Habits are a powerful way for our brain to increase its efficiency. Making regular actions and behaviours into habits allows us to focus on more essential tasks. They are our life management system on autopilot.
Even bad habits can be beneficial to our health. An improved mood and less tension are the short-term effects. However, they frequently have a detrimental long-term effect on our health and well-being. We create habits even without our knowing, and these can be success habits or bad habits, but us humans tend to accumulate more bad habits than good!
But why is it so difficult to put an end to something we know is harmful for us?
We are receiving a benefit, such as a good mood or reduced stress levels, when we partake in the bad habit, e.g., smoking. As a result, anytime we are in a particular scenario (for example, when we are worried), our brain builds a desire to engage in this behaviour in order to reap the benefits.
Our mind keeps us desiring the things that we are trying to avoid, creating a vicious cycle. This understanding helps us to devise ways for breaking and eliminating bad habits.
Bad habits harm us in a variety of ways. They have the potential to adversely affect our health, our emotional well-being, and even our intimate relationships. It will not work to try breaking a bad habit simply by telling yourself you’re not going to do it. The habit, such as the desire to drink or smoke or being incredibly disorganised, is hardwired into your brain.
Getting rid of bad habits is similar to creating a goal. If you have a precise goal in mind, you have a better chance of succeeding. It’s also crucial that you are the one who wants to break the habit (intrinsic motivation).
Identifying the bad habit and why you think you persist in it is the first little step to take. Make a note of it on a sheet of paper.
Once you’ve figured out what’s causing the bad habit, make a plan to change it immediately. If you smoke every day, for example, you will figure out what makes you want to smoke. Is it anxiety or stress? Do you smoke when you have a cup of coffee purely out of habit?
When you smoke when you’re stressed, you will need a plan of action to minimise stress throughout the day. What minor things in your life can you get rid of that are causing you stress? Make a note of it in your action plan. If you’re tempted to smoke because you’re drinking coffee, consider switching to a different beverage.
You can then write it down and commit to smoking one fewer cigarette per day until you reach your goal of no cigarettes.
Many bad habits can be replaced by alternatives. If you always have something sugary for dessert, for example, your blood sugar levels are likely to suffer. It’s also possible that you will gain weight. Because we know that refined sugar causes a myriad of health problems, you should swap out your desserts for healthier options.
If you need something sweet after supper, cherries are a good choice. They provide the sweetness you crave, plus lots of health advantages.
You must make the choice to take a step back and not succumb to peer pressure. Refuse and walk away when pals insist on spending their Friday nights drinking from 5 p.m. till the wee hours of the morning. Replace it with a healthy habit, such as going to the gym or spending time with your family.
Some habits are inextricably linked. If that is the case, you can work on all of them at the same time. You already know that watching too much tv and overeating is bad for your mind and body. By turning off the tv and going on a bike ride, you can get rid of both habits at once. Bring some healthy snacks and plenty of water.
Another little step toward easing bad habits is to remove or replace them. We all realize that drinking soda is bad for you, and some individuals drink a litre or more every day. Replace soda with water or freshly squeezed fruit juice in your fridge and on your grocery list.
If you like a burger and fries every now and then, bring a water bottle with you when you order. Order individual burgers and fries instead of the combo, which includes a drink.
Another bad habit such as continually using your cellphone can be controlled by putting your phone out of reach at different times of the day. Put y our cellphone in another room when you’re eating meals with your family.
Another bad habit is bringing your phone to bed, and you should keep it in another room nearby in case of an emergency. If it is next to you, you will be more inclined to watch news or scroll through social media before going to bed. Both are full of bad news, which will make you lose your optimistic outlook on life. In bed, replace your cellphone with a good book about positivity or some other form of self-improvement. If you are spiritual, read some Bible devotions and spend time in gratitude before going to sleep.
The quick answer is that it varies.
According to a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes between 18 and 254 days for a person to develop a new habit. These numbers are similar regarding breaking a bad habit.
There are so many factors in the question “How long does it take to break a habit?” that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. For example, it takes a lot longer for someone who has been smoking for 20 years to quit than it does for someone who is attempting to break the bad habit of forgetting to brush their teeth in the evening.
To have the long-term drive to stop or replace your habit, make sure you have a strong “Why” (purpose or goal) because this will keep you going if/when things get tough.
Creating habits requires self-discipline and many people do lack in this area. If you want to gain more self-discipline, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free detailed report about the Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
Our habits start at a young age, and sometimes they are copied from our parents. For example, when you grow up with a parent who eats emotionally, it is possible that you may develop the same habit. As you move through life and have daily issues, you may reach for junk food or what you call comfort food that causes weight gain.
To change a habit that has been hard-wired into your brain, you must take tiny steps. Changing a habit overnight or in a few days is a daunting task. Making a big lifestyle change will put many people into fear.
They fear the work; they fear that they will fail, and with that, they decide not to start on any new habits. Tiny habits removes this fear of big change and the need to become a new person overnight.
Using tiny habits means that you also need to change your priorities. You may think your priority is to lose weight fast or stop procrastinating overnight. Tiny habits puts the spotlight on the priority of making the change fun and simple to do.
You will enjoy changing your habit instead of dreading each day and wondering how you will accomplish a big task.
Tiny habits also help remove other roadblocks to success, such as feeling guilty when trying to make a big lifestyle change, and it falls flat. We also try to change a big bad habit by setting very unrealistic goals. Those types of goals require the sort of willpower that most people do not possess, and they give up easily.
Tiny habits are easier to work with because they are so simple. In his book Atomic Habits, author James Clear states that if you make just a 1% change per day, you are stacking new habits that will stick. Motivation to create big changes is something that is difficult to create. You set the bar so low; it doesn’t require you to work on motivating yourself into action.
To illustrate just how small a habit you need for weight loss, let’s look at the top ideas. We already talked about a green apple at breakfast, but there is so much more.
– Decrease the portions on your plate or switch to smaller plates.
– Chew your food slower. You can time yourself and chew a bite for 20 to 30 seconds or at least put the fork and knife down each time you have a bite in your mouth.
– Switch your snacks from sugar-based to fruit or vegetables.
– Drink sips of water constantly during your day. Rehydration in a simple form.
– Journal what you eat and why. You will then understand your eating motivation.
Any habit you want to change or start has to have a big why. Why do you want to do this, and what does it mean to you? Once you understand that, you pick a tiny habit and do it repeatedly. Make it fun to do the habit, which means you will keep working it in tiny steps.
We can use healthy eating as an example. You can buy a water bottle with a funny saying and always carry it with you. Try putting fruit out where you will see and arrange it in a fun pattern. If you have kids, involve them as much as you can to make it fun for you.
Using tiny habits will change your life for the better, and the road to change will be enjoyable rather than a big daunting task.
Creating habits takes thought and focus. As you work through your day, using an app will be a huge benefit to you.
There are many apps to consider, from micro habits, daily habits to the habit tracker.
Here is a list of the best apps for you to consider.
It doesn’t matter what habit you want to create. Habit stacker can help with self-confidence, fitness, or losing weight. This app allows you to build a morning or evening routine that will boost your success.
You start with a tiny habit and then stack new habits on top of each other. Think of it as building a scaleable wall brick by brick.
The habit stacker idea for success is to get up earlier than you did before and begin a habit. Once you complete the first one, see how many more you can stack one by one during your morning routine. This has a free version that allows you to work on two habits, and you can upgrade to building unlimited habits.
This is an in-depth app that will ask you the right questions to help determine where you need to focus. It requires you to think about and answer how you sleep, which affects your ability to be motivated and productive.
You have goals, and the productive tracker will make sure your motivation matches your goals.
Being prompted will keep you on track, so be prepared for those types of notifications as you go through your day. Productive habit tracker has calendars, advice on health and productivity, with some challenges to keep you motivated for success.
This habit tracker is for you if the idea of putting your results into an excel spreadsheet gets you excited.
You can easily view how well you are doing in creating and maintaining habits. Also exciting is the idea of having weekly targets you can set and achieve.
Momentum tracker is only for iPhone at this point in time.
Studies have shown it takes at least 21 days to permanently install a new habit that your brain recognizes and will work to make it happen.
This app is set up on that idea and is perfect for those who feel they can only create one new habit at a time. You will need to think long and hard about what habit is most suitable for you to start with.
Once you get that habit installed, you move to another 21 days to a new habit.
This app is perfect for people with hectic careers. It notifies you of the habits and related items you need to do first, which is similar to do your most challenging task first thing in the morning.
It works with graphs and statistics to analyze your progress and keep you moving in the right direction.
This app will appeal to people who like awards or progress reports. As you work on a habit and do not backtrack, a chain grows to keep you visually motivated.
If you are on the go a lot, you may also like this app because it works offline and online to perform consistently during your day.
Gamers will love habit hunter. It is a goal and habit app that turns your information into an RPG game.
As you do your goals and habits, you earn coins, weapons, and armor for your hero game.
Quirky, but still an effective app to use if gaming’s your thing.
This app makes connections called chains that are linked to routines you are already doing.
You pick a micro habit and incorporate it into an already established routine.
This app will show you a full year of daily habits. It calculates your progress along the way as you use tiny habits to change your life.
Super Habit shows you your progress on a yearly calendar, your current and longest streak for each habit, as well as your yearly and all-time completion rates.
This is another IOS only app.
This app is for those who love accountability. It has a social network where you can share your habit tracking and progress.
You can motivate others while you get some love back and move into creating habits for a successful life.
Creating habits requires self-discipline and many people do lack in this area. If you want to gain more self-discipline, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free detailed report about the Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
If you haven’t heard of mini habits, you’re in for a treat. Imagine making only small adjustments in your life, and still managing to create impactful and meaningful change.
The mini-habit is just what it sounds like – it’s taking the premise that doing a whole lot of small things will eventually add up to something amazing. Think, for example, of what would happen if you only read a couple of news articles every day?
Mini habits don’t stop there though. Not only can your mini habit change how you get things done, but they impact your mind and body as well. Read on to discover the powerful benefits of mini habits.
By setting small goals, you’re much more likely to meet them. So instead of telling yourself that you’re going to return all your phone calls promptly, you instead focus on returning the next phone call on time.
What’s even better is that meeting these small goals means you get to where you start expecting success, which leads to the mindset that will generate that success you’re expecting.
By accomplishing mini-goals, you start to realize that you do have the ability and power to accomplish things. Your confidence grows, and you gain a better, more positive sense of your abilities.
And this becomes a cycle of success which can be really powerful in helping you to achieve your goal.
Many people underestimate what they can achieve or are capable of; don’t be that person! If you put your mind to it, you can achieve far more than you ever thought possible.
Motivation is sometimes hard to come by and gets used up quickly. That’s why mini habits are important as they don’t rely on motivation to accomplish things, they grow from willpower instead.
The more you achieve, the more you believe and that can be incredibly motivating.
Yes, you really do create a series of changes that you will carry with you your entire life.
Mini habits done daily will build up those larger habits that you’ve been trying to build all along. Like starting with a single push-up every day and creating almost as a by-product that habit of daily exercise that had seemed so daunting not all that long ago.
So, now you know the importance and benefits of developing positive habits, let’s look at a really powerful but simple morning habit that can get your day off to a great start, and it only takes 10 minutes.
Most morning routines you find online take hours to complete. Thirty minutes of physical activity, three pages of Morning Pages, or twenty minutes of meditation.
Read below to learn a few time-saving practices you can incorporate into your morning.
Minute 1 – Drink Water
Start keeping a large glass of water beside your bed. Before you even get out of bed, drink the dang water. Your body is dehydrated after a long night of repairing itself, and you need to replenish that.
Drinking water will also help reduce the morning fog and grog that follows so many into their workday despite multiple cups of coffee.
Minutes 2-3 –Breathe
Now that your body is rehydrating take a few minutes to do simple breathing exercises. This is as easy as timing your breaths to take six to ten deep breaths through one minute.
Timing your breaths will force you to focus on your breathing and your body. Helping you to wake up and calm yourself for your day.
Minutes 3-6 – Stretch Your Body
Gentle stretching will get your blood flowing, and your body has woken up. This will also help to ease you into the process of getting ready and the day ahead.
Stretching has long term benefits as well including better circulation and flexibility overall.
Minutes 6-9 – Give Thanks
Take a few moments to reflect on what you are thankful for. You don’t have to write these down or keep a record on your phone.
Just take a few moments to single in on aspects of your life you are thankful for and why. This will put a positive spin on your day and keep you present through the difficult moments.
Minute 10 – Visualize Your Success
Visualizing the successes you wish to have through the day will cement them in your mind and help you to become more confident. These can be successes for the day (a successful meeting) or long-term successes (finishing that half marathon or saving up a down payment on a house).
Try this simple routine tomorrow morning and see what kind of a difference it can make to your day.
Creating habits requires self-discipline and many people do lack in this area. If you want to gain more self-discipline, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about the Power Of Self-Discipline; download, read it and take action 😊
It should come as no surprise that the habits we form will determine our success or failure. After all, habits already dictate a lot about our lives. If we, for example, eat large amounts of food regularly and don’t exercise, we can expect to have physical consequences for our actions.
That’s why it’s so important to form good habits so that we can reach our fullest potential.
Let’s look at some examples of habits that you can create for yourself that also boost motivation:
If you’ve ever been sick then you know it’s impossible to be productive, or even to have a positive attitude when you’re not feeling good. That’s why it’s so important to take charge of your health.
Carrying extra weight not only drags you down but affects energy levels which in turn affects productivity.
Your improved health makes this a win-win all the way around.
When you make goals, you tend to feel that initial surge of enthusiasm for the project.
For example, if you’re doing something that will benefit a specific group of people somehow, then plan to spend time each month with that group to remind yourself of why you’re doing this.
Getting the jump on things is a habit that not only keeps your boss happy but also gives you a rush of dopamine to the brain.
For example, make lists that keep you not only on task but ahead of the game.
If you’re dealing with a big goal, such as some serious weight loss, it’s easy to lose your motivation when it feels like you’re not making progress.
These kinds of goals come from small changes, like planning to eat a little differently (cutting carbs for example), or in taking the stairs instead of using the elevator.
That is an easy habit for you to build, in that it involves choosing a little more carefully what company you keep.
Building a habit of meeting with this group on a regular basis not only keeps you motivated but has the added benefit of cementing relationships with those around you.
Building good habits is an awesome way to stay on track to reach your goals.
As you are probably already aware, creating habits takes discipline so lets look at how you can develop the self-discipline needed to create habits in the first place.
One of the ways that people struggle with developing self-discipline, is trying to make too many changes at once. Not just by doing more than one goal at a time, but by making those goals way too large.
Either of these approaches tend to lead to failure.
An example of too many goals at once might be someone choosing to quit smoking, go on a diet, exercise regularly, build a successful business, and get out of debt.
For example, take quitting smoking, you might start with that one since it has the most negative impact both on health and finances.
So you might start with just quitting smoking. You could spend a couple of months getting rid of the cigarettes and using aids like the nicotine patch to help. Then once you have completely quit smoking and no longer need the patch, you can move on to the next goal or goals on your list.
You may find changing your diet and exercising more to be really overwhelming goals because they are huge ones. So, another tactic to help you with discipline is to break them down into smaller goals. Instead of just quitting overeating, maybe you break it down into this week you cut your soda intake in half, then week two you cut it out completely.
If you do this week by week making one SMALL change, you may find it easier to stay in control.
So instead of going full tilt, you can start by doing mini workouts at a lower intensity for a few days, and over time add more minutes to your workout until you reach at least 20 to 30 minutes of activity. You can also over time increase the intensity of your workout as you get stronger and in better shape.
By breaking down the goals into bite-sized steps, you can make it easier to develop the discipline you need to accomplish them. You will also improve the chances of success in changing your habits.
And having a strong mindset is critical to any attempt to staying disciplined and motivated to achieve success, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂
