Bringing About Change By Building Tiny Habits
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When it comes to the various goals that you might want to accomplish in your life, whether it be losing weight, saving money for retirement, starting to eat better, or some other goal that you want to achieve; don't wait. The truth is that we aren't always going to feel motivated to do the things that we need to do, but we can make the decision to do them anyway.
Don't Wait To Feel Motivated
Setting a bold goal at the beginning of the year to hit the gym every day is easy, when you're all fueled with excitement about the prospect of the new year and all of the things that you want to accomplish. But that energy and that motivation will fade, and before you know it you will be making excuses about why you cannot put down that chocolate bar, make it to the gym, save that extra $100, and so on.
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Given that most of our daily routine is effortless habit, change that we want to seen then is going to require discipline, and we can try to build discipline by introducing tiny habits into our lives incrementally. Drastic change isn't going to be accomplished overnight. If we do engage in sudden changes, it might last for a few days, but sooner or later we usually sink back into our regular habits. That is why if we want to create change, then we need to focus on something small instead of the bigger, overall picture of how we want our lives to be.
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Habits Emerge Through Associative Learning
In fact, there are a number of ways that one can go about trying to build new habits in their life in order to bring about some overall change that they want to achieve. We can make tiny/macro goals for ourselves, establish behavior chains using environmental triggers, eliminating excessive decisions or options that can be made, and more. Not many people bother to set goals for themselves and even fewer are able to follow through with them. Knowing how to effectively introduce and build new habits in your life can go a long way in trying to bring about a variety of possible change that you'd like to see.
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We are going to repeat what works for us in our life, and that is why it's estimated that about 40 percent or more of our daily routine is simply habit.
These habits are automatic and don't require active thinking, and when they are bad habits (like spending too much money or eating the wrong thing) it can feel like you're caught in a perpetual cycle that you're never able to get out of.
The secret that many have found is that the method of bringing about change rests in focusing on small, tiny habits that you can introduce in a associative way with the routine that is already established. Using something in that daily routine to act as a 'trigger' for the new habit that you want to display/exercise is going to probably have a much better chance of prompting change, than waiting for the written goal on that piece of paper to spur any motivation. In the past, I would do things like write down “exercise every day” on a piece of paper and think that this was going to be sufficient enough to fuel me to achieve that goal, but it never was.
Researchers suggest that it could take as little as 21 days for an individual to be able to form a new habit, incorporated into their daily routine.
And the more good habits that we incorporate into our life, the more that it is likely that we are going to be pleased with the outcome.
Pics:
pixabay
habitsforwellbeing
prosperousheart
fromfoundertoceo
Sources:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140808111931.htm
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00435.x
http://99u.com/articles/17123/5-scientific-ways-to-build-habits-that-stick
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/forming-new-habits_b_5104807.html
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Great Post!
Habits become habits by repeating. It only takes small changes in our lives to make a big overall change. Great post. Upvoted and followed!
Excellent post.
Great post! I personally use the app Habitify to keep track of my progress and to motivate myself to keep going. Try to not break the streak!