5 Rules of Successful Habit Formation

You have decided that you want to change your life. You've got a goal in mind. What can you do to ensure that you achieve success? You know that you will need to adopt certain success habits. The following rules will help you ensure successful habit formation.

Plan

 

Success habits don't just happen by accident. They are created by design. Creating a plan will increase the chances of your successfully creating a new habit. Think of the plan like a roadmap. Include your starting point, the final goal and all the steps along the way. Don't forget to note down potential stumbling blocks and how you will overcome them.

 

Many people include a vision board in their planning. This is a great way to see what your goal looks like and when placed somewhere that you will see it regularly can reinforce the goal you want to achieve.

Focus

 

You must be committed to your goal of creating a new habit. If you are not committed, then the chances of succeeding in attaining it reduce dramatically. It is important to believe that you will create your new habit and to be able to see yourself doing it.

 

Write down a positive statement that affirms you have created your new habit.

 

For example, if you want to create the success habit of waking early then you could write, 'I wake at 5.00 am every day refreshed and ready to start my day. I use my extra time to run for 20 minutes and to eat a healthy breakfast. I spend 30 minutes reading a motivational book because I know that it helps me improve my knowledge and will inspire me. Before I start my work, I make sure that I plan my day and make sure that I know which tasks are important for helping me to achieve my goal.'

Know Yourself

 

Self-knowledge is crucial to creating new habits, as well as eliminating old ones.

 

You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. It is important to know where you are right now, where you want to be and what needs to change.

 

By knowing yourself you can create a growth mind-set. This ensures that you understand that action is important as by taking action you create change which leads to success.

Practice

 

Habits take 21 days to become routine. This means that you need to ensure that you build time into every day to practice your new habit.

 

To ensure that you complete the full 21 days you need to plan and you need to identify any potential stumbling points that may cause you to want to skip a day. Knowing what might interfere in your daily habit practice ensures that you can put in place plans to overcome it.

 

Positive mind-set is key as is commitment. If you are committed to creating the new success habit and understand why it is important to your overall plans and goals then you will be more able to overcome stumbling points and ensure that you practice your new habit every day until it becomes a routine part of your daily life.

Reward

 

When you set out to create a new success habit you have your plan for how you are going to achieve it and what your life will look like once that happens. Don't forget to build in a reward. Make it something that you really want and value. It doesn't have to be big but it does have to be important to you. By planning a reward when you have created your new habit you will be more emotionally invested in creating the habit.

 

Write down your reward or get a picture of it and put it somewhere where you will see it every day. This will reinforce the desire to succeed and strengthen your motivation to achieve your goal.

 

By using the five rules above you will be creating a positive mental attitude towards creating a new success habit. Don't try to create too many new habits at once. It is simpler and more realistic to create one new habit at a time.

 

How to Achieve Your Habit Goals More Easily

You’ve made a goal. You’re finally going to address that habit. You know the one. You’ve been talking about doing this for a long time now, and you feel good because now you have a deadline. You’ve got this handled.

 

Or do you?

 

Whether you’re trying to break an old habit or instill a new one, the thought has always been that if you make a positive decision toward change, that’s already half the battle. But more often than not, these lofty goals fall by the wayside in fairly short order. Why?

 

The problem with goal-setting is that we’re focusing on the wrong goal. We say we want to lose 25 pounds by swimsuit season or to stop smoking by Christmas. But without a plan in place to make that happen, nothing is going to happen, even if you have what seems like a reasonable timeline in place.

 

What you forgot was how to make a plan, a roadmap for getting there.

 

So, what can you do?

 

1. Break down the task into small goals. If you want to lose those 25 pounds, then how are you going to do it? Maybe you want to exercise more and watch your diet. So make a goal for each week instead. For this particular goal that might mean changing out a meal for a protein shake every day and going to the gym three times a week. Whatever your goal, figure out the steps you need to get there.

 

2. Put those tasks on a schedule. Now that you know what the pieces are, how are you going to make them fall into place? So if you’re planning on going to the gym three times a week, then put that on your calendar. Or create a meal plan and post it somewhere you’re going to see it.

 

3. Track your Progress. Change is slow, so having a visual cue will help you see that in fact, you are making positive strides toward your goal. Remember those sticker charts we had as children? They work on adults too. Or mark on your calendar so you can see at a glance when you’re making progress.

 

4. Don’t worry about the end date. Maybe progress might not be as fast as you’d like. The fact that you’re making progress means you’re heading in the right direction. Keep going! 

 

You can change habits with time and effort. In this case though? It’s more about the journey more than the destination. Make a solid plan and whatever your goal, you’ll get there!

 

Are Success Habits Right for You?

You have probably seen lots of articles about the habits of the highly successful or wealthiest people. It may be that you've read them and wondered if any or all of those habits would be right for you. Would you achieve success if you followed them?

 

The good news is that the success habits of these people are habits that anyone can adopt in their own lives to achieve the success that they desire. After all many of these highly successful people started out from places similar to where you are. They just took action to change their minds and their lives.

 

If you are completely happy with every aspect of your personal and professional lives, then you will probably not want to make any changes. However, it may be that if you look at yourself really closely that you will find something that you want to improve. 

 

Ask yourself the following questions. Be totally honest with yourself in your answers.

 

• Is your life fulfilling? 

• Do you feel happy and contented?

• Do you live comfortably with enough to save for retirement and unexpected emergencies? 

• Are you really happy in your job or is there something else that you really want to do to earn your living?

• Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years or even 20 years?

• Is that where you want to be?

 

If you answered 'No' to any or all of the questions above, then you are ready to change your mind and your life by developing success habits.

 

By deciding to take the initiative and develop new habits dedicated to success and change you will be able to create the life and future you want.

 

What are the success habits that you could develop?

 

Prioritization: knowing what tasks are important and doing those first. Keeping lists can help you prioritize.

 

Goal setting: identifying goals and knowing what to do to achieve them.

 

Waking early: getting up even half an hour earlier each day can help you create a more effective routine and start to your day. Many of the most successful people get up 2-3 hours before starting work each day.

 

Visualization: being able to visualize what you want and what you and your life will look like when you achieve it is a powerful habit for developing success.

 

Exercise and diet: eating healthily and developing an exercise regime is another key habit for success. The mind and body are inter-connected.

 

Self-knowledge: knowing yourself really well is an essential habit for success. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is important. Eric Thomas, the Hip Hop Preacher, said, “Ask the real you to stand up.” By knowing yourself you can then identify the future you really wish to create.

 

Networking: meeting people who are successful in the area you wish to develop success in can help you gain knowledge, tips and insight. You will also create friendships, partnerships and surround yourself with positive role models.

 

Success habits are not exclusive to the rich and famous. They are valuable habits that can enrich your life regardless of age, gender or ethnicity. If you want a happy and fulfilling personal and professional life then you need to start cultivating these habits today.

 

Building Habits Slowly is the Foundation for Success

When I worked in New York City, I found myself getting into some bad habits. I took the train to work and got off at the station that was closest to my office. I had a checkup and my doctor was not very happy with my numbers. I needed to change my ways. She said I needed to get more exercise and eat better.

 

I did some research on diets and found that adding more fiber to my diet was a great way to be fuller and hence eat less. I started eating oatmeal frequently for breakfast and increased my intake of fruits and vegetables. I didn’t give up sweets altogether but scaled back on them significantly. But I didn’t do this all at once. I incorporated these diet changes over several weeks.

 

As for my exercise, I decided to start walking. Even here, I started out slowly. For about a week or two, I decided to get off at the train station that was a couple blocks away from where I worked (both to and from work). As I got used to the pace, I started taking the train station two stops away from my work. Since this took longer to walk, I had to increase my pace a bit in order to make sure I wasn’t late for work.

 

I continued this process of choosing train stops further away from my office until I was walking about three miles per day. I was also power walking because of the distance. Because I built this up slowly, it became a natural part of my routine and I found myself eager to walk.

 

In my next checkup, the doctor was amazed at my results and told me to keep doing what I was doing. My results weren’t just an improvement. She told me the results of my checkup were fantastic.

 

The point is not necessarily to go to work in New York City (unless you want to). It’s that I was able to build up good habits by doing so in a slow and steady manner. Had I tried to walk three miles in that first week, I don’t believe I would have been successful. By making small changes over the course of several months, it became a part of my life and something that I enjoyed doing.

 

Of course, during the times when there was bad weather, I did scale back my walking on those days. But it just made me more willing to get back to it the next day.

Contributed Article

 

Easily Make Exercising Daily a Habit

We all know we’re supposed to stay active, but how many of us have struggled with making exercise a daily habit? 

 

When we exercise throughout the week, we build our bodies, keeping our energy levels high, which makes for added productivity. But exercise is also good for us in other ways. Exercise helps you to sleep better and keeps you generally healthier as you age. Exercise not only keeps your body in top form but leads to better moods and overall mental health.

 

So how do you make exercise a daily habit? Follow these step-by-step instructions, and you’ll be on the road to building this healthy habit in no time!

 

1. Set time aside in your schedule. Being deliberate about when you exercise means that it’s more likely to happen, even when life is busy. Also, it trains your body that it’s time to move at a specific time each day. Before long, you’ll find yourself craving movement and the many benefits it offers.

 

2. Use your smartphone. Set a reminder on your phone for when it’s time to exercise, so you don’t forget.

 

3. Prepare yourself. Lay out your exercise clothes and gear the night before so you can’t use the excuse that you don’t have time to find everything. Keep your exercise bag right near the door and ready to go.

 

4. Just leave when ready. Is it time to go? Don’t overthink it. Just go whether you feel like it or not. Your body will click into gear once you get started. 

 

5. Take baby steps. By starting small, you won’t overwhelm yourself, or worse, do damage to a body not ready for a heavy workout. You can always increase your time/reps later when you become fitter.

 

6. Keep it fun and interesting. Noting screams boredom more than the same routine day after day. Mix up what you’re doing – run a new route or try a new exercise machine at the gym. Adding new types of exercise also makes sure you are working all your different muscles too.

 

7. Take a break – occasionally. As you build your new healthy habit, you don’t want to skip days. Consistency is key. However, it’s good to have the occasional lighter exercise day when you’ve recently upped your game or when you are especially tired or sick. 

 

Once you make exercise a daily habit, you’ll come to look forward to it. You won’t even think about it; you’lljust do it. With so much benefit, it’s obvious that keeping a daily exercise habit is essential to a happier and healthier you!

 

Develop the Growth Mindset Habit

When deciding what new habit to pursue, it’s easy to look at all the things we shouldn’t do as a place to begin. We want to stop smoking or stress eating. We want to learn how to say ‘no’ or to quit spending so much time on social media.

 

Have you ever considered the flipside of all that by building a habit that’s positive? What if the habit you formed was one of growth and personal development?

 

Having a growth mindset positively impacts your life in multiple ways, so it’s a great healthy habit to build into your life. What are the benefits of developing a growth mindset?

 

1. You keep learning. Learning is important as you not only discover new ways to do things, but by making a practice of constantly learning, you develop new ways of thinking, and new ideas. Learning connects you with more of the world and helps you see things with a deeper significance than you ever thought possible. But more than that, people who stop learning very quickly stagnate. Studies have shown that the practice of learning new things when you are older helps ward off problems related to dementia. In short, learning is good for your brain!

 

2. You learn perseverance. As we learn new things, we adapt and change how we think. That gives us the ability to see other solutions to problems that would have frustrated us in the past. By challenging yourself to grow, you learn how to push through obstacles and find new paths.

 

3. You learn how to embrace challenges. Growth can be challenging. But by pushing yourself to grow, that means you’re also pushing yourself to look at challenges differently. An obstacle now becomes an opportunity to learn something new and to do things in a way you haven’t before. 

 

4. You learn how to embrace failure. When you’re interested in growing as an individual, you start to see failure differently. Everything becomes a potential lesson in a way that you didn’t think would work. 

 

5. You become more open to criticism. By being willing to grow, you start to see that the input of other people has significance. You see their words not so much as something negative, but something you can use to develop as a person and learn something about yourself. You might not always like the lesson, but that’s part of growing too.

 

By embracing personal growth, you find the best version of yourself. You’re able to become more than you ever thought possible, and then you turn that around by finding out that you can become more still. You’ll find that the furthest edges of yourself are far beyond what you thought you ever could be. 

 

7 Small Habits that Will Change Your Life

It’s hard to imagine sometimes that small things can have such a deep impact. But if you’ve ever doubted the impact of tiny actions then think about how erosion created the Grand Canyon. Over time, something as small as sand, water, and rock have created one of the most awesome of nature’s miracles.

 

So too will small habits affect your life in such a way as to create lasting and significant change. Read on and find some habits you can start immediately implementing that will begin reshaping you into the person that you’ve always been meant to be. 

 

1. Get up on time. Starting the day with multiple hits of the snooze alarm sets a bad tone for the rest of the day. You obviously set the alarm with the intention of rising at that hour – why are you breaking that promise to yourself? By getting up on time, you’re putting a positive start on the day. Shouldn’t you give yourself the best odds of a good day as possible? 

 

2. Eat healthily at every meal. It’s hard to feel energized when you’re slogging along on a diet filled with fats and sugars. When you put more healthy choices onto your plate, you will feel better. Your mind will be sharper, and you'll be better energized to get through the day. Start small. Add a salad to your meal. Or replace dessert with that piece of fruit instead.

 

3. Exercise. Before you get caught up on thinking you need a lot of fancy equipment or huge time investment to feel good, think again. Start small. Try taking the stairs at work instead of the elevator.

 

4. Read more. Dedicating a half hour of every day to your mind means that you’re constantly sharpening your saw and exposing yourself to new ideas. Pick books that inspire you or encourage you to think.

 

5. Realize you’re an ‘idea’ person. Make a goal of writing down a few ideas every day. Some researchers suggest ten but even one new idea a day means that you’ve got source material to draw from when you’re looking for something with which to challenge yourself.

 

6. Become more mindful. Meditate. Even starting small has the positive impact of reducing stress, lowering your heart rate, and bringing a mind that’s running in a million directions at once back on track. 

 

7. Think about your day. When you finish the day, reflect on your accomplishments. Focus on the things you’re proud of, on the things that made you smile.

 

None of these items should take very long – even 15 or 30 minutes a day on some of these is enough to create lasting change. What you’re going to find out very quickly is that by practicing these habits you’ll not only feel better, you’ll like the person that you’re becoming. That is building ‘you’ at your best. If a small change can do all that, then isn’t it time you got started?

 

Setting Up Your Environment for Better Habits

When you are trying to develop good habits, the environment you have set up for yourself can make or break whether you succeed. You want to give yourself the biggest chance of success. It can really help when your surroundings are at their optimal settings.

 

Keep your environment clutter free. There is nothing worse than trying to focus on good habit development than having to fight through a wall of clutter. If you are looking to be more productive, for instance, it won’t help if you are spending a good portion of your day looking for where you put things. Clutter has a negative psychological effect on people. It limits your space.

 

It’s not just physical clutter that’s a problem. Virtual clutter can be just as problematic. If you are spending lots of time wading through emails or searching your disk for files that you saved weeks ago, this is just as limiting as sifting through papers on your desk. There is even such a thing as phone clutter where people spend too much time talking on the phone.

 

Organization is going to be a big help in reeling in clutter. Come up with a good system for both the physical and the virtual assets. There are plenty of books and seminars that exist to help you get a handle on the clutter problem. You can look at solving your clutter problem as developing a new habit.

 

Another important aspect of your environment is mental. If you are stressed out, this is going to take away from your ability to develop good habits. You’ll focus on what is stressing you out and it will become your central target. Without taking the proper measures to reduce that stress, it will be difficult to make any progress with your habit development.

 

There are several ways to reduce stress. The first is to take steps to resolve any situations that you have control over which are causing you to be stressed. If your bills are getting out of hand, try taking on some extra work to make that more manageable. For stress that is caused that is not within your control, consider such activities as exercise and meditation. While these won’t take away those stressful situations, it will make them much easier to manage them. Both of these activities have been proven to help your mind and body reduce the effects caused by stress.

 

8 Steps to Success with Small Habits

What if I told you that you could succeed with small habits?

 

After trying and failing so many times to create the new, more positive habits you crave, is it any wonder that by now you’re probably a little gun-shy about the process? But the truth is, most attempts at forming new habits fail, simply because you’ve tried to bite off more than you can chew. Using small habits instead, you approach your life in a new way, by taking charge in tiny bite-size chunks. Meaning that not only is change possible but so is the ability to become that person you always knew you could be. 

 

How do you create a small habit successfully?

 

1. Don’t try to change the world overnight. Start with just one new habit and then go from there.

 

2. Make a commitment. Not every habit is created equal, and some take longer to embed in your mind than others. But, one thing is true. The longer you perform the same activity day after day, the more success you will have in creating that habit. Decide right now that you’re going to give this new habit at least 3 – 4 weeks to give it a proper start.

 

3. Link the habit to something that already works. If you have a successful habit already in place, ask yourself what small thing you can attach to that habit. For example, you might already be brushing your teeth every day. How hard would it be to add flossing to that routine?

 

4. Keep it small. Knowing that most habit formation fails because you’re trying to do too much too soon, then make a point to keep the changes very small. Mini-habits have a much higher rate of success than trying to create a great big change.

 

5. Have a disaster plan in place. Knowing that things are going to go wrong from the start helps you to be ready when they do. Can’t jog today because it’s raining? That’s ok, you’ve got an entirely different workout in place as a Plan B.

 

6. Grab a friend. The only way to keep on track, especially when building habits, is to use your network. Have an accountability partner or use social media to keep you honest.

 

7. Reward yourself. Celebrate every little milestone with a reward, something that makes sense and will encourage you to keep going when you’re flagging.

 

8. Redefine yourself. Accept that this is the new you. The habits you’re building are going to change who you are – hopefully for the better. Embrace the new identity.

 

By following these steps, you not only will succeed when applying small habits to your life but over time you’ll see some amazing growth and development as a person. That’s pretty exciting, especially when you consider how little you had to do to get there.