This past year I have spent a lot of time listening to self-improvement podcasts.
It has been a major goal of mine to improve my mindset, future planning, and relationships.
However, throughout this process I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about humans, in general. For instance, I’ve heard time and time again that is the most efficient way to make long-lasting changes in your life is to set long-lasting habits. If you can program your brain to do something automatically, it saves you so much time and energy down the road. When you automatically act a certain way each day, it frees up your mind to consider other problems. However, on the flip side, this also means that it can be very difficult to deprogram your habits. Recently I noticed this facts within myself, as it applies to our indoor air temperature control system. We experienced a normal power outage, during which time our entire neighborhood lost power and my HVAC system was promptly zapped by an electrical surge. My central heating and cooling system was completely fried by the energy, and there was no quick repair to fix the HVAC plan. I knew that I needed to call out a professional HVAC technician to inspect the appliances, but it was going to be several days before my local heating and cooling technician could make it. This entire time, despite realizing that my HVAC system was absolutely broken, I couldn’t stop fiddling with my thermostat every few minutes. Every time I felt uncomfortable in my house, I couldn’t suppress my habitual pattern of diddling the temperature control device.I finally got my HVAC system repaired, and for my next measure of self-improvement, I installed a locked smart thermostat to reduce my habitual thermostat abuse.