Three researchers from the University of Duke have found that up to 45% of your actions may be automated by your brain!
In the study, “Habits – A repeat performance” from Duke University shows us that habits can be extremely powerful. They can turn us into machines of efficiency or slaves of our own actions.
Although challenging to adopt, healthy habits have been proven to improve lives in various ways!
Whether it’s flossing your teeth, taking a 15 minute run everyday or even choosing a healthy meal, any habit can be mastered with persistence and consistency! Here are 12 tips for creating unbreakable habits!
1. Start Small. Whenever deciding to adopt a new habit, it’d be wise to start off small.
Many of us, filled with motivation and ambition, tend to fully immerse our selves in whatever we’re planning. While that’s a great idea, be careful not to overwork yourself just incase of those times you find yourself lacking in motivation!
If you set a goal of exercising 30 minutes a day, start with 5 minutes a day. If it’s eating more healthy, try to incorporate just one fruit into your meal everyday. You’ll soon find yourself feasting on apples and oranges!
It’s highly recommended that you set a goal and take incremental steps towards that goal. At first, make it so easy that you can’t refuse! And you’ll soon find yourself doing more and more!
2. Be clear in your reasoning. Before you even start to think of creating a new habit, ask yourself “why”. “Why am I doing this ; what’s the purpose”.
Whenever your clear in your reasoning for doing something, doubt has a more troubling time convincing you that your wasting your time. This isn’t to say there won’t be days you wake up with less motivation than the day before!
When you create clear reasoning, your able to focus more deeply on the target task. In the goal of habit creation, clear reasoning reminds you that you aren’t wasting your time, and your struggle is well worth the reward!
Are you exercising 30 minutes a day to improve your health, or just to improve your appearance? When you decided to make your bed every morning, was it to live in a tidy environment or was it to instill self discipline?
3. No more 0 days! Many experts have agreed that it takes around 30-90 days to create a strong, worthy habit.
30 days itself can be a stretch of time, however with tip 3, you can stop resetting your streak! Here’s how it works!
To ensure your streak isn’t lost, you should always try your best to do the bare minimum, if possible! If you can do more, then great! If not, oh well!
The reasoning behind this stems from the conflict people have with simply starting an activity or action. Once your started though, you’ll find it’s easier to keep going!
Take for example, performing 25 daily pushups. This sounds insurmountable to some people, however just do 1 pushup and you may find the other 24 after the first!
By ensuring your streak doesn’t reset, your actually solidifying the habit into a more concrete version, despite the seemingly lack of effort your putting into it!
Building habits isn’t an easy process. Few struggle to even get started, and even fewer accomplish their overall goal.
However, applying these three tips will surely make forming habits significantly easier, and much more effective!
Are you working on employing a new habit? Leave me a comment about it below! Until next time, keep developing!
Dailydevelopment 