How to Create New Habits for 2018!

The new year is nearly there and a lot of us are making resolutions. Maybe you want to stop smoking or drinking, maybe you want to lose weight or read more books, whatever you want to do to improve your life in 2018, there is a way that you can create a habit that will help give you the results that you want.

In this blog post I'm going to tell you about my experience at creating habits for myself, in order to achieve what I want to achieve.

How to Create New Habits for 2018!

When we think of the word "habit," we often think of bad habits because it is much easier to create bad habits for ourselves than good habits.

Habits are learned by repetition. You are doing something every day for a certain amount of time and you have created a habit. Now, if you want to keep your resolutions for the new year, you have to create new habits.

I have never smoked in my life, but in addition of being an addiction, smoking is also a habit, so if you want to unlearn this bad habit, you will have to create new habits. If for example you like to smoke a cigarette outside during the pause at work, you could create the habit of walking around the block, or eat fruit instead... in addition of receiving professional help for the addiction, of course.

Now how do you create a habit?

In order to create a habit, you need to do the same thing every day for at least 21 days. There are studies that show that after 21 days the habit is created, good or bad. So what you have to do is very easy, it is to do the thing you want to be your new habit and do it every day for 21 days.

If you miss one day, you have to start again. You will see that after 21 days you are doing the habit unconsciously and even if it was unpleasant at first it has become pleasant, in most cases.

I have created several habits in my life when I needed to have them. You do not need to keep habits your whole life if they are not useful to you anymore.

For example, a few years ago I created the habit of reading self-development books because I wanted to see some improvements in my life. So what I did is set 20 minutes per day to read a book while having my coffee. I would not miss a day doing it, making it a priority. It was hard at first, but then I was reading even more than 20 minutes a day, enjoying it. During that time, I read all the books I wanted to read and since then I read daily, but not at a regular time anymore.

See my mindset and self-development library.

When you want to create a habit, the most important is to have the willpower and not to do too much. Just do what you can do. If I had set myself for one hour of reading, I would have set myself for failure.

Another habit I created for myself, when I was driving to my job every day for a total of 1 hour and 30 minutes, was to turn off the news on the radio and listen to motivational speeches, business audio books and other self-development materials. That's the same thing, it took around 3 weeks to think about it, and then it was automatic. 

If you think that you are depressed in your life and want a change, try that! It's amazing how you feel better not listening to the news, especially first time in the morning.

Three years ago, I started to modify my diet because I was eating too much meat and was subject to severe gout attacks. I decided to eat salad for lunch, every lunch at work, and I created that habit. It was hard at first, but then I was looking forward to my daily salad. That's the same thing, it took me 21 days of monitoring to make sure that it was done, and then it was on autopilot.

This year, two months ago, I created the habit of walking 2 kilometers per day, exercising 40 minutes per day, while listening to self-development and motivational audio. I started the first month with a walk of 1 kilometer and 30 minutes of exercises, then I extended that. I started this at the beginning of the year in fact, but it was really irregular because I hadn't created the habit.

The only time I missed my exercise time was yesterday because it was raining all day, but today, I extended 20 minutes and tomorrow will be the same, so it will make for the day missed. I also will write a blog post monthly to be accountable to myself and my readers: Fitness Challenge - November Report

Another habit I created, and this will be the last example is to write a blog post a day on Steemit. I did the same thing a few years back for my WordPress blog for more than a year. Just doing it for 21 days and the habit is created. That's a priority for me and it has to be done. Sometimes, it's not easy to find an idea or time, like today, but the important thing is to do your best, and I hope you will like it.

Remember that in order to create a habit you have to set a habit that is realistic for something you want to do. I could not set a habit to run 5 minutes daily for example because I just hate running.

All images are CC from pixabay.com

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Michel Gerard

www.michelgerardonline.com