How to Choose Your First Habit
Deciding on new habits to form in your life is all about what you can achieve, and what you want the end result to be. When choosing a good habit to start with, choose something you can do today, right now.
It can be making the bed, flossing twice a day, making your own breakfast instead of picking up donuts on the way to work. These are very simple habits, but ones that ultimately will do wonders for you.
Start with One Small Habit
When you create new habits, there are two important things to remember:
- You should start with just one habit at a time.
- You want to start small.
You may have a vision of these complex and intricate lifestyle habits you want to develop one day, which is great! But it is difficult to keep up with more difficult and elaborate habits when you haven’t started with the simple ones.
It is like running a mile versus running a marathon. If you can’t run a mile, how can you run a marathon? Start with the mile first, or in this case, the small and simple habit.
Water is a simple and important habit. Many of my clients come to me dehydrated. We assess where they are at, they should be, and establish a plan to get to the goal by a certain date they feel comfortable with. Increasing all at once is rarely the solution.
Learning New Habits
You will come to a point when you want to develop other healthy habits, which is great news. Just make sure your previous new habits have become, well, habitual! These should be things you do every day, without really having to think about it.
As a good place to start, try to do each habit for at least 30 days before moving on to the next one.
Is Your Habit Not Working?
Don’t feel like you have to stick to a new habit forever if it isn’t working for you.
Just remember WHY you want to change or stop it.
It shouldn’t be because it’s too hard or you just don’t want to do it anymore, but because you don’t feel it is benefiting you like another habit in its place would.
This is what you need to remember.
Btw, here is where your values play a big role. The process becomes easier when you are able to align your habits with goals and ultimately with your values.
