I would prefer not to brush my teeth every morning and every evening. Three or four minutes a day might not sound like a lot but I could come up with plenty of activities I’d rather engage in each day. Plus sometimes I’m rushing and spill toothpaste on my clothes.

But still, I brush my teeth every day because if I don’t I would have bad breath and eventually all my teeth would fall out.

Except for when I’m really trying to come up with something to write for this here Sea Log, I don’t think much about brushing my teeth. Yes, it’s something I *have* to do every day. But I’ve always done it. It’s habitual now.

In 2012 this blog seemed like a daunting task. Even after we started – I remember a couple weeks in – being scared we were going to run out of things to write about. Neither of those things turned out to be true.

Now I’m trying to adopt new habits. Like reading for at least 30 minutes each night. Or writing for at least 30 minutes each morning. Truthfully, there’s a lot things I want to be doing more consistently. And it’s not going so well.

When someone asks me “how are you?” or “what’s new?” I actually want to give them a real, honest answer. So I end up talking about habits a lot. And it turns out most people aren’t good at adopting new habits, either. We like the idea of having changed, but we don’t like actually changing. Because change is new and unpredictable and uncomfortable.

A while back Erik wrote about the idea of good decisions vs. great decisions. He said he’s never made a great decision in his life in the moment he made that decision. That even his best decisions were only good decisions at the time. They became great decisions only because he stayed committed to them and saw them through. That wasn’t my idea but I buy into that logic.

I think about all the things I want to do more consistently – and you might to the same. They’re good things. They probably could be great things but they don’t seem like that yet. Because what we also feel is the fear of failure or the nerves of commitment. Or maybe just the awkward discomfort of breaking the habits we currently have in place.

The best ideas are really just the ideas we can commit to.

From now on, when I want to adopt a new habit, I’m just going to think about The Sea Log. How with a simple little commitment for (almost) 2 years we’ve created something we love and can’t imagine not doing. And I’m going to try to remember how anything I want to commit to can be just like this.

Kind of like brushing my teeth.

Photo credit: Teacher Rose