How to create a habit: 5 steps to achieve it

Everybody has dreams that they wish would one day come true. Learning a new language, being in shape, 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 performed every day, automatically and effortlessly. If they form habits that are related to what they want to achieve, the process that will bring us closer to our dream becomes easier and easier, flowing by itself.

However, habits are not something that happens overnight. To do this, it is necessary to be focused on their achievement, dedicating both physical and mental effort.

• It may interest you: "Toxic habits: 10 behaviors that consume your energy"

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

The habit and its aspects to take into account

As we were already commenting, habits are behaviors that are done automatically every day.

When an action has become an everyday thing, which is done every day, it becomes a habit and is done almost without thinking. This type of pattern, once established, implies a lower consumption of energy, both physically and mentally.

However, habits only become present in people's daily lives after having overcome a process in which they have been integrated into everyday life. Trying to make something new become our daily bread is something that certainly involves a greater concentration, being aware of what to do and how it is done, in addition to not losing the objective for makes.

It is very comfortable to fantasize about the idea of ​​achieving a long-awaited dream. What is not so comfortable is having to get excited every day to the activities that are related to the goal you want to achieve, whether they require mental or physical resources.

It must be taken into account that the process of habit formation is not something concrete and fixed, that is, it is not all habits settle with the same ease nor do they take the same time to become something daily. This process can vary depending on 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 incorporate

In addition, the speed with which the habit settles 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 walk for half an hour each day than to lift weights for, also, half an hour daily. The physical and mental effort is much greater in the second case and the desire to do so may be less.

The claim that getting a habit into people's daily lives only takes about 21 days, or what is the same, 3 weeks, has become quite famous. This statement, in addition to being very risky, has been clearly false for those habits that are more complex.

Several investigations have tried to see how long it takes to acquire a habit, obtaining very varied results, depending on the difficulty of what was wanted to achieve. Research indicates that some habits can take very little to be acquired, just 18 days, while others, on the other hand, take almost a year to become something everyday. It has also been seen that missing one or two days does not have a negative impact on the acquisition of the habit, but missing more than two.

How to create a habit: steps to follow

However, once the habit has been introduced into the person's day-to-day life, the physical and intellectual effort that was necessary to invest 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, who covers a lot, little squeezes.

The ideal is to try to introduce only one habit at the beginning, at most two, and hope to achieve it after a while.

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

It is very important that the habits to follow are defined in a very concrete way. It is not the same to say that you are going to walk for half an hour every day after eating than to tell yourself that you are going to walk.

In the second case, it is more likely fall into self-deception, telling himself that by moving around the house he already counts how to walk or, since he has already done the errands he had to do, it could be said that he has exercised.

2. Define a plan and stop making excuses

Whenever you try to introduce a new habit in life, the constant fight against laziness and the return to the previous routine arises.

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

The worst enemy to getting a dream is not obligations or lack of time. The worst enemy is yourself.

To put an end to these excuses, the best thing to do is to identify them and prepare in advance everything to avoid them.

Are there other obligations to do? Well, it's time to do them before. We don't have the necessary material? Surely there is something at home or, if not, it is bought and ready.

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

3. Schedule reminders

It does not make much sense to become aware that a new habit is going to be followed if after, in practice, you forget that it had to be done.

Thanks to technological advancement, mobile phones, in addition to being those devices to watch videos of kittens, have multiple functions, including being able to program personalized alarms, with a text message that reminds you what to do and when.

In addition, another option, a little more analogical, is to leave notes in strategic places in the house, such as the mirror of the bathroom, refrigerator door, or TV screen where the things to be written are listed make.

Following this strategy, the excuse that you have forgotten what you had to do is no longer valid.

4. Monitor progress

Every so often, it is convenient to see how progress is taking place.

It is very important to check if progress has been made, and the best way to see it is by writing down in a notebook or on your mobile the days in which the habit to be carried out has and has not been fulfilled.

If it has been the case that there has been a day in which what had to be done has not been done, it is very important to point out the reason for it.

In this way, you will not only know how often you are doing the habit and to what degree you are achieving the objective, it will also be possible to detect possible obstacles that have arisen during the process.

5. Celebrate what has been achieved

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

Even if you have failed the odd day, it is possible to celebrate what you have achieved at the end of the week or the month, allowing yourself some respite or whim.

However, the rewards must be consistent and, also, they must be something very punctual.

It would not make much sense to celebrate having gone a whole week without eating industrial pastries by stuffing a whole cake between the chest and back on the weekend.

Nor does it make sense to celebrate that you have not smoked 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: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40 (6), 998-1009.