The Purple Carrot Paradigm

Habits are a thing. Healthy habits are important and can often be an underlying component to successful behavior. Unhealthy habits can often be the source of one's misery, or at least a contributing factor to that realm.

Each morning for the last couple weeks I have been noshing on purple baby carrots that I pulled from my garden. I had a surplus of the little beasties, and before the hard freeze hit, I dug them all up, rinsed them off, and stuck them in the fridge.

I have been eating a few with breakfast ever since.

Something that I noticed this morning, however, is my supply of purple baby carrots is dwindling. It was in that moment of noticing that I felt a twinge of sadness, as my morning purple baby carrot ingesting situation has become a habit.

Why am I blathering about this? Well, I have learned over the past few years that building a new habit is actually quite easy. You start small with something that is easily attainable, and you build on it. This methodology applies anywhere in self-development land. You identify an overall goal, set some attainable objectives (at least two), and from there list actions to help you reach those goals.

How this applies to purple baby carrots I grew is simple. I want to feel better. That is my overall goal. I know that I feel best when I eat food I produce myself, so one of the objectives was to grow food to eat. The other objective was to simplify the ingestion of that food. If your habit goal is not well-defined and somewhat easily plannable, it will be hard to consistently stick with it.

Now here's the thing. Growing those carrots took awhile and more than a bit of effort. Harvesting, cleaning, and storing them was also effort, so walking my over-worked flintlocks to the fridge to grab a few out every day to eat was pieces of cake. Through my prep work I set my desired habit up for success.

Plus, there is nothing quite as tasty as homegrown carrots!

I think the main point I am getting at, is if you want to develop a new habit that benefits you, just start! The biggest trick to it is to develop clear, concise goals, specific objectives to help you meet those goals, and do the prep work to make accomplishing your actions towards habit development as easy to follow through with as possible.

There is however, my current upcoming carrot deficit situation. I think I might have to engage in a grow them in the hoophouse over winter or in the window experiment. I can't have this habit neglected or go to the wayside because I mathed wrong or nature was more than a bit brutal to my carrot-growing aims this year (Carrots do not like excessive heat).

Which brings us to another part of habit development and follow through-ability, the ability to adapt one's goals.

I'll probably write about that next time, after I wash the compost off of my hands 😉

And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's non-habitual but most definitely functional iPhone.

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