Are you unable to open your eyes in the morning without a strong cup of tea or coffee — or several cups? Are you incapable of speaking in a civil tone to your spouse until you return from your morning walk and have your endorphins flowing? Do you ignore the ‘inside world’ of your home and your family members — or merely grunt in acknowledgement of their existence — until you have finished with the newspapers and the outside world? Do you insist that you must bathe before, and not after, breakfast — even if your fluffy omelette is wilting on your plate?

If you nod sheepishly for any of the above, you are well on the way to becoming a creature of habit: Someone who has done the same thing in the same way for so long that you cannot function satisfactorily without those little rituals — and eventually you think that wherever you go, you have to do things ‘just so’.

Most of us do not start out that way. We are determined to keep each day special — and different. We do not want to sink into the rut of routine and we vow that we will never allow everyday habits to get the better of us. We think that we are doing a pretty good job of this until one day we are packing for a long-awaited trip to our dream destination and we find that instead of checking whether we have a lake-facing room or a garden-overlooking one, we are more concerned with whether there is an electric kettle available for our morning ‘cuppa’.

Then, in place of beachwear or skiing jackets — or along with it — we stuff our luggage with a kettle, tea bags, instant coffee, dairy whitener or single-serve packs of evaporated milk ... and we know it is time to question where the spontaneity went. Why do the thrills of sliding down the icy slopes of the Alps or paddling in the clear blue-green waters of the Mediterranean Sea not excite us as much as the thought of that early morning pick-me-up or the mandatory spoon of curd and pickle at the end of a meal?

We shudder to see ourselves turning into our parents or grandparents or our not-so-favourite aunts and uncles who were never content anywhere but in their own homes with everything the way they were accustomed to, and we decide to make the change: Leave old habits behind.

We have heard that if we do something consistently for 21 or 28 or 66 days, it becomes a habit, we can turn around our lifestyles, become the picture of health and so on ... But, since we are already halfway to becoming those quirky parents/aunts/uncles (or already there), will this work for us? We know we cannot come upon a square of chocolate in the fridge and allow 66 seconds to pass without devouring it for instant gratification, so how can we drop old habits and turn around almost compulsive practices in any of those time frames?

On a recent trip to the UAE, however, we found that some habits come easy. Within a matter of hours we began to take for granted central air-conditioning and a grime-free environment, hot-and-cold bathwater on demand, ready-made salads, and all the many comforts of living we do not enjoy in our own home in India ... and by the time we returned, 10 days later, our lives had turned around.

Gone was the ‘healthy’ habit of year-round cold-water baths; we found our home-filtered drinking water unpalatable after all those bottles of mineral water; we railed at having to sort and wash and chop vegetables for salads; we avoided sweeping the house daily ...

I guess some creature-comforts are more habit-forming than others, right?

Cheryl Rao is a freelance journalist based in India.