It would make sense to assume that moods are created from thoughts or stressors, things that crop up during the day and knock us off-kilter. This isn’t so. Psychologist Robert Thayer argues that moods are created by our habitualness: how much we sleep, how frequently we move, what we think, how often we think it, and so on. The point is that it’s not one thought that throws us into a tizzy: It’s the pattern of continually experiencing that thought that compounds its effect and makes it seem valid.

First you create your habits, and then they create you

a mood is a state of enhanced readiness to experience a certain emotion. Where an emotion is a single note, clearly struck, hanging for a moment in the still air, a mood is the extended, nearly inaudible echo that follows. Consciousness registers a fading level of activation in the emotion circuits faintly or not at all. And so the provocative events of the day may leave us with emotional responsiveness waiting beneath our notice. If a man spills coffee on himself, his annoyance is relatively short-lived — on the order of minutes. After the conscious feeling is gone, residual activity in the anger circuits lingers. He will pass into an irritable mood — a quickness to anger, the only reflection of the waning activity in those circuits.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.

We first make our habits, then our habits make us.

Ultimately, your habits matter because they help you become the type of person you wish to be. They are the channel through which you develop your deepest beliefs about yourself. Quite literally, you become your habits.

There's an old Hindu saying that goes, 'In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.' Come help me celebrate mine.

Either you control your habits or your habits will control you.

At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

Essentially, you have to go through your life replacing your thoughtless bad habits with good ones, making a commitment to be a happier person. At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

To establish your own routine, you have to spend some time observing your days and your moods.

The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” — JOHN DRYDEN