How to Develop Good Habits
Seven ways to make them stick…
They say, “bad habits die hard”, but that’s only because good habits are difficult to develop. Here are 7 easy ways to help you achieve those New Year’s Resolutions that are long overdue…
- Start small
Don’t jump into the deep end so quickly if you know that you can’t swim to save your life. Dream big, but be realistic. Start with small simple changes. Once you get into the groove of this new habit, make it a little bigger and a little harder. You’re basically in the novice stage and you have to keep training to get to the expert level.
- Get someone to keep you on track
You don’t have to hire a professional coach to keep you in check, just ask your friends to help you out. It’ll be easier for you to get the hang of developing your new habit if someone is keeping tabs on you to make sure you aren’t forgetting to do it.
- Ask yourself “why?”
Once you’ve established the “what” and “how”, you will have to answer the third question which is the “why”. So you’ve decided to lose weight by making your diet healthier and exercising regularly, but what is your purpose? Why do you want to do all of that? You would need to answer this honestly if you want to keep yourself motivated through the process.
- Make it easy
Make the good habits easier to do and the bad habits require more effort. You can use laziness to your advantage; don’t let it take control over you.
- Be an active doer
You can imagine all you want, but don’t just stop there. If you want to reinforce this habit in your life, you have to do it actively instead of simply just visualizing about the outcomes.
- Reward yourself
Incentives are a good way to keep you motivated on the daily struggle of trying not to fall back to your old ways. Do you want chocolate? Okay then, eat a huge portion of vegetables first.
- Repeat
You can’t trick your mind, you can simply train your body. Stick to what you have started. One day you’ll wake up and the habit that you have now decided to develop has become a staple in your daily life.
These points were inspired from Eric Barker’s “Barking up on the wrong tree”. For more of his content visit http://www.bakadesuyo.com.
