Nearly everything you do can be broken down into habits. Using habits themselves as the foundation, you can build various elements of your life through using the advantages and the benefits of these habits. In this presentation, we will discuss how habits create the foundation of your life and how to use these habits to achieve your goals.
What Are Habits?
More specifically, habits involve three parts: a cue, a routine, and a reward. The routine is the behavior that we typically think of when we think of a habit. The cue is the stimulus that causes said behavior, and the reward is the perceived benefit from that behavior.
Good Habits and Bad Habits
Habits come in all forms. Smoking is a habit; the way that you brush your teeth is also a habit. We typically break down all of these habits into good habits and bad habits.
Good habits are habits that have a positive routine and a positive perceived reward. For instance, eating a nutritious breakfast is positive behavior and the reward you receive from eating a nutritious breakfast is beneficial.
Bad habits are habits that have either a routine or reward with negative consequences. Smoking, for example, is a bad habit. Despite the perceived reward of relieving stress or promoting a relaxing feeling, the long-term consequences are not beneficial.
Building to Achieve Your Goals
You can build on this foundation to achieve your goals by first becoming aware of the habits that you currently engage in. Because we typically don’t notice this behavior ourselves, it can be helpful to bring in friends or family members to help you recognize different behaviors, or habits, that you have picked up.
For you personally, it can be helpful to keep a habit notebook. This notebook is where you write down habits that are pointed out to you, or habits that you yourself notice. You may even get into a habit of using this notebook to record other habits you have.
Once you begin to become aware of your habits, it will be easier to introduce new habits to achieve your goals.
Begin writing down some goals that you have and some ways that you could achieve them. Maybe start with little things that you could add into your everyday life like drinking a certain amount of water every day or getting up and doing some exercise in the morning.
With these activities, you will want to substitute them in place of already formed bad habits or just habits that you want to change. For instance, say you always spend 20 minutes in the morning on social media and you think that going for a run would be a better use of your time. Change that habit.
You can build better habits to achieve your goals! It will take time because some habits are so ingrained in our daily life, but you can do it. When you put in the work you will see the rewards.