How to create positive habits?
Have you ever wondered how habits are formed? How to create or eliminate them? If so, this article is for you!
We will see together how habits are created through a method, a process that allows you to consolidate them into your routine. Furthermore, Habits are the core of our success in both personal and professional life, so why do we not use them as tools to achieve our goals?
A habit is an automatic behavior that is performed regularly until it becomes automatic.
Each of us has goals to achieve, but without a precise method, reaching those goals becomes impossible. That is why habits are essential behaviors to achieve your dreams.
The main point is to understand how a small daily improvement can lead to huge results in the long run and this is called compound interest (known in finance). The step is to be able to repeat that behavior over an extended period of time. According to experts, it is around 60 days. My advice is always to start in small doses, one step a day, one page a day. Initially, reading a few pages a day will be difficult, boring… But after some time, it will be very easy and you will start to enjoy it.
Let me tell you about a personal experience. During the period of isolation in Italy, where I live, one could not leave the house (except for necessary trips) and that is why I started reading. During this period I started reading 2 pages a day of the book Siddartha by Hermann Hesse (I highly recommend this book). In the beginning, it was boring and I couldn’t make sense of the reading…. After a week of reading, I got a taste for reading mainly because it was a book that made you think about life and its meaning by telling a story. Since then I have been reading many books because I always want to discover new information through personal experiences (biographies and autobiographies) and stories.
Returning to our objective, which is to create habits, there are four main steps that I consider fundamental.
- Make it obvious!
This means trying, by all means, to facilitate a behavior by making it visible to the eye. For example, if you want to read a book, put it on your bed pillow, put it in the hallway and you will remember it. So it is crucial to create the right environment to allow you to do a certain behavior.
2. Make it Attractive
Besides making a behavior obvious it is necessary to make it attractive. This means associating an action with a positive aspect it brings with it. For example, joining a book club allows you to surround yourself with people who are interested in reading and who encourage you to read and discuss. Another technique is to do something you enjoy immediately before doing a difficult habit (e.g. make coffee and drink it before writing an article in a medium).
3. Make it Easy
The simpler the better. Less is more. Reduce the steps that lead you to a positive habit by improving your work or study environment. Read a book in your mother tongue.
4. Make it satisfying
We are more likely to repeat a behavior when the experience is satisfying. Feeling pleasure, even minimal, during the action are a fundamental signal for the brain. That is why creating reinforcements before and after a habit you want to establish is crucial to creating and making it last. Find the right time to start a behavior by creating your own space.
Some practical tools I recommend are a Habit Tracker which you can download online and keep track of your actions and how often you do them. Nothing happens if you don’t read a few pages of a book or write for a day, the important thing is don’t miss twice, make sure you get back on track.
Another tool takes a blank sheet of paper and writes down your typical day. Evaluate which habits are positive and negative. Then try to eliminate the negative ones (there will be another article on how to eliminate bad habits) and reinforce the positive ones.
The goal of creating habits is to achieve a healthier lifestyle, start reading a book, not biting your fingernails, writing an article a day, etc. . Find a place where you are calm, where you have time, and start a new behavior. The important thing is to jump in and try it out, experience it for yourself and see if something is right for you or not.
Remember what is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided. Try to increase the chances that you will create positive habits to achieve your goals and become the person you want to be, your ideal self.
Enjoy the process and don’t think about the result.
