habit in it's place?

"Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones." ~ Stephen R. Covey