Chris Loper has been writing about self-improvement and helping busy adults with habit formation since 2017. He also writes an education blog for parents and students for Northwest Educational Services. Along with Greg Smith, Chris is the cocreator of Parenting for Academic Success, a series of transformative classes that create empowered parents, confident students, and harmonious families. His most recent endeavor combines his academic and habit-formation expertise to help students thrive in college. Visit SmartCollegeHabits.com to learn more. In 2021, Chris published a humorous memoir titled Wood Floats and Other Brilliant Observations, a book that blends crazy stories with practical life lessons. He lives in Issaquah, WA where he is the owner of South Cove Tutoring.
“The pain that’s created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself.” –Russel Simmons1 Procrastinating comes with many costs. One is “the thinking cost” – the taxing mental exercise of thinking about whatever you’re not doing, coming up with excuses to not do it, and then feeling guilty about procrastinating as you choose a more pleasant task. The longer you put… Read More »The Pain of Procrastination
What are feelings? What is pain, pleasure, hot, cold, an itch, or a tickle? On a purely physical level, feelings are just nerve signals – neurons firing in your body to communicate with your brain. What about feelings within your brain? Fear, confidence, sadness, happiness, and the like? These are just nerve signals too – patterns of neurons firing in your brain. Nerve signals are neutral. There is nothing inherently… Read More »They’re Just Nerve Signals
We say things like this to ourselves: “It doesn’t count as a workout unless I do 45 minutes.” “It doesn’t count as reading unless I finish a chapter.” “It doesn’t count as meditating unless I do 20 minutes.” “It doesn’t count as writing unless I finish a blog post.” But when we say these things to ourselves, we’re usually justifying not taking action. We’re giving a reason to do nothing… Read More »This Mindset Helps You Show Up Consistently
Have you gotten off-trail on a hike and found yourself doing some serious bushwhacking? (Those of you who answered “no” have clearly never been hiking with me.) Well, let me tell you from my extensive experience that bushwhacking is hard, painful work: forcing your way through pokey salmonberry bushes, struggling over slippery vine maple, getting slapped in the face by wet tree branches. So why on Earth would anyone go… Read More »Bushwhacking Your Way to New Habits