We all know the power of habits. Habits rule! Think about it, you’re whole life is controlled by habits. We eat by habit, sleep by habit, and do a lot of other things by habit. We are the creatures of habit. Now how can this information possibly help you? In fact, if you recognize the massive power of habits and learn how the process of habit creation works, then you’ll be able to create your own habits and break the ones you don’t desire to be in your life. One of my favorite ways of creating new habits is what I call the 30-day habit creation plan, in which you decide on a habit you want to create like, writing, working-out, or whatever it is that you want to become a daily habit, and set 30 days on the calendar (or write them down as a list) and start practicing the activity during those 30 days, crossing out each day as you go forward.
Why this method is highly effective?
The 21-day rule
First of all, various studies have shown that we actually need 21 days to acquire a new habit. And you may ask: then why do you suggest me to aim for 30 days instead of just 21? And the answer is simple: you want to make the new habit a daily one for a long period of time (and perhaps for the rest of your life) so when you hopefully succeed at making up the new habit you’ll get past those extra 7 days and keep going. But the main reason for setting exactly 30 days is that by adding an extra week to the 3 basic ones, you’ll give yourself more room to get a taste of the habit and experience it thoroughly in order to examine the effects it has on your life.
Specific Time-frame
The second reason is that by setting a specific time-frame you’re giving your mind a clear target to hit, which is crucially important for this process. How many times have you started up a new project that requires a lot of commitment from you, whether it be related to time, money, effort, etc, and you’ve given up long before you reach success? There may be many reasons for that, but one of the most frequent one is that you’re not capable of conditioning your mind and body to make the new task (or set of tasks) a part of your daily routine. When you’re mind and body are conditioned to accept something, like doing a task on a daily basis, there’s virtually no way of failing to follow through. But for your mind to know what you’re trying to do, it has to have a kind of clear map, and a sense of direction. Setting a specific time-range is a perfect way of doing that.
Quitting is a legitimate option too
Notice that there’s another great benefit that you get by setting a time-frame for the new habit, which is that you are free to stop doing it after the 30-day period is gone. Let’s say you want to create the habit of working out each day, and you’re favorite form of working out is running in your neighbourhood every morning. So one morning, you put those pair of running shoes on after 7 days of doing it in a raw for the first time in your life, and just before you get out, you detect a strong feeling of resistance pulling you back. It’s like your entire body is begging you not to go out and do this 30-min run. It may suggest that you could do something more relaxing and fun instead. Maybe you can play some video games, or watch your favorite TV show, or, what about calling your long-time friend, the one that had been out of your mind for several months? You see, at this point, your mind and body are fighting aggressively against this new task that pushes you out of your comfort zone. And your mind is working hard to offer you a lot of tempting and attractive alternatives. You probably know that following through get a lot harder at this point than it was before you began the whole project, when you were totally excited and feeling motivated to reach success. The beauty of the 30-day method is that it allows you to give yourself the permission to stop doing the new task after the 30-day period is over. That way, you can convince your mind to support you through your challenge by making this agreement to stop doing the task if you feel you don’t like it after the 30 days or that it has no real value to add to your life.
New pathways in the brain
The fourth reason that makes the 30-day method really great is that by the end of the 30 days, you’ll find out that the new challenging task is not a challenge for you anymore. And that it has become all of a sudden a part of your daily life. That’s because the repeated action will create new pathways in your brain specifically for this task, which makes it a lot easier for you. At this point you’ll find it fairly easy to extend the project for another 30 days. You’ll notice how easy it will get to keep doing the new task, like working out, day after day and for as long as you wish. And this is exactly what you want. This is where the true power lies.
By mastering this process, you’ll have the key to creating real and lasting changes in your life.
I want you to think about this: what are the things that you think your life would be better off without? It may be the lack of focus you suffer from when you work on important tasks, or it may be that you waste a lot of time surfing the net and going through fluff material that doesn’t have any significance to your life, or whatever it is, just jot down what comes to your mind without judging it. It’s critically important to figure out the bad habits in your life, because you’ll come to realize that it’s your worse habits that cost you the most time.
Bad habits are often massive time consumers.
Let me give you an example. Some times I check my e-mail with the intention to spend only a few seconds on this task. I just want to check out the important e-mails and get rid of some of the spam that comes at me like crazy. So I start going through the list and I come across an e-mail sent to me by a friend that includes a link leading to a cool video on youtube.com, and I follow the link, I check out the video, and my eye catches an interesting title for another video, and I click on it, check it out, and you know the rest of the story. I may keep watching videos for a good full hour without even noticing it. Although I’m quite successful at keeping it under control now, there are always some minutes that slip out of my hand every now and then.
How to design your 30-day habit creation plan
I’m sure you too have some similar habits that are costing you valuable time right now. You don’t need to be hard on yourself, because habits like that are usually well established, so it takes time and dedication to get rid of them. But generally speaking, you can achieve a lot in just 30 days of your life.
A word of caution: don’t be extreme when designing your 30-day habit creation plans. For instance, if you’re currently wasting too must time watching videos on youtube.com, and if you’ve been doing this for quite a while, then it’s safe to bet that it’s going to be tough to change that habit. You’re used to it, it feels good, and may be it helps you forget (temporarily) some ugly problems in your life. That’s normal, and it may indicate some sort of emptiness in your life. Instead of setting the objective of the 30-day habit creation plan to be “completely avoid watching videos online”, you might choose to “avoid watching videos with little value and focus on watching videos that hold valuable content that can teach me something helpful.”
Also, since you’re concerned about wasting time (at least you should be), you may aim at reducing the time you spend on watching videos each day.
There’s an important key here, don’t aim at something negative. Don’t say I will stop eating chocolate completely during the next 30 days, because actually by saying that you’re directing your focus to what you don’t want, which is presumably stop eating chocolate. Instead it’s much more effective to say you’re going to stop watching chocolate AND you’ll start eating more kinds of healthy food, like, vegetables, beans, fruits, etc. That way you’re giving your mind an order to avoid something, and a target to hit during those 30 days at the same time. You’re telling you’re mind what you don’t want and you’re directing it to what you do want, so it knows where to focus all the energy you have.
Too easy, too hard
How hard the new task should be? Would it be valuable to gain a new habit if the basic task is not challenging to you? And how do you know when the task you’re setting is too easy or too hard?
Well, the answer to any of those questions basically depends on who you are since there are no right or wrong answers. But let me share my thoughts with you. First, I don’t believe that the value of a habit is measured by its level of difficulty. Many simple and easy tasks can do magic for your personal and career life if you can make them habits and incorporate them properly with your lifestyle. For example, the act of writing down a set of simple tasks you want to get done in a single day is in, and of itself, very easy to do. Yet, this act is proven to be very effective at helping people create better results in less time. Another example is drinking more cups of water during the day. How hard that can be? Yet it’s very good for your health to make it a habit.
You see, simple and easy tasks can make huge difference in many areas of your life. However, doing challenging work is also important for your growth and prosperity.
I usually don’t sit to write an article if I think that it will not add true and genuine value to my readers. I think about the article very thoroughly and try to find out what impact it will have on the reader, how it will make his life better and more fulfilling, how it will help him/her grow and make a better life. I make sure that when I write I do create something that’s worth reading. And as you probably know, this is not easy to do. It takes a lot of thinking, organizing, and research to be able to create writing of that kind.
Generally speaking, any habit is not valued based on its level of difficulty, but rather based on the value it adds to your life, and whether it makes your life more productive and fulfilling.
A good rule of thumb is to start with tasks that are easy to tackle and that you are pretty sure you can do, and then start making your way up, targeting more difficult and challenging tasks, like running for an extra 15 minutes, or writing for an extra 20 minutes, or dedicating more time to “real work” every day (checking e-mail and watching videos not includedJ), or whatever it is that its challenging for you.
How to get yourself motivated
The motivation to follow through and reach the point of success is important too. And in fact, you can motivate yourself through various ways.
One good and viable technique is to write down all the reasons you have for achieving your objective. For example, jot down all the reasons that come to your mind for gaining the habit of working-out on a daily basis.
When you know your reasons, your own reasons, not your parents’ or friends’, you’ll gain clarity and you’ll be able to decide whether it’s worth it to pay the price it takes to create the desired habit. Doing something challenging, physically or mentally, like, working out everyday, is not easy to make a habit. It takes effort, dedication, and a lot of sweat. And if you go chasing a target like that without having some deeply convincing and solid reasons, you’ll probably not get full support from your mind and body.
Another way to motivate yourself is visualization. Set down in a quite place for 15-20 minutes each day (preferably in the morning) and do nothing but visualize what it feels like to reach the last of the 30 days successfully. What changes will occur in your life? What value will be added to your life as a result of doing the task everyday for 30 days in a row? How will you feel about your self? How would you start to think about yourself afterwards? And will success empower you and increase your self confidence? Answering those questions will provide you with enough details that allow you to better see and feel what it it’s like to be successful.
You’ll be actually programming your mind to help you make your way successfully and more easily through the 30 days.
5 ways to remember your objective everyday
At the beginning of this mission, especially at the first one or two weeks, many people find it hard to stay focused on and to remember doing the task at the first place. This is typical at first since the new task has not become a habit yet. That’s to say that it hasn’t become a part of your life, and your mind and body are not conditioned to accept it as habit just yet.
To be able to remember doing the task each day you have to stay focused on the project the whole period. For that purpose, I suggest you follow those simple, yet very effective, techniques:
· Share the task with someone else
if you can get someone to do the task with you, like, doing the running session with you each day, then that’s great. If not, then you can share the task with others by kindly asking them to remind you about it. Or make a promise for someone whose opinion you care about that you’re going to do the task for the whole period. This one is very effective.
· Post reminders every where
Post notes that state clearly and specifically what your objective is. Post those notes on the walls of your bedroom, on the refrigerator door, in your office, and in every place you can, and that you expect to be in or visit during the 30-day period.
· Reward yourself
It’s a good thing to reward yourself for following through. Set a specific reward or a set of rewards that you want to give to your self and also specify when you’re going to do that. This will offer you more support from your brain which always seeks to get you what makes you feel happy and fulfilled.
· Think about the task
Take a few moments each night before you go to sleep to actually think about the task in ways that makes you feel good about it. What will this habit add to your life? Why will your life be better after gaining this habit? What you can do tomorrow to make it better than the way you did it last time? Also visualize your self doing the task and feeling good about it. You can repeat the same process in the next morning for more focus and to get the maximum benefit of programming your mind.
· Review the list of reasons
Create a list of reasons for doing the task (as I mentioned earlier in this article) which help you stay clear-headed and motivated. Be sure to review this list frequently (ideally everyday).
By following those steps you’ll find it very easy to stay focused and avoid forgetting your most important task of the day, which is the one you intend to make a daily habit.
What is the habit that you want to create in your life? What is the task that you’d like to make a part of your daily life? Is it writing? Exercising? Studying? Reading? Whatever it is, get a piece of paper and jot it down (or punch it into your computer). And on anther paper, write down all the reasons you have for creating that habit. Then, get another paper, and write down how you’ll make it happen and what are the resources available to you that you can use to support your journey.
Don’t start with something too big and too ambitious at first, a single habit, no matter how simple and easy, can do you wonders if it’s right for you, and help you save more time, get more done, and achieve more goals than you ever thought possible.
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