How to keep habits 101

Hello hello,

Welcome to another article. The other day I went to this workshop about habits, how to organize them and how to keep them. It was a great workshop and it totally opened my eyes to a different view of how to make habits. So, I decided that I would bring that tips to all of you.

---

Why we need habits ?

We spend a great deal of our lives listening to doctors, parents, teachers, etc, that having and keeping habits it’s important and needed. But, why? Why do we need to have habits? Can’t we just wake up some days and decide that in that day we are going to exercise, or write another chapter of that book that we started 2 years ago?

Because habits lead to results, habits make us have some routine in our lives that lead us to have results. Good habits lead to good results and bad habits lead to bad results.

How do habits work?

There is this simple 4 phase cicle that explains how habits work. We are going to use this example, you want to run a marathon. First, you are stimulated, maybe you saw someone running a marathon or a friend told you about their experience in a marathon, that stimulated you and is going to lead to a desire, you want to have that experience so you start answering to that desire. You buy some running shoes or start walking on a treadmill, for exemple. After all that answering you have a reward, running the marathon that you wanted. In summary, the goal of keeping and having a habit is to get to the final phase, the reward.

If we want a reward, why do we keep bad habits?

The tricky thing about our brain is that he likes rewards, it gives us the happy hormones. And we like the rewards fast.

The difference between a good habit and a bad habit is:

Good habits make time an ally, bad habits make time an enemy

We are gonna use another example, you dear reader, smoke. Smoking it’s a habit, it’s something you do every day and more than once. So, when you smoke you receive your reward right away, you stop feeling frustrated or nervous. But, a good habit like exercising, is gonna take some time until you see results. So whats easier? Having your reward right away or after some time?

The other tricky thing?

With good habits you receive your reward after but pay right away, with bad habits you receive your reward right away but pay the price after.

So, while with exercising (good habit) you pay with pain and tiredness and it takes some time to see results, with smoking (bad habit) you feel good and less stressed but then after some years you are going to have a harder time breathing.

The power of 1%

You know something dear reader, there isn’t a single person on this earth that made a rule about mastering something in our first time. What I’m trying to say is, if you want to do 10 push-ups and you never did a push-up in your life, you’re going to most likely fail and stop trying. This happens with habits too. That’s why you can start by doing only 1% of the habit that you want to accomplish. To make this easier to understand.

You want to read everyday so; you buy a book; you sit in your sofa; start reading, you read a good ten pages and go do your other thing you need to do. The next day you don’t read, the day after that one you feel that you failed, because you promised yourself that you wold read everyday and failed already. You aren’t used to reading everyday, especially ten pages!

Read one page everyday. That’s it. Do only 1% of that task every day. If you read a page everyday in, what? 3 months you will finish the book. And it can be something even smaller. Like, buying the book, holding it. Let’s use the marathon example again. Your 1% can be putting on the running shoes one day, the next day you walk to the door, the next one you open the door and walk to the street. The power of 1% people, it’s amazing.

5 Things you can do to have good habits and erase the bad ones

1- Change your identity

Calm down. You don’t need to go undercover mode. Changing your identity can happen with changing the way you think. Like, start using I am instead of I want.

So, instead of saying "I want to stop drinking soda", you say "I don’t drink soda".

2- Staying in the same spot = pain, changing = pleasure

You need to exaggerate in this one. Everytime you do a bad habit start thinking about every thing that can go wrong. Like, you always snooze your alarm and because of that you don’t get to places in time. Exaggerate. If you keep snoozing your alarm you’re going to sleep and lose an important meeting, and while trying to get ready after waking up late you are going to fall and break your foot, because you are in a hurry.

3- Make every habit small, easy and nice

The two minute rule. start with things are going to take only two minutes, you don’t need to start big.

4- Make the habit good to accomplish

Make it double reward. If you run the marathon you can buy that shirt you really wanted, or a better pair of running shoes.

5- Look out for the environment

You know when you are in school and the people that sit in the back are the ones that talk a lot and don’t pay attention? So, if you sit there and try to listen to the teacher and take notes it’s going to be hard. Because you are in the middle of people that aren’t going to help you get to your goal.

How to keep them

I have four tips for you. Because starting is easy, but keeping is the hardest.

1- Write it down.

Make notes of the days you did that habit, it’s okay if you jumped some days.

2- Don’t use motivation to keep you motivated

There are days we wake up with zero motivation. That’s why we keep an eye on the goal, and not on the motivation.

3- Delete distractions

You want to read but then you go on your phone ? Put the phone on a drawer.

4- Get happy for the small vitories

Feel proud because you read one page, hell, because you have read one paragraph.

---

And that’s all folks. I hope this helps you as much has it helped me. Are you someone that keeps habits with ease? Or you always start and never finish them? Let me know.

See you soon,

JP