8 Tips To Help Build Habits

When it comes to achieving goals and targets, it doesn’t matter what you’re looking to achieve, if you pay attention to your habits and place an emphasis on repetition, you’ll quickly find these goals much easier to attain. We need habits in our lives for a wide variety of reasons, but it’s how we go about achieving these habits that helps define us. If you’re looking to lose 10 pounds for the summer, but you’re struggling because you just can’t seem to make exercise or healthy eating a habit, something will have to change if you are to meet your weight loss goal. Here are a few simple hacks proven to help make new habits stick for good. 

Set yourself a goal 

Before you start creating productive habits, you need to know why you’re looking to create them in the first place. Do you want to become healthier? Perhaps you want to quit an unhealthy lifestyle choice? Whatever you want to achieve, make sure it is clear and defined. 

Set realistic goals 

If you want to create habits and make them stick, you need to make sure that your goals are realistic and achievable. If it is weight loss you want to achieve, have a realistic figure in mind for how much you want to drop. 30 pounds in one month is unrealistic, whereas 10 pounds is not. If you set yourself 30 pounds as a target, you are setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. If you were to drop 15 pounds, rather than celebrating this, you would feel down because you are 15 pounds off your unrealistic target. If you set a goal of 10 pounds and lose those 15 however, you can celebrate this and your motivation will improve as a result. 

Start with the basics

If you’re looking to create new habits that stick with you for life, like anything, you need to begin slow. People make the mistake of trying to do everything all at once, when in reality you are never going to change your life in just one day. Sticking with the weight loss theme, if you are looking to drop a lot of weight, you can’t expect to change your entire outlook and mental approach to diet, exercise, and nutrition in a single day. Start with the basics and perhaps aim to cut out certain ingredients, or to drink 8 glasses of water a day. With exercise, aim to perhaps walk 5000 steps per day for the first week, then 6000 the next, and so on. Remember, you’re in this for the long run. 

Aim for 21 days 

Statistically, it takes 21 days for something to become a habit. Say, for example, you are trying to eat healthily, if you are able to eat cleanly for 21 days, it will no longer feel like a chore to you and you’ll do it without thinking. The leadup to this is known as the ‘conditioning’ phase, as it is here where you are literally conditioning and training your brain and your body. If you can make it to 21 days, you are far more likely to succeed with your goals and targets.

Visualize

No matter what you want to achieve, we can virtually guarantee that the journey to achieving these goals will be difficult at times. Life is full of roadblocks and obstacles, and it is down to use to navigate around them as best we can. When you feel down and feel like throwing in the towel and calling it quits, visualize your goals and remind yourself why you started. In order to make these healthy and productive habits stick, picture yourself several weeks, months, even years down the line after you’re realized your goals. Visualize how great you’ll look and/or feel, and how much better life will be. 

Try to form triggers

Triggers are very important when it comes to forming habits, which is why it’s important that your triggers are productive and positive. These are rituals which are carried out directly before you perform the habit you’re working on. If you’re trying to get into the habit of drinking water with each meal, find a trigger you can form to remind you of what to do. Before eating a meal, perhaps click your fingers as a reminder to drink water. Eventually the clicking of your fingers will serve as a trigger to remind you to drink that glass of water. Sure, you may get a few odd looks around the dining table, but the finger-clicking can be very discreet if this is a genuine concern for you. 

Try to stay away from temptation

If you are looking to lose weight and get in shape, the habits you will want to form will largely revolve around exercise and healthy eating and drinking. As motivated as you are, there will be times when you feel down and crave junk food or alcohol, and if you have these things in the house, you will be more likely to give into temptation. Experts recommend removing temptations from you, or removing yourself from temptation, to help keep you on track. If you are craving chocolate and know that there is a bar in the cupboard, it will be on your mind and you’ll drive yourself wild thinking about it and trying to resist it. If however, you know that there is no junk in the house, you’ll know that thinking about it is a waste of time, and so you can fix yourself a healthy snack instead. 

Put it into writing 

If your ultimate goal is to quit smoking, rather than just telling yourself you want to quit smoking, instead, make the effort to write it down. A single piece of paper with the words ‘quit smoking’ written on it, will mean nothing to an outsider. To you however, it could be the difference between life and death. It isn’t the text that’s important, it’s the fact that you took the time to write it down. This adds a sense of urgency to your goals and makes your habits clearer and more-defined. What’s more, seeing your goal in writing will hold you accountable and will ensure that you make the necessary changes to your lifestyle so that you can form the habits needed to go smoke-free.