Part of a healthy and successful life is transforming your knowledge and inspiration into habits. Developing habits is a great exercise to improve your life. If you form habits of successful people you will ultimately be successful; To form new habits, you will require to understand how habits are formed.
Before we discuss how to develop habits, we have to understand what habit is. The easiest definition of habit can be;
A habit is a behavior that is repeated regularly. This behavior can be an action, routine, or lifestyle.
We can further explain habit in this way; behavior we do repeatedly and regularly without any effort and thinking about it. Just like the habit of waking up early. The people who wake up early as their habit don’t feel like effort while waking up early.
It is true in the opposite way too. For the people, who wake up late as a habit, the same thing applies.
Why habits are Important
We are what we repeatedly do; Excelence, then is not a action but a habit.
Aristotle
Habits are who you are. Your habits also play a role in making your character.
Its most simple example can be;
people who brush their teeth daily are hygienic and healthy
People who don’t brush their teeth daily are not so hygienic and ultimately unhealthy.
You can develop good and successful habits to be a good and successful person. Good habits are of a lot of significance in a person’s life. A big reason for that is you can develop and change your habits.
Suppose a person develops good habits in himself. For instance, let’s discuss the most beneficial habit of reading books. If a person develops this habit, his knowledge will grow daily. He becomes a respectable and successful person.
He will have good knowledge which he can use to develop other good habits. This habit will take him toward success day by day and make his character a lot more polished.
Everyone has days when they don’t want to work out, work, and eat healthily. Mostly because of a lack of motivation. But when you will have a workout in your daily habit. You won’t need motivation anymore to work out. In other words, habits replace motivation. You just have to develop the right habit.
Developing a good habit isn’t an impossible task if you know how habits work. you have to analyze yourself and the habit’s nature before introducing your brain to that habit. You can make the process easier with the right determination and practice. Now we are going to talk just about that.
Developing habits
Developing a good habit won’t be much hard after you understand how habits actually form. You have to understand the components of habit and identify those components.
A habit is a cycle of 3 components.
- trigger
- Routine
- Reward
When developing habits, we have to identify these three things.
Trigger in Developing Habits
As its name suggests, the trigger starts the habit process. The trigger is a specific thing, sound, sensation, or feeling that starts the routine or behavioral action. We can understand it by the routine of waking up early.
On hearing the alarm sound you get up from bed and go around a set routine. For the habit of waking up early alarm clock works as a trigger. It is triggering the routine.
If a habit doesn’t have a fixed trigger, you will proceed to routine whenever. Which is not a good thing. Begin to develop a habit with a clear trigger in your mind it will help you to appropriately initiate the habit.
In order to develop a habit, we have to identify its trigger. Triggers of habit should be clear in our brains before we start doing routine. All habits have a trigger. It can be a physical cue or a less obvious mental cue. You might need to think more deeply to identify less obvious triggers.
Routine in Developing Habits
As the definition says, habit is the repetition of behavioral action. You repeat a behavioral action in a habit. This repetition of action is called routine, Routine is the basis of habit.
To consciously develop a habit you have to carefully decide what action(s) will your habit be about. What action(s) will you be repeating in your routine.
In the habit of waking up early, waking up and getting out of bed is the routine. Which gets triggered by an alarm sound. After you decide on the routine of your habit you have to identify another thing we are talking about in the next point.
Reward in Developing Habits
The reward is the outcome you get after you complete the routine. You might expect your outcome to be the completion of a routine. This routine can be as simple as brushing your teeth. After you brush your teeth you get white and healthy teeth as a reward.
The reward is equally important as other components for developing habits. You should have a clear understanding of what is your reward. Some habits have very complex outcomes which can make it difficult for you to identify their reward.
Waking up early in the morning gives an outcome of a productive day. You can make the reward more exciting by having a coffee after you wake up.
So alarm sound triggers the action of you waking up which in reward gives you a cup of coffee.
Without a reward or outcome clear in mind, it’s very hard to make something your habit. So at the start make a habit with an easy-to-understand outcome and clear reward. Keep your outcome something measurable so you can see your progress. just like clean teeth and a productive day. This will help you with developing habits.
How long will it take
Once you understand all the components of habit. Identify them in the habit you wanna make and start doing It in your daily life.
According to scientific studies, it takes 21 days for an act to become a habit. You can always start small with a much clear and easy habit. You can adopt an easy habit even in fewer than 21 days.
Similarly, hard habits can take more than 21 days to develop. I will advise you to choose an easy habit and start small.
Remember
Developing a new habit is like training yourself. Like other good things, Developing good habits consciously is also difficult. Many people quit developing good habit before it becomes a habit. You have to be self-disciplined and do the hardship and believe me it will get only easier.
You don’t take bumps on the road as a sign that you are headed in the wrong direction. There are requirements of any journey worth taking.
This was your improvement dose for today. Focus on the process of becoming the person you were born to be.
