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5 Powerful strategies on creating a New Habit

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There are tons of diets, exercise programs, productivity tools, personal finance strategies, and time management apps out there, and a lot of them are pretty great. The problem is that we fail to appreciate the crucial part our behavior plays in actually picking them up and using them. You can gather all the information in the world, but it won’t create any tangible results in your life unless you consistently take action on what you learn. Hence, the need to understand how to create a new habit.

 

  1. Start Ridiculously Small

You have a big goal in mind, so it makes sense to go after it with a big behavior change, newsflash; this approach may not necessarily work. So, what you want to do is start small, ridiculously small. When you are consistently showing up and doing what you plan to, you can start increasing the effort. For instance, start saving 500 naira weekly instead of 5000 naira at once.

 

  1. Get Yourself Hooked

When you have invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into something, it gets much harder to quit. You can get a big calendar, put it on a prominent wall in your house, and start putting a big, red X over each day you complete your habit. That is a brilliant way of creating a physical representation of your efforts. When you have done this for a while, you will find yourself pushing through even when it’s hard.

 

  1. Use a Trigger

One of the biggest mistake people make when committing to a new habit is having vague intentions. Studies have shown that if your goal is going to be effective, you need to have very clear intentions about it. You have to know exactly when and where you are going to do what. Implementation intentions and scheduling are two great strategies for clarifying that.

 

  1. Deliberately Shape Your Environment

Your environment plays a huge role in your behavior. So, if you want to create change in your behavior, you need to create change in your environment. For instance, if you want to read more books but find yourself consistently choosing to watch TV instead, place a great book next to your living room couch. Then put the TV remote in another room. By tweaking your environment like this, you can nudge yourself to choose the right habits by default.

 

  1. Surround Yourself With the Right People

The people around us also impact our behavior in a big way. If you are serious about creating big change in your life, you need to have the right people in your corner. If you want to be healthy but all your friends are unhealthy, it’s time to make some new friends. And if you want to go after big goals but you are surrounded with pessimists, it’s time to surround yourself with inspiring network of people.

 

When you set out to create a new habit, see it as an experiment. This mindset allows you to perceive setbacks as valuable data rather than failures. If a strategy isn’t working, tweak it until it does.

Do have any more tips to add to the list? Please drop a comment.

 

 

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