How To Start A New Habit

 

The purpose of wanting a new habit in your life is to make your life easier.

On my previous article I shared a habit tracker and I talked about what is an “habit” and how you can start working on getting a new habit.

This time and as a complement to help you get a new habit in your life, I would like to talk a little bit more about how these 3 steps will help you to change old and not too good habits into a good habits in your life.

The goal of any new habit in your life is or should be to help you to get a new habit in a way you will do it as part of your life in a mode automatic, without thinking.

Have you noticed that many of the tasks you do in a regular day, you do them in an automatic mode, you don’t need to tell your brain to wake up and get out of bed, get dressed have breakfast and go to work, all those tasks you can do one after the other without telling your brain what leg or arm move next.

But there’s some habits we keep doing in that automatic mode that won’t help you to do better in life or be happier with your life, that’s why you want to do some changes in your habit.

Let’s talk about one habit everyone talks often about, and many of us wish we could be stronger to achieve it, eat healthier.

You might think, yes everyone tells you to eat healthier, but before you notice you already are having the same food you have at home or you used to have, so why is this so hard to work on it?

To be more successful on changing habits the first thing is to follow these steps:

Triggers:

When you want to work on getting a new habit that will help you to achieve a goal you need to work  on something that will help you to stop doing the same old habit and this trigger will remind you to do the same habit instead.

Let’s say you get a photo of a certain dress you want to take to that party or wedding you were invited to, and you place this photo on the door of your fridge. Keep one photo of that dress in your wallet or your purse too.

Every time you feel hungry and you want to open the fridge and eat anything you see at first, but as soon as you see the photo of that dress you want to take to that party, you will remind your brain that you want to eat healthier and you will look for a healthier snack then, same will happen if you go out for dinner, when you look at the menu and you want to order the first food you see on the menu, you can take a look at the photo you have in your wallet and you will remember why you want to work on this new habit, this way you can order something that will be a better option.

Get a routine.

Most of the diets will fail within the first or second week.

It’s well know, everyone wishes to lose 100 pounds in three months, and I’m gentle on this point, as some people want to do it for the next day.

Most of the goals to achieve will fail just because we want to do so much in such small period of time!

Be gentle with yourself. Set up small goals so you will achieve each one of them and by doing this you will be able to work more and more to achieve everyone of your goals.

Diets are so hard to follow, you go to the doctor or to the nutritionist office and you get a paper with your diet and you can read, don’t eat this, this and this. So many changes to make right now!

Diets that works to change habits have more probabilities to last in time with better results, and some nutritionists know it, they will ask you what you used to eat and they will make a plan with some of that food in your diet so you can make little changes and it time they will make more changes on your diet so you can reach your goals.

Work on your new habit the same way, make little changes at the beginning.

You want to wake up earlier, set your alarm clock only 5 minutes earlier for tomorrow, and every week set the change for another 5 minutes earlier, in a month you will gain 20 minutes, in two months you will gain 40 minutes to do something more on your day.

You want to work on doing more exercise, start working out only for 15 minutes three times per week, and add another 5 minutes in two weeks, your body will get used to do exercise and before you notice you will be working out for 30 minutes everyday.

Celebrate.

Yes, I know, we are adults, we don’t need any prize for what we do.

Well, things change, and I don’t talk about big prizes, you don’t need something big to celebrate, and a good motivation plan will help you to achieve your new habits.

What about if you do better on your eating healthier plan and you reach your first goal to lose your first 5 pounds, why not to go to that restaurant and have one “fancy salad” or a big glass of that natural fruit you love.

If you’re working out and you want to celebrate, why not go to a place you want to visit it for the first time and spend the day there.

Setting some goals and set in advance how you will celebrate when you achieve your goal will help you to work on your new habit and reach that goal.

New habit tracker

Write down your goals and keep track on how your doing, every note you write down will help you to know more about why you have success and why you fail.

Working on your new habits this way will help you to know your likes or dislikes and how can you work on a new habit with more chances to success.

You can work on your new habits on your personal journal, your bullet journal or you can get a new new habit journal to work on it.

 

 

 

Once you set your goals, something important to do it’s to mark down when you will start and when you will finish. Give your new habit a time to accomplish it.

 

One last word about changing habits.

Don’t work on all the habits you want to change at the same time, work on one or two at a time, start little and within time you will be working on more habits easier.