According to a study, people who make New Year's resolutions, by the end of the year only 9% feel they are successful in keeping them. In another study, participants who failed their new year’s resolutions said they had unrealistic goals. Others said they didn’t keep track of their progress, and others said they forgot about their resolutions.
However, in order to build new habits, consistency is needed. New habits won’t form, from one day to the next. Research shows that it takes 21 consecutive days to form a new habit and about 90 consecutive days (3 months) to turn that new habit into a lifestyle. So when we think about setting new lifestyle goals for a new year or for a new season in life, we are aiming to put certain behaviors on autopilot, where you don’t rely on someone else to remind you or to motivate you. It becomes a part of who you are. But the key is that you must have a reason why you are making these lifestyle changes. You have to ask yourself why you want to do this?
THE HABIT LOOP
The process of building a habit can be divided into four simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. This is known as the habit loop. These 4 stages are continually scanning the environment, predicting what will happen next, trying out different responses and learning from the results. If you think about it, these 4 stages of the habit loop - cue, craving, response, and reward, really influence nearly everything we do each day.
There are 4 laws of behavioral change that can be applied into the habit loop:
You need to make the cue obvious
You need to make it attractive enough to crave it
You need to make it easy
You need to make the reward satisfying
So keep these 4 laws of behavioral change in mind when creating new habits. Remember to make sure that the habit cue is obvious, the craving is attractive, the response is easy, and the reward is satisfying.
7 HABITS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE HAVE IN COMMON
If you’re thinking of creating new habits in this next year or next season in life, here are 7 Habits that successful people have in common:
They Wake Up Early
They Read a lot
They Reflect/Journal at least 15-30 min daily
They make exercise and focused meditation a priority
They keep the early mornings for their toughest projects
They stay organized & plan their day the night before
They keep their goals & priorities always in front of them
Remember to listen to your body and keep a balance. It’s not about being perfect but about building self-awareness & doing what works best for you, so that you can live more intentionally and become the person God is calling you to be.
HABIT TRACKER
With this post, I want to challenge you to take a moment to write down what good habits you want to build. I have included a weekly downloadable tracker example for you to use as a template to help track your habits along with examples of what kind of rewards you can gain from them.
