“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.” -Octavia Butler
As per researchers from The Duke University, patterns account for around 40% of our actions on any specific day. Knowing how to develop new habits while retaining your old ones, is key to making improvements in your wellbeing, your wellbeing, and your life generally. In a nutshell, your health, wealth, happiness, fitness and success depend on your habits.
However, there is a lot of details around here, and much of it was not extremely easy to absorb. To reduce this issue and break it down in a simple way, below are put together are demonstrated ways on how to create new habits that stick.
1. Make some decisions
Habits change into character. Take a decision first. Determine your plan of action and the changes you’re ready to induce in your daily life. For instance, if you plan to wake up early and work out every morning, set your watch for a particular time, and when the alarm goes off, get ready immediately and put on your workout gear and start your intense workout. Try fixing a time for this activity, say 7 am every day. This way, buy default, your body will remind you to work out at this time daily.
2. Be precise and focussed
Although we would all strive to be happier, healthier, and prosperous, the pursuit of abstract patterns always leads to disaster. If you wish to be a happier person, a more realistic solution is to practice gratitude every day. Small practices contribute to significant improvements and advantages, such as physical exercise eventually helps in minimizing procrastination.
A complex habit is easier to prepare and envision, leading to better results. Rather than dreaming about finishing the race of your 10000 challenge, imagine your everyday run. If you cannot escape your habit into smaller, actionable measures, it might be too impractical.
3. The 21 Day Rule
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not is not an act, but a habit.”
Research suggests that it takes 21 days to start a new habit. It takes hard work, discipline and courage to develop and retain it. If you wish to inculcate the habit of walking 10,000 steps every day, mark a 21-day streak on your calendar. You can even use a reminder app on your phone to keep you on your toes. By the end of the 21st day, you will notice that you will naturally be inclined towards continuing that activity even on the 22nd day. It’s science! Try it.
4. Review the current routine
Incorporating behaviours into your current routine will help them stick. It can be as easy as creating a calendar reminder or planning a balanced lunch every morning after breakfast. Start listing your everyday routines, behaviours that you carry out and searching for ways to implement new actions. The strategy is to create ‘small habits’ that ultimately result in a larger habit.
Select a habit which is easy to begin and can be divided into smaller, ‘thin habits.’ Having completed these tiny routines will improve your confidence and dedication to change.
5. Learn to be patient; Stick to the speed that you can keep up with
Learning to be calm is probably the most vital life skills of all. If you increase the weight in the gym, you can likely be slower than you thought. If you add regular sales calls to your business plan, you will probably start with less than you intend to do. Patience is all about it. Do something that you will maintain. New habits must feel simple, particularly at the beginning. If you remain consistent and keep on growing your habit, it is going to get difficult enough. It often does, but you learn to cope with it.
6. Let others know that you are practising a new habit
Tell others that you will be planning to start following a specific action. It is incredible how much more focused and engaged you can become when you know that people are watching you see if you have the power to follow through with your commitment. In fact, your close f=ones can motivate you and help you stick to your goals.
7. Credit yourself
Grant yourself a credit of some kind for adopting a new habit. Every time you praise yourself, you reaffirm and strengthen your actions. You will soon tend to connect, at an implicit stage, the enjoyment of reward with actions. You set up your protective shield with positive outcomes that you unintentionally look ahead to as a result of participation in the habit you have selected.
Too much of our everyday lives is a habit, an occurrence that happens on the autopilot. We are only doing things in a specific way at some point in time. Let us take advantage of the power of behaviours to make meaningful improvements, both professional and personal.
8. Be accountable
Share your new routine with a friend or partner and ask for guidance. Ask a member of the team to review your updates every day for a couple of weeks.
Another path to productive habits is a habit tracker, a method to control your activities. Used to monitor if or not an activity has taken place every day, habit detectors can vary from a journal to paid apps. Choose a tracker that takes less than a minute to make.
9. Try to get back on track as soon as you slip
Life is a habit, or rather a succession of habits. Best performers make bugs, commit bugs, and get off track just like anyone else. The distinction is that they will get back on the right track as soon as possible.
Studies have shown that once you have missed your habit, regardless of when it happens, it has no observable effect on your long-term success. Instead of striving to be flawless, give up your whole-or-nothing attitude.
One should not intend to fail, but you really should prepare for failure. Take the time to understand what is going to keep your problem from continuing. What things are there that could be a hindrance in your way? What are some of the everyday crises that are likely to drag you off course? How do you intend to work through things? Or at least, why would you jump back from them instantly and get back on the right track? What you need is to be consistent, not flawless. Try to develop the reputation of someone who has never missed a habit twice.
10. Develop an affirmation
Build an affirmation that you repeat to yourself over and over. This frequency significantly increases the pace at which you grow your new habit. For instance, you might say something such as “I have a healthy body”. Repeat the last phrase until you feel sleepy. In most situations, you will naturally start working out and eating cleaner. Affirmations rewire your neuropathways and reprogram your subconscious mind. Use this to your advantage to develop a new habit.
11. Try to understand your ‘why’
“When you feel like quitting, ask yourself why you started.”
It is crucial to make a change that you would like to make, not something that you need to do. Habits are quickly compromised when we get overwhelmed or demotivated. Motivation is after all what gets you started and habits are what keep you going. You may feel like you are supposed to be running a race this year, however, you also know that a hectic life would make it hard to train regularly. So, you can choose to work toward another 10k run instead.