Habits: The Gateway to Success or Failure

What you are today is a direct result of your habits. If you have a healthy body, it is because of your healthy food habits and exercise. If you are obese, that too is the result of your carelessness in your choice of food and exercise.

When you are aware of the things that you need to change to build up a good habit, you find it hard to do because you are attempting to change the wrong thing.

To examine how habits make or break a person, let us see the three steps of habit formation.

Step 1: Reminder

 You are driving back home. On the way, you come across your favourite restaurant. The sight of the restaurant reminds you of all the delicious foods available there. This is the trigger that reminds you of all the mouth-watering food items offered by the restaurant.

Step 2: Routine

You just park the car to have the most loved food of yours. You enter the restaurant and order your favourite food and eat it. This is the actual action.

Step 3: Reward

The food now has satisfied your taste buds. Now it is so rewarding to the point that your brain gives you the signal to stop next time you run over this restaurant.

If you follow the same cycle for a few days, you just stop thinking about it. This will end up becoming a habit. Your car automatically stops before the restaurant and you make the habit of eating at this restaurant every day.

All the habits are formed based on the three steps process mentioned above. Your success relies on your capacity to overcome your bad habits and form new good habits.

Let us see how we can come out of bad habits

 Reverse the Results

Eating outside once in a while may give some joy and satisfaction. But if it becomes a habit, it is not good for your health and also for your pocket. You are enticed to go to the restaurant only if you pass by that way. If you can avoid that route and go by some other route, you can avoid eating there. Along with that, you can make your actions difficult by travelling in public transport where you cannot get down on the way, or with a colleague who doesn't prefer eating outside. This becomes a habit because it gives some pleasurable experience. To avoid that, you should make your reward non-pleasurable. This can be done by deeply understanding the negative effect on your health and finance by performing that particular action. You can apply a similar concept to other bad habits too.

Forming a New Habit

Find the Triggers

Let us say you want to start exercising. Since you are not accustomed to it, it is possible that you feel lazy to begin, or you get busy with other works. One of the easy approaches to start exercising is to anchor with your habits.

For instance, watching TV is your habit. Consider advertisement as a trigger to take ten push-ups. Every time you come across advertisements, take ten push-ups.

Ironing is a boring process for me. Therefore, I would iron my dresses whenever I am watching my favourite program. You can think of such ways to anchor your new habit with the existing habit.

Make a To-Do List

This is another effective method of sticking to your habits. Write all the things you want to do that will improve your productivity and gives you better results in the long run. Research proves that there is a high possibility of reaching the goals of those who write it than those who don’t. Writing a to-do list serves as a constant reminder for you to do your tasks. At the same time, this will also give a sense of fulfillment if you could complete even most of the items in the written list if not all.

 

Vote Yourself in Favour of a New Habit

 As you know well, in a democracy, to form a government, you don't need the highest percentage of votes. If the elected representatives belonging to one party are just half as the total number of representatives, they can form the government. If you want to exercise, the first day, even if you exercise for just five minutes, it implies you are voting in favour of exercise. You can increase the total time gradually. This routine will turn into a habit.

Identity Vrs Outcome

There are two ways to build up a habit. One is a result-based habit and another one is identity-based habits. If your focus is only on results, then you may lose your motivation too early because the result is not tangible in the short term. Instead of focusing on the result, focus on identity. Think of the person you want to be identified with. If you want to write a book, it is a long process. But if you want to be identified as a writer, you automatically start writing almost every day. The goal not should be, “I want to write a book”, it should be “I want to be a writer.” The goal should be, “I want to be a singer” instead of “ I want to sing 100 songs.” Focus on your personality than the outcome

Process Vrs Result

Any habit doesn't give you instant results either good or bad. By eating unhygienic food for one day may not affect your body. Likewise, eating hygienic food also doesn't have any positive effect on your body. You don’t become intelligent by reading a book for one or two days. You can’t excel in martial arts just by practicing for a few days. It is a long term process. Therefore, you should aim only at the process, not at the results. If the process is right, the result comes automatically. It takes 32 degrees Fahrenheit for the ice to melt. It never melts till the 31^st  point of Fahrenheit. Therefore, you should wait till your melting point of the result arrives.