Sticking To Your Habits And Getting Your Habits To Stick To You
by Zara Lisbon
via Daily Burst
The key to having a good life can be boiled down to a very simple formula: good habits = a good life. Of course, having good habits is easier said than done! In fact, it’s extremely easy to say, and yet almost impossible to do. Making a habit out of having good habits seems to be a constant struggle for so many of us. If you’re trying to develop good habits and stick to them, here are some rules that might help:
- Just Start
If you think about how hard it will be to do do X every day for the rest of your life, you may never get started. Instead, just pick a habit you’d like to develop and do it for one day. If your goal is to drink eight glasses of water every day, just start by waking up on Monday morning and drinking one single glass of water. Then, go from there.
- One Day at a Time
Don’t worry about any day besides the one that you’re on. Continuing with the water consumption example, don’t plan to drink the perfect amount of water tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, just aim to drink the right amount today. Just today is easy. You can focus on drinking eight glasses of water today, and if you don’t quite make it there, that’s okay too, because even if you only drink five or six, you’re well on your way to developing a good habit.
- One Habit at a Time
We like taking on many new habits at once, because we’re eager to change our lives for the better, and don’t take into consideration how hard it is to develop a new habit that sticks. If you try to develop multiple new habits at once, the chances that any of them will last are quite slim. Instead, pick ONE habit and really work on it until it becomes second nature. Once this new habit is as ingrained in your routine as showering, you can move on to develop the next habit.
Developing new habits can seem daunting, especially with the constant articles proclaiming this or that habit is the one that you absolutely NEED to have. But here are two pieces of good news: 1. There are no habits you NEED to have and 2. The ones you want to develop, you absolutely can. Pick three new habits you want to take on this year, and work patiently on one at a time.
Bonus tip: if you can find a way to make your desired habit fun, you’ll master it twice as fast.
