[Note: This post was originally posted as just a draft. Well, it was hardly a draft, it was a sentence that I was going to write about later. Oops. You can now read the full post here]I’ve been pushing hard with the Superhero Challenge lately. I miss the odd thing here and there but for the most part it’s going well.One of the biggest challenges with a new challenge is habits. Habits stand in the way of us now and that bright and shiny, new person at the end of the challenge that has broken all their old, bad habits and is soaked in new, uber-productive ones.Of course that rarely happens when you do a challenge. Big changes are often incremental but they can still add up to big things in the end.One of the ways to adjust these awesome (terrible?) habits is to be mindful about them. It’s not a great long term strategy to be mindful about all of your habits in an effort to change them because that would require you to be “on” 100% of the time and alert for signs of habits happening. That’s really hard to do. You can do it some of the time though. There is one time in particular I’ve noticed where it’s very difficult to be mindful of your habits and what you’re doing.Don’t rushThe first thing to go out the window when you rush around is mindfullness about what you are doing. Most of the time when you are rushing around it’s because you’re late or you want to get on with the next thing you had on your todo list. That’s the last time you’ll be truly focusing on what you are doing and evaluating it. Slowing down to evaluate is exactly what you need to be doing when you want to change a habit or behaviour.Go slowBeing mindful can happen when you are moving fast but it’s tough. I find it easier to move slower when I’m being very mindful about what I’m doing. Just the act of moving slower than I normally would reminds me that I’m doing something different. I’m not moving out of habit. I’m not engaging automatically. I’m moving deliberately. I’m making slow, thoughtful decisions and doing exactly the things I want to do. You wouldn’t do this every 100% of the time because it would take your ages to get anything done but in the initial stages of a habit change it might just be the thing that knocks you of your habits and routines and sheds like on the very behaviours you want to change.Going slow is the last thing you want to do when you are learning something new but it might be the best thing you could do.