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.
Your current habits have strongly established neural pathways. They’re like well-worn trails through the forest – easy to follow, easy to walk. But if they don’t take you where you want to go, what’s the point of following these paths? Perhaps you’d like to go somewhere else – a new lifestyle, a better career, a healthier mind and body – but every time you try (or even just think about… Read More »Why You Feel Resistance to Change
I’ve just finished my standard arm workout. It was more thorough than the arm workouts I did last year, but even though I did more exercises, it felt easier, and it seemed to take less time. Indeed, it probably did take less time than my old workouts. How can this be? Did I get stronger? Yes, but as I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve increased the weights and/or increased the repetitions of… Read More »The Power of an Automatic Routine
“You don’t know how it feels to be me.” –Tom Petty1 You have no idea what it is like to be someone else. Their consciousness – the way they experience life –will be inaccessible to you.2 If this seems wrong, consider for a moment the astounding fact that you cannot even be sure that other people are conscious at all. The only proof you have that anyone is conscious is… Read More »Other People’s Minds Are a Mystery
We spend so much of our lives other than where we are right now. We mentally teleport to the past, thinking of what we could have done differently, ruminating about our failures. We teleport to the future, imagining what we’ll say, what we’ll do, and how we’ll feel, even though such imaginings are usually inaccurate or pointless. All of this comes at the expense of being present. It prevents us… Read More »You are here; it is now.