How To Develop A New Habit

Habits are actions that the human body is driven to do on a regular basis. According to psychology, a habit is not something that you just do at a particular time of the day or week. It’s not something you are consciously aware of as you’re about to perform a particular behavior. Because of these repetitive patterns, habits are strong enough to override awareness and control; requiring no conscious thought and little effort.

Although the majority of habits are formed unconsciously, there are also conscious habits. Conscious habits are particularly important for personal and professional development and are considered to be beneficial. On the other hand, habits that are learned without our volition or awareness are viewed as dysfunctional and often harmful.

In this article, we will bring our attention to how we can form new habits particularly to achieve specific goals, improve ourselves, or simply in order to stop a bad or harmful habit.

Categorizing Habits

We could have different categorizations of habits depending on the context. Here as we are looking on personal development the categorization we could propose is as per following:  habits that help us keep the healthiest mind, habits that make us keep the healthiest body, and habits that are leading to strong personal development (for example, new skills development or intelligence). When we then start considering our own habits the categorization presented here has two main benefits. First, it could be seen as a question to make us self-aware and start avoiding unhealthy habits, and second, it could help us focus on the right development and grow healthy habits.

Building New Habits

Habits can be a powerful tool for personal development. Learning to manage your own behaviors is important for your overall well-being and can improve your productivity, which, in turn, increases your self-confidence and inspires you to take action.  However, creating new habits is not an easy task. For example, when it comes to building a new routine of exercise or diet, it can be challenging to keep up the habit after a while. We actually lose most of our habits between 2 and 4 weeks, so it's important to allow enough time to integrate them.

Another key parameter is motivation. Lack of proper motivation has been identified typically as the source for breaking a new habit. When we create new habits we do create them because they feel right, but it doesn't mean that they don't require effort on our part to be maintained. So, when it comes to breaking old habits, we really need to be making the effort required to change them so we can establish new habits instead. It's a constant balance. However, it can be overwhelming to contemplate changing a routine that is comfortable, so the right motivation is crucial to overcome this.

We will introduce now a way of creating a new habit, the main idea is that through repetition - daily practices - and the right rewards we can start moving from intentional acts that we perform with awareness, towards acts that are performed in auto-pilot mode, thus creating habits. So the approach here is that we start with a specific daily practice that pushes us to act, to end up in a habit that pulls us to act. In the end, we will notice that these initial daily practices when they are fully incorporated, they have become habits.

To initiate a new habit or replace a bad habit with a good one a clear plan is needed. Duration wise we should allow ourselves at least 30 days that we will invest in repeating the daily processes we have set. Each day we should be accurate with the timing and behavior. As building a new habit is not an easy task we should only initiate only a few daily processes. If we are completely new to habit formation, having only one or two daily processes would be sufficient. Also, we need to take some time and contemplation with our thoughts and resolve to create a process that resonates well. As we have mentioned before, motivation is a key when building or changing a habit so we need to remain motivated and also have the right reward once each of our daily processes is completed. Lastly, a periodic review of the progress would be beneficial to ensure that we do not slip into old behaviors, and any consequences if we do so or necessary encouragement. On the other hand, how to reward and recognize the accomplishments and that the rewards remain attractive enough.

The routine that was described was anchored in time, so based on a specific time a daily process is initiated. Another way to see or have a daily process is based on the situation. The difference between a time-based process and a situational process is in what will get you motivated. A situational process is something you do for your improvement, and you get motivated or triggered by the situation. A time-based habit is something you do for your improvement that will be triggered at a certain time of day. The method described here aims to help you keep your focus and attention to your overall goal. Remember, having rules for your habits, and working on creating new habits can have an extremely positive impact on your life