HABITS -HOW THEY MAKE AND BREAK US
(HABITS) HOW THEY MAKE AND BREAK US
What are habits and how are they formed?
Habits form when new behaviors become automatic and are enacted with minimum conscious awareness. That’s because “the behavioral patterns we repeat more often are etched into our neural pathways”.
How do habits affect our lives?
Habit provides us with its structure.” by and large, the structure is important since it gives us a sense of rhythm in our lives. We don’t do well with a lot of uncertainty and like to feel in control.
Why are habits so important?
Habits are essential to our health. They can make or break our chances of achieving and maintaining our lifestyle goals such as sticking to an eating plan, exercising regularly, managing diabetes/other medical conditions, increasing quality of life, and promoting longevity.
Why do good habits make us successful?
Harnessing the power of habits is a great way to pursue success. Committing to habits allows you to free up your brain capacity to make better decisions, do your best work when you are in a prime mental state, and stay on track even when things are difficult.
How do habits make you or break you?
Habits can make you or break you. Take it, train it, be firm with it and the habit will put the world at your feet. Be casual with it, and it can destroy you. Habits of action and thinking play an important role in shaping your personality and consequently heavily influence your time management. Practice bad habits and you will feed your vices. Your will gets weaker. Practice good habits and you will feed your virtues. Your will gets stronger.
How to break bad habits and create a good ones?
1. Stress and boredom
Most of the time, bad habits are simply a way of dealing with stress and boredom. Everything from biting your nails to overspending on a shopping spray to drinking every weekend to wasting time on the internet can be a simple response to stress and boredom. But it doesn’t have to remain the same always. You can teach yourself new and healthy ways to deal with it.
2. Choose a substitute for your bad habit
You will need to have a plan ahead of time for how you will respond when you face the stress or boredom that prompts your bad habit. For example, when you get the urge to do something you can do breathing exercises instead.
3. Cut out as many triggers as possible
Your environment makes your bad habits easier and good habits harder. Change your environment and you can change the outcome.
4. Join forces with somebody
How much do you try to diet in private? Or maybe you quit smoking but kept it to yourself. Instead, pair up with someone. The two of you can hold each other accountable and celebrate your victories together. Knowing that someone else expects you to be better is a powerful motivator.
5. Surround yourself with people who follow good habits.
You don’t need to ditch your old friends, but don’t underestimate the power of finding new ones.
6. Visualize yourself succeeding.
See yourself doing away with your old habits and adopting good ones. See yourself building a new identity.
It is necessary to cultivate good habits and avoid bad ones. There is a saying that habits are at first cobwebs but afterward cables. This shows that habits might be broken at first, but once they are difficult to break. Hence, we should try to acquire only good habits. Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words they become your actions; watch your actions they become your habits, watch your habits they become your character; watch your character it becomes your destiny.
The secret to adopting a new habit is to go small at first and slowly work your way up.
