How To Create And Stick To Good Habits

 

A method for making ourselves happier…

Do you check all your social media accounts first thing in the morning without even thinking? I do. It’s become a habit — a central aspect of my life; and we all live with habits to some extent.

In his book, Mini Habits, Stephen Guise offers some useful knowledge on the concept of habits — how they start, how they can evolve and, more importantly, how they can help us achieve our goals.

A lot of our daily activities are governed by habit. According to a study conducted by Duke University, 45 percent of our behaviors are habitual.

We are prone to falling into habitual behaviors when we are stressed.

Another study at UCLA demonstrated that we tend to resort to habitual behavior when under stress or pressure. The downfall is that this happens whether the habits are good or bad for us.

Stress is often the result of being unable to make certain decisions. Since we don’t have to make any decisions about our habits — they are preprogrammed into our life. If you find yourself eating donuts when stressed, they are habitual behaviors. I wish they weren’t!

The good news is that habits are nothing more than neural pathways in the brain and they can be changed. The more they are used, the thicker they get, and deteriorate when neglected. We create our own habits by repeating activities until they get easier and easier.

This is why, after consistently logging into our social media right after waking up, our brains go on autopilot — that’s how we can end up on Facebook without even realizing it!

For example; In order to increase the amount of material I was writing, I needed to have a designated writing schedule. The best time to do this is early in the morning so I had to create a habit of getting up earlier. The first few weeks were a struggle because those neural pathways were still weak. But soon enough, my brain straightened the connection between waking up and getting straight out of bed, while the habit of rolling over and going back to sleep became weaker and weaker. Before I knew it, my neural pathways were doing all the work for me, leaving me bright-eyed and ready to start the day.

You can substitute your bad habits with minor, almost ridiculously tiny goals. Picking an easy goal eliminates any perceptions of difficulty and isn’t daunting enough to make you feel fatigued. When you start small, you might find out that you can achieve more than you set out to do! You’ll be surprised at how pleased you feel with yourself.

When you set goals that you can easily fulfill, you’ll feel great no matter how minor your achievements were. Making our own decisions makes us happier.

There are apps such as Lift or Habit Streak Plan that are perfect for helping you document your habits, or you can go for the old-school approach and use a big calendar to monitor your progress.

Developing a daily routine that is full of helpful rituals is something you can be proud of.

Why not start today?