Habits are human behavior. Behavior can be classified as good and bad, right and wrong. One thing is quite clear that not all habits are good and vice versa. But those bad habits have the potential to significantly impact our lives in a negative way. On the other hand, various good habits have the potential to lead us towards a successful life, in a shorter and longer run.
Good Habits are behaviors and patterns that you showcase by default. They enable you to carry out crucial activities like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, getting prepared for work.
Interestingly, you follow this routine every day without considering them. Your unconscious habits create room for brain to perform more advanced activities like problem-solving and choosing what do.
What is Habits?
Habits are fundamental to becoming successful in life or probably ending up a failure. Yet, as significant as habits are, some lack the knowledge of their capabilities.
Habits are default activities that you engage in without giving an afterthought. They are automatic behavioral or mental activities. They help you carry out some actions without exerting too much energy. They simplify your life.
Several people aspire to break bad habits. For instance, some people diet to stop overeating. They exercise to reduce obesity. Habits can hinder or impact your performance and productivity.
12 Tips to Form Good Habits that can Benefit You
Habits are essential to every human endeavors. They can make or break your chances of achieving and maintaining our lifestyle along with increasing quality of life and promoting longevity. Here are the good habits formation tips that can benefit you:
1 Exercise daily
One of the good habits formation tips that can benefit your health is to exercise your body and muscles every day. You don’t have to run a marathon or lift a weight. You only need to engage in less strenuous activities that oxygenate your blood and inject endorphins in your body.
2 List your wins and mistakes
Journaling is commonly considered as a good habit; because it does not only help you know about the wins and mistakes of your whole day, but it helps you improve your skills to convey your message.
Whenever you implement a good habit in your life, you are highly likely to achieve many victories towards the way along with some mistakes. If you create a journal and list all your wins and mistakes in separately, then you can easily look back at all the mistakes at a glance that was not in concordance with your strategy to develop a certain habit.
Next, it can help you minimize these mistakes, so you can remove hurdles in developing that good habit and you want to replace it with a bad habit.
Doing this not only helps you identify the roadblocks but also enables you to accelerate your progress in developing a good habit.
3. Work on your environment
You can never deny the significance of the environment in developing a good habit. Suppose you have decided to eat clean, but when you open the door of your fridge, you find all the junk food in it. How hard it will be for you to resist all that?
If you will not focus on changing your environment, then it can be a bit of a challenge to get rid of your bad habits and replace it with a better one. So, better to make the right changes to your environment that is in concordance with your goals.
4. Be grateful for what you have
Sometimes, you waste time thinking of what’s not enough. You become immersed in those daunting challenges. However, challenges justify the presence of hope. When you have life, you have expectations. You will be free from challenges when you are six feet under. The only strategy you have to stop focusing on your problems is to focus on what you have.
Gratitude is a time-tested pathway to success, health, and happiness. It redirects your focus to what you have from what you lack. Here’s what James Clear does every day.
5. Be specific
Narrow down what you want to do. “Don’t say something broad like, ‘I want to eat more fruit and vegetables. “You need to have a specific plan to work out exactly when and how you’re going to do that” – for example, by having fruit and vegetables in the house. A behavior is more likely to become habitual if it’s something you enjoy or find rewarding. Even if it’s something you think you’d rather not do, like exercise, “when you’ve done it you’re likely to be pleased with yourself”.
6. Start with small adjustments
Most people have a mindset to achieve everything in a single day which ends up getting them nothing in the end. Instead of going for fixing everything in a small amount of time, it is better to make small, yet effective adjustments so that your mind can handle these gradual positive changes in a proper way.
For example, if you want to lose weight then the best way to do it is not by switching straight away to the healthy diet overnight because this can cause various health issues, when not done right.
The reason behind this is the fact that it takes a decent amount of amount of willpower, determination, interest, knowledge, and practice to develop a new habit and if you use all you try and do it all overnight, you are most likely to get tired of it. So, it’s better to start small.
7. Put on good Smile
Can you pause and smile before you continue reading this?
Now here is what just happened based on research conducted by the Association for Psychological Science; you set a pace for living a happier life when you smile. A genuine smile or what’s called a Duchenne smile is a good habit to have if you want to find spiritual, emotional and mental peace of mind.[2]
Smiling induces the release of molecules that function towards fighting stress. The physiological state of your body determines the state of your mind. When you slouch or frown, your mind takes cues relating to unhappiness and depression. But, once you adjust yourself by putting up a smile, you begin to feel a new level of excitement and vibrancy.
8. Focus on building a routine
If you want to add a good habit in your life, then you must focus on doing it on a daily basis because once you do that regularly, then you will not only be able to practice that habit more, but it will become a part of your daily routine.
Charles Duhigg, a best-selling author, once said: “The key to victory is creating the right routines.”
Let’s try and understand it through an example. Suppose you want to quit smoking. The major reason why it is difficult for many is the fact that it is an intrinsic part of their daily routines. In order to cut this habit, you need to mold your daily routine and add something better, replacing this habit.
9. Choose your moment
“Make use of what we called ‘habit discontinuities’,” says Verplanken. These are the “moments when people go through life-course changes, such as moving house, starting a family or a relationship, divorce, retirement or organization changes”. These kind of events disrupt old habits, and allow you to create new ones. It’s why New Year’s resolutions tend to fail – your life, and old routines, are still the same on 2 January. But switching jobs or schools, or getting a pet, can become a catalyst for broader change.
10. Have more clarity
Before deciding to include a good habit to your life, you must be clear regarding why you want to adopt this habit, what importance it has in your life, how it helps you in achieving your goals.
If you don’t have clarity in mind, then you can easily become confused and stressed. That’s why you should develop clarity first to get your direction right and have a purpose.
When your intentions are clear regarding a habit in your mind, then you can sacrifice anything to develop that good habit because you are well-aware of the outcomes that it will bring to your life if done successfully.
11. Seek inspiration
It is usually difficult to be inspired for a considerable length of time. Sometimes, you become discouraged and feel like giving up on your goals when things are not working out as intended.
A practical approach to stay on top of the situation is to inspire yourself each day. When you wake up in the morning after meditation, watch some motivational videos, and let the story of great leaders inspire you.
Establish what Anthony Robbins called the ‘hour of power.’ Determine how many minutes you spend but make it count. Inspiration is the fuel for achievement because when you can conceive it in your mind, you can accomplish it.
12. Identify all your triggers and obstacles
In order to develop a good habit, you must have a clear idea about all the triggers and obstacles. If you don’t do that, then you are likely to face failure.
When you start to form a good habit, there will certainly be many bad days but that doesn’t mean that you should come back to old bad habits to deal with them.
For example, if you want to quit alcohol but had a bad day at the office that should not push you back to touching alcohol just to get over it. It can destroy all the efforts that you have put in so far to get rid of that bad habit. Instead of this, try to have a better way to alleviate stress like exercising, meditation, or something productive that helps you reduce stress and cheers you up.
