5 Things You Need to Start Forming Better Habits

a post by Susie Pettit for YourTango.com [via the World of Psychology blog]


Good habits will change your whole life.

If you’re interested in life advice for self-improvement, you’ll need to learn how to form good habits and how long it takes to break bad ones.

When it comes to forming good habits, there are no golden rules.

10 Ways You Can Become a Better Version of Yourself

It does not take two weeks, 21 days, 1,000 hours, or 10,000 hours. I’ve stopped behaviors that I’ve been doing for years in a moment, I’ve also taken months to wean myself away from whatever habit I was doing. At any moment, at any time, on any day of the week, you can choose to do something differently.

What is needed to start a new habit or change a bad one? Here are the five things you need to form good habits and start your self-improvement journey.

1. A Strong Why
   
   
2. Accountability
   
   
3. Visualization
   
   
4. Mindset Shift
   
   
5. To Take Action Every Day

Continue reading to fill in the details. I had not read all thisd about habit changing when I finally stopped smoking but I now realise that I had a very strong why. I needed to support my husband in his effort to stop on doctor’s orders. Incidentally he started again after about three weeks. After 14 years I am still tobacco free.

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3 Tips for Anyone Who's Tired of Trying to Make New Habits Stick

a post by Barbara Guignard for the Tiny Buddha blog


If you have a bad day, remember that tomorrow is a wonderful gift and a new chance to try again.” ~Bryant McGill

As I crawled back into bed after hitting the snooze button, my eyes heavy with sleep, I told myself, “You gave up once more” and rolled over back to sleep, annoyed with myself.

Two months earlier, inspired by the book The Miracle Morning, by Hal Erold, I had taken the habit of getting up early (around 5am) every day to meditate for fifteen minutes, write for thirty minutes, and exercise for thirty minutes.

When I started the new habit, it felt amazing. I was so proud of myself—I was doing it! On top of the satisfaction of achieving goals that I had set for myself, I really felt the benefit of being productive before everyone wakes up. It had a positive knock on effect on the rest of my life; I was upbeat, motivated, and I was going to work with a spring in my step.

Then, about two months in, normal life happened: I had been to bed later the previous nights—drinks with colleagues, watching a movie—and tiredness, coupled with maybe the weariness of the new habits, quickly took over. That morning, I did not jump out of bed and I was longing to roll over instead of starting my “miracle morning.”

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Why We Fear Ending Destructive Habits (Try this Experiment)

a post by Mike Bundrant for the NLP Discovewries blog [via World of Psychology]



Are we really afraid to end bad habits? Here’s how to know.

Try this simple thought experiment:

1. Think of your bad habit. It could be anything. Biting your nails, smoking, raging, spending too much money, overeating, dating the wrong people; you name it.
2. Say to yourself, with firmness and a matter-of-fact tone, the following:

I will never (insert bad habit) again. For as long as I live, I will simply abstain from (insert bad habit).

Notice what happens next. If you have a destructive habit that you’ve tried in vain to quit – and if you declared with firmness to yourself that you will NEVER do it again, the most common emotion that arises is fear (in my experience).

A few people experience relief – as if they never realized that they could just quit their bad habit. Like an affirmation, the statement just hits home.

Some people laugh at themselves after making this statement. Yeah, right, like I’ll never do again. And Mickey Mouse is real, too!

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We Do What We Know Is Bad for Us, Why?

a post by Brian Lee for the Lifehack blog

We all know what a bad habit is. Smoking, eating unhealthy foods, excessive alcohol consumption and living a sedentary lifestyle are just some of the things that are drummed into us as behaviours we ought to avoid in order to increase our overall well-being.

Yet a study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that in the year 2000, avoidable behaviours such as poor diet, lack of exercise, smoking and drinking alcohol were some of the underlying causes of nearly half of the deaths in the United States:

Tobacco: 435,000 (18.1% of total US deaths)
Inactivity and bad eating: 400,000 (16.6%)
Alcohol consumption: 85,000 (3.5%)

If we know bad habits are so detrimental to our health, why do we continue to do them?

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I doubt that the figures for the UK are much different.

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