How to start a habit

So today, we are going to discuss one of the things that a lot of people certainly are going to be interested in - since they tend to fail to achieve this - and that is to be able to start a habit! In life, there are a lot of habits that are certain to be good for you (sleep early, learn to focus when studying, exercise to lose weight, etc.). However, a habit can be extremely hard to achieve. I know a lot of people who want to exercise to lose weight, however, after a few days of starting to exercise, they procrastinate and end up giving up the challenge before actually seeing any change in their body. Well, I do empathize with you - sometimes I really want to be able to turn something into a daily habit, but it is just so hard for me to repeat it. Because of this, today let’s discuss some methods that you can take whenever you want to start a habit.

The first thing that you need to do is to form your mindset, and that is to force yourself to realize the importance of this habit. I strongly believe that this is the utmost important thing that you must do before you even start the practice. Without really believing in the importance of this, then you won’t have the determination in order to start and continue this habit. Let’s take the example again of when people want to exercise to lose weight: anyone can do that, but again, they don’t have the strong-enough mindset to do that. If you really understand the positive impacts that this thing can bring, whenever you try to turn a good practice into a habit, then you won’t mind all the things that are blocking you from achieving this goal. Because of this, try to force yourself into thinking of how good this habit can be, because when you have had a good reason on why you should do it, then I can assure you that nothing can hold you back from achieving your goal of forming this habit.

The next thing you should do is to try to create a 21-day habit challenge. Yeah, yeah, I know that this may sound a little cliché, but if you have been able to force yourself into having a strong mindset, the next thing that you should do is force yourself to just do it! I understand the fact that some people may become bored because they are not able to receive the positive impacts that this habit is bringing in just a few days - remember, this is solely because you are not conducting this practice long enough. There are two things that we need to achieve if you want to be able to form a habit: 1) getting you to not give up that early on, and 2) continue on this practice for long enough so that you can see the results that this can bring. Because of this, I know that many people have talked about this before, but let’s try to create a 21-day habit challenge. 21 days isn’t that long of a time, but you can yield plenty of results from that amount of time, so this is definitely an ideal range of time for you to force yourself into doing this practice. But again, you must have a very strong and rigid mind in these 21 days - try to do this thing every day for the next 21 days without quitting! I know that this can be hard, but again, this is only 21 days, and again, you want to see the change that this habit can bring, right? Then, just do it, because if you don’t have the ability to finish the 21-day challenge then you are not really understanding how good this habit is - you are not even meeting the first requirement in the first place! Just do the challenge for 21 days, and see if it is worth continuing on.

However, a good thing is that in the phase of 21 days, you certainly are going to be able to see at least some results, right? After you have been able to finish the 21-day challenge, and before you start to figure out whether you should continue on the practice (and turn this into a permanent habit) or not, notice the positive impacts that this is bringing! If you have done this challenge, then I can guess that this thing is very beneficial for you right? In the span of only 21 days, what has happened, and what has become better? When you understood the positive impacts of this (and how you have benefited from it), you are actually going to have a higher likelihood to continue pursuing this practice - you have seen the results (not too much but there is still some, right?), and also, you have become a little bit less lazy to do the practice (as you have had forced yourself to do this for 21 days, so this will become less hard over time), so if you want to (and you should), continue doing it!