Everyone has dreams that they wish would come true one day . Learning a new language, being fit, finishing a career and more can be goals that we want to achieve, but these will never materialize without good habits.

Habits are behaviors that are carried out every day, automatically and without effort. If you form habits that are related to what you want to achieve, the process that will bring you closer to your dream becomes easier and easier, flowing by itself.

Habits, however, are not something that can happen overnight. To do so, it is necessary to be focused on their achievement, devoting both physical and mental effort to them.

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In this article we are going to talk about how habits are created, indicating a series of guidelines that can help in their achievement and, in addition, a series of aspects to take into account when deciding to introduce one of them in daily life.

The habit and its aspects to take into account

As we were saying, habits are behaviors that are done every day automatically. When an action has become an everyday occurrence, which is done every day, it becomes a habit and is done almost without thinking about it . This type of pattern, once established, implies a lower consumption of energy, both physically and mentally.

However, habits only become something present in people’s daily lives after they have overcome a process in which they have managed to integrate them into everyday life. Trying to make something new become part of our daily bread is something that implies, certainly, a greater concentration, being aware of what is done and how it is done, besides not losing the objective for which it is done.

It is very comfortable to fantasize about achieving a long-cherished dream. What is not so comfortable is having to put the energy into activities every day that are related to the goal you want to achieve, whether they require mental or physical resources.

We must take into account that the process of habit formation is not something concrete and fixed, that is, not all habits settle with the same ease nor do they take the same time to become an everyday occurrence. This process can vary according to several aspects:

The starting point where the person is.

  • Physical and intellectual abilities
  • Personality traits
  • Lifestyle
  • Other established habits that may interfere with the habit to be incorporated

Furthermore, the speed with which the habit is established depends on both the objective and the difficulty of the habit itself to be incorporated . For example, it is not the same to try to get a half-hour walk every day as it is to lift weights for half an hour every day. The physical and mental effort is much greater in the second case and the desire to do so may be less.

It has become quite famous to claim that it only takes about 21 days, or 3 weeks, to introduce a habit into people’s daily lives. This statement, besides being very risky, has been shown to be clearly false for those habits that are more complex.

In several investigations, we have tried to see how long it takes to acquire a habit, obtaining very varied results, depending on the difficulty of what we wanted to achieve. The research points out that some habits can take very little time to be acquired, just 18 days, while others take almost a year to become something everyday. It has also been seen that failing one or two days does not negatively affect the acquisition of the habit, but failing more than two.

Making a habit: steps to follow

However, once the habit has been successfully introduced into the person’s daily life, the physical and intellectual effort that was necessary at the beginning of the process becomes much less.

1. Set specific goals

It is quite possible that you have many goals that you want to achieve . However, as the popular saying goes, he who embraces much, does little.

Ideally, you should try to introduce only one habit at first, at most two, and hope to achieve this after a while.

If you manage to establish the habit, you can try to increase the level of complexity. For example, if you wanted to walk for half an hour a day, you can now try to make it an hour or even run for part of that time.

It is very important that the habits to be followed are defined in a very concrete way. It is not the same to say that you are going to walk half an hour every day after eating as it is to say to yourself that you are going to walk.

In the second case, it is more likely to fall into self-deception, telling oneself that just because he has moved around inside the house he already counts as walking or, that since he has already done the errands he was supposed to do, one could say that he has exercised.

2. Define a plan and stop making excuses

Whenever an attempt is made to introduce a new habit into life, there is a constant struggle against laziness and a return to the previous routine .

It is common for one to tell oneself that one does not have enough time, that one does not have the material one is touching, that one has other obligations, etc.

The worst enemy to get a dream is not obligations or lack of time. The worst enemy is oneself .

To put an end to these excuses, the best thing to do is to identify them and prepare beforehand everything that can be done to avoid them.

Are there any other obligations to be done? Well, they have to be done first. Don’t we have the necessary equipment? I’m sure there’s something at home, or else we’ll buy it and be done with it.

Dreams are not going to come true by themselves, you have to put in the will and effort to achieve them.

3. Schedule reminders

It does not make much sense to become aware that you are going to follow a new habit if later, in practice, you forget that you had to do it.

Thanks to technological advances, mobile phones, in addition to being those devices for watching kitten videos, have multiple functions , including the ability to program custom alarms, with a text message reminding you what to do and when.

Another option, a little more analogical, is to leave notes in strategic places in the house, such as the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator door or the TV screen on which the things to be done are written.

Following this strategy, the excuse that what had to be done has been forgotten is no longer valid.

4. Monitoring progress

From time to time, it is useful to see how progress is being made .

It is very important to check if progress has been made, and the best way to see this is by writing down in a notebook or on your mobile phone the days when you have and have not made a habit of doing so.

If it has been the case that there has been a day when what had to be done has not been done, it is very important to write down why.

In this way, not only will it be possible to know how often the habit is being made and to what extent the objective is being achieved, it will also be possible to detect possible obstacles that have arisen during the process.

5. Celebrating what has been achieved

In the same way that it is very important to see to what extent what is proposed is being achieved, it is also very important to celebrate it .

Even if you have missed a day or two, it is possible to celebrate at the end of the week or the month what you have achieved, allowing yourself some respite or whimsy.

However, the rewards must be consistent and also very timely.

There wouldn’t be much point in celebrating a whole week without eating industrial baked goods by stuffing a whole cake between your chest and back over the weekend.

Nor is there any point in celebrating that you didn’t smoke today by lighting a cigarette the next morning.

Bibliographic references:

  • Duhigg, Charles (2014). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
  • Graybie, A. M. and Smith, K. S. (2014). Psychobiology of habits. Research and Science, 455, 16-21.
  • Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. Potts, H. and Wardle, J. (2009) How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.