Habits are an important part of our lives because they practically form our personality. The results we have now in our lives are the results of the habits we’ve had till now.
If you don’t like the results you have now then you should start changing your habits. And this article will help you do that by showing how to build good habits in 4 simple science-based steps.
What is a habit?
A habit is a decision you make and action you perform every day.
A good habit will help you reach your goals, develop both personally and professionally, and feel fulfilled.
4 steps how to create a good habit:
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying.
1. Make it obvious
One of the ways to make it obvious is to change your environment so it could be easier for you to take action and start a habit.
For example, if you have a bowl of cookies in your kitchen then probably every time you are near that bowl you take some cookies. If you want to build a healthy eating habit then you can start with switching that bowl of cookies with a bowl of apples.
2. Make it attractive.
It is the anticipation of the reward – not the fulfillment of it – that gets us to take action. The greater the anticipation, the greater the dopamine spike [1].
One of the ways to make your habits more attractive is to pair an action you want to do with the action you need to do.
For example, after I exercise for ten minutes (action I need to do) I will watch a movie (action I want to do).
Also, community can have a significant impact on which behaviors are attractive to us. One of the most effective ways to build better habits is to join a community where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
For example, if you want to create some healthy habits then you better join the community where healthy habits are normal and not the community where drinking and smoking is normal.
3. Make it easy.
One of the easiest ways to start a new habit is to make it so easy that you can’t say no to it.
For example, if you want to create an exercise habit then start to exercise for 1 minute per day. Or if you want to start a healthy eating habit then start eating one healthy food per day or one healthy meal this week.
Do this for 30 days and then you can increase the intensity and difficulty of this habit. The most important part of building a new habit is consistency. If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. And if you get one percent worse each day for one year, you’ll end up practically at zero or 0.03 to be precise.
4. Make it satisfying.
After completing your habit give yourself some kind of reward so you would have the desire to do this habit again next time.
Summary
So, in this article we learned 4 steps how to build good habits. These steps include making your new habit obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. If you want to create good habit then start applying what you learned in this article.
P.S. If you want to find out how science-based nutrition and diet can prevent and treat the most common diseases, improve your overall health and help you live longer then you can click here to learn more.
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