Habits

Recently I read Gretchen Rubin's book Better Than Before about how people displaying what she calls the four tendencies (she capitalizes it in her book, but I hate capitalizing non-proper nouns, so I won't) develop habits and how, once one knows one's tendency, one can use that knowledge to develop the habits one wants to develop.

The four tendencies are: upholder, questioner, obliger and rebel.  There's a quiz at the beginning of the book that is supposed to help you determine which one you are; however, I felt the quiz wasn't actually that helpful until after I'd read the book and done more reflecting on which type I was.

I started out thinking that I would be an upholder - mainly because I liked the idea.  Upholders always keep commitments to both themselves and others.  There's no question that I'm good at keeping commitments to others, and I decided that the daily habit of exercising I'd developed (mainly running) was evidence that I was an upholder.  DH is an upholder.  He is a self-taught musician and can focus laser like on what is important to him and tune out everything unimportant.  He will fulfill obligations to others, but it won't ever come at the expense of obligations to himself.  

After I read a bit, I'd decided that I might be more of a questioner.  There were definitely things I wanted to do (more blogging, playing the piano, eating healthier) that I never made time for, and I decided that I was doing so because I didn't believe there was enough information that said activity would benefit me, and I couldn't convince myself that I should do an activity that I didn't really believe was important.  Which is kind of true, but I could see that I didn't hold responsibilities to others to that same strict standard of having convinced me they were truly important.

So finally I landed on the fact that I'm an obliger (I'm definitely not a rebel).  I have a very hard time putting my own wants (important but not urgent tasks) ahead of others' wants.  It's not that I'm some saintly unselfish person (that's one of the reasons it was hard for me to determine that I'm an obliger), it's more that I get more of a kick from ticking off things that I need to do for other people than I do from working on my own projects.  Part of it is probably my upbringing where we always did our "work" first and our "fun" later.  Now that I look back at my own habits, I see that my running really developed out of a perceived obligation that I had to look a certain way and that running would get me there.  I can also get sucked into the idea that there is some kind of "other" in the world that is judging my competency as an adult based on how organized my medicine cabinets are, but that tends to go hand in hand with insecurity about other areas of my life rather than a true belief that there's an external standard that I have to live up to (toys do not get picked up every night at our house).

I also had a hard time determining that I was an obliger because I see my MIL and my mom as consummate obligers.  My MIL is more of a person who acts because she feels very pressured and judged by the outside world.  She feels like everything has to be a certain way because of the expectations of others.  My mom gets a lot of satisfaction from serving others, but sometimes to the point that it can be frustrating because she won't communicate her own wants and needs (and you can tell she as them) and gets upset because those wants and needs aren't met.  It's funny because they both want the same thing but have such different ways of approaching it.  

Lots of Rubin's suggestions for obligers revolve around accountability partners, the idea of which is not really appealing to me, but I recognize that I do fare better with my habits when I have some kind of external accountability.  I really need to take lessons if I want to lean to play the piano.  I like to have races and a training plan to stay motivated with running (now that I'm coming it it from a healthier place).  I feel an obligation to family to post things about my kiddos so I blog at least once or so a week under my other identity.

Which comes back to making posting in this space a priority or habit or what have you.  I have a lot of stuff on my plate, and I love the idea of ticking it all off, but, at least for today, I'm putting my obligations to myself and my own long term projects first.

Dear internet, what do you think is your tendency?  How do you think it helps and/or hinders you in life?