How Important Is It For Us To Understand Our Habits?

Olivier Fahrni


How much do you know about the effects of your daily habits?

Do you have a lot of good habits that lead to positive outcomes for yourself and others, both in the short and in the long term? On the other hand, do you have bad habits that might be doing the opposite?

In Koru 1 we have been exploring how creating positive habits can put us in control of shaping the lives we want to live. This has required a lot of self-reflection and the ability to actively notice the habits we have, while exploring all of the outcomes of these.

We have looked into areas like:
- How habits can help us reduce stress
- How habits can help us to be healthy
- How habits can help us to be productive

We have also tried to examine the good and bad habits of people within our classroom environment. From this, we have started to hear students talking about new habits they are creating and the effects of these. Last week for example, Mr K and Mrs Harris made no mention of students' weekly planners, but in the 3 days we had of school, nearly all children in Koru 1 completed their planners (including personal goals and evaluations) without being prompted. They made the time to do this without being asked. There are clearly many positive habits being developed in our learning spaces.

Koru 1 students managing their individual planners during organisation time
- Positive habits they have created independently

Soon we will be focussing on how habits can impact our relationships with other people.

This topic has many strong links with our My Body and Me theme for this year, as we learn more about many of the factors influencing hauora (health and wellbeing), and how there are things we can do to improve the hauora of ourselves, our whānau and others in our community.

We look forward to starting some independent investigations next term about many of the issues arising from our learning around habits. It has definitely led to some interesting discussions and questions!