How to generate new healthy habits?

Health is not just the good condition of the human body; In many respects, it is also the behavior and lifestyle patterns that are behind this good condition. Therefore, to feel good physically and emotionally learning to adopt healthy habits is key.

However, starting from scratch to integrate these routines into your day-to-day life can be a challenge. Therefore, in this article we will give you some practical advice so that this project of go to the gym, start eating healthy, stop smoking addiction, better manage sleep hours, etc.

• Related article: "Psychological well-being: 15 habits to achieve it"

7 tips to know how to create new healthy habits

Keep these key ideas in mind if you are committed to adopting healthy habits and maintaining them in your long-term life.

1. Calibrate well the balance between your abilities and the ambition of your habit

If the routine that you consider transforming into a new habit seems too much like the one you already do every day or what you already know perfectly well that you can do, it is It may be possible that applying it to your day-to-day does not contribute anything, or even that you throw in the towel due to lack of motivation (since you will not be leaving your comfort).

On the other hand, if the goal you have set is too difficult and far exceeds your capabilities, you will probably get frustrated and you end up not only throwing in the towel, but also giving up making modifications to your plan so that it better fits your talents and knowledge.

Therefore, it is important that you try to find a balance between what you know how to do (or what you have already become used to doing) and what is a huge challenge. To get it, you can make a SWOT panel, that is, a table divided into four other squares in which you can write down in a brief and summarized way your Strengths, your Weaknesses, Threats and Opportunities in relation to the goal you set for yourself. Keeping this in mind, it will be easier to guess the level of difficulty that you will have to face.

Of course, do not get obsessed with making it perfect; if you come close to a realistic and reasonable notion of that tension between your abilities and your goal is enough. If you turn this first stage into (paradoxically) an almost impossible mission due to the degree of accuracy to which you aspire, you will not be able to move the card and go on to practice.

If your way of estimating what your healthy habit project will cost you turns out to be too unambitious or too complicated, you can always make corrections as you go., but at least you will already have a backbone of the difficulty curve that you had estimated to, from this, make the appropriate modifications.

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2. Segment your new habits into short-term goals

To enhance your capacity for self-motivation, it is important not to stay with the simple abstract idea of ​​the habit you want to embrace.: specify as much as possible. Remember that abstract goals are also goals with fuzzy limits, which can be modified "at your convenience" and place you in your comfort zone without realizing it.

To avoid this, make your objective be specified in a chain of specific sub-goals that provide you with sources of motivation in the very short term. That is to say, make sure that this new healthy routine is divided into goals for hours or days, so that you always have the next one on your radar.

This will not only help you motivate yourself (since you will know that in a very short time you can feel the satisfaction of having advanced towards your final goal); In addition, it will help you detect errors on the fly, and avoid procrastination.

• Related article: "The 3 types of procrastination, and tips to stop procrastinating"

3. Visualize your success

Visualization is a widely used technique in psychotherapy both as a self-motivation tool and to overcome fears and personal complexes.

To put it into practice, set aside several minutes to close your eyes and imagine in the most vivid way that you can that situation you aspire to reach.

• Related article: "Visualization: the power of imagination to overcome difficulties"

4. Schedule a series of reminders

Speaking of procrastination, it's important that you keep it at bay by setting various reminders and alarms.

Remember that the chances of you giving up on improving your life habits skyrocket if you are not able to foresee situations where there is a high risk that you will forget to do the corresponding task; Once you have started skipping exercises or actions that make up that routine, it is easy for the following ones to end in the same way as well.

So that, create a detailed schedule and post it in a place where you can see it often, and set multiple alarms every morning or night as a reminder for the next few hours.

5. Reserve moments to measure your progress and detect failures

Especially in the beginning, you need to pay close attention to how far you are moving from wishes to practice., so that if you are not managing to implement a routine as you would like, you can correct the situation in the first days.

If not, it may be that when you realize that you are not reaching your goals, you will become discouraged and completely give up transforming your habits.

6. Share your achievements with others

If your healthy habit has to do with exercising, it is usually positive to do it in the company of other people; the presence of people who accompany us in this process of physical and / or personal development is very motivating.

In addition, it is also good that you keep up-to-date with your friends and family about your progress. By doing this, you will help them to bring up that topic often, to congratulate you at key moments, and ultimately to motivate you and at the same time act as a reminder of your goals.

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7. Insure the first 21 days

It is estimated that the average adult takes around 21 days to integrate a new habit into their identity, that is, the way in which he conceives his "I", which is known as self-concept.

Therefore, when you are trying to adopt a new routine to your day to day, take into account this time reference to know at what moment that chain of actions to which you you want to get used to it, it will begin to be part of your daily life without you paying so much attention to it, since after that number of days, it will come out of you more automatically and spontaneous. Which means that the habit will go from being a project to a consolidated reality.

• Related article: "Self-concept: what is it and how is it formed?"

Meyo: an app that can help you

If you want to have help to adopt healthy habits as efficiently as possible, the Meyo app may interest you.

This application is intended as a kind of virtual "personal trainer" that helps you to internalize skills and routines necessary to lead a healthy lifestyle both physically and psychologically.

Among its multiple guidelines and exercises, it includes content to learn to meditate, enhance skills social activities, exercising consistently and avoiding injuries, improving emotional management skills, etc. Depending on what you are looking for and need, the app will adapt to you and will propose different tasks.

If you are interested, you can download it at this page if your smartphone has an Android system, or in This other if you have an iOS system.