15 Key Tips to Develop Good Habits That Work

When we talk about habits, one thing is quite clear that not all habits are good and vice versa. But those bad habits have the potential to significantly impact our lives in a negative way. On the other hand, various good habits have the potential to lead us towards a successful life, in the shorter and longer run.

Suppose a person loves to drink alcohol after work each day. When he does that continuously, it will become a bad habit that will definitely be hard to break. In addition, there is a high chance that consumption increases over time as well.

On the other hand, if a person has a daily habit of hitting the gym after work, then it is certainly a good habit because it not only makes the person fit but also keeps him away from stress which is extremely necessary to be productive at work.

In both cases, one of the main purposes is to get rid of that work stress, but one habit is beneficial and the other is harmful, regardless of their effectiveness in reducing stress.

So, the key question is how to develop a good habit and how to replace them with some bad ones?

To help you out with that, we have created all the tips that can help you build good habits and their impact will certainly help you replace them with the bad ones.

Most people have a mindset to achieve everything in a single day which ends up getting them nothing in the end. Instead of going for fixing everything in a small amount of time, it is better to make small, yet effective adjustments so that your mind can handle these gradual positive changes in a proper way.

For example, if you want to lose weight then the best way to do it is not by switching straight away to a healthy diet overnight because this can cause various health issues, when not done right.

The reason behind this is the fact that it takes a decent amount of amount of willpower, determination, interest, knowledge, and practice to develop a new habit and if you use all you try and do it all overnight, you are most likely to get tired of it. So, it’s better to start small.

Whenever you decide to develop any good habits in you, one of the key elements is to stay optimistic. Positive thinking not only helps you to overcome negative feelings but also enables you to deal with stress-related issues in an effective manner.

Positive thinking doesn’t mean ignoring all the things and continuing with your daily activities but it’s about reacting positively to all the unpleasant things.

If your thoughts are mostly negative about changing your habits, then it will be very difficult to adopt the new good change in your life. Whereas, if your thoughts are positive towards it, it becomes easy for your mind to accept it.

So, be positive and let go of the negative thoughts. You can do anything if you put your mind to it!

Well, it may sound easy to most but it is actually not as easy as it sounds. Commitment is not only a promise that you make with yourself to achieve something, but it’s also the dedication to give your time and energy to a specific job, enthusiastically.

If you stay committed to practice good habits, then the chances of success greatly increase. It’s not like you don’t face any obstacle and challenge. They will come and go but you will have to stay determined and manage all the challenges with a positive attitude. Keep your focus on your main goal which is to make that good habit a part of your life.

In order to develop a good habit, you must have a clear idea about all the triggers and obstacles. If you don’t do that, then you are likely to face failure.

When you start to form a good habit, there will certainly be many bad days but that doesn’t mean that you should come back to old bad habits to deal with them.

For example, if you want to quit alcohol but had a bad day at the office, that should not push you back to touching alcohol just to get over it. It can destroy all the efforts that you have put in so far to get rid of that bad habit. Instead of this, try to have a better way to alleviate stress like exercising, meditation, or something productive that helps you reduce stress and cheers you up.

Sometimes, it’s not the good habit that is a challenge to adopt but it is all the things that are attached to it that make it a hassle holding you back from practicing that good habit. Once you identify the things that hold you back, then it becomes easy to come up with a perfect solution to overcome these problems.

Let’s say, you want to work out because you know the benefits that it brings to your health, but the gym is quite far away from your home. In that situation, instead of making excuses about not being able to go to the gym, if you bring some basic exercise stuff to your home and start things off, then it would become easy to practice this habit.

It may also help you get the motivation to hit the gym in any case.

Image Credit: https://coffeegeek.tv/

When you work towards building a new habit, don’t expect to succeed in just a few days without any hassle. In fact, it is possible that you might have to face failure many times before successfully become habitual of that good habit.

If you feel guilty about your failure, then you might end up giving up on that good habit to be a part of your life. However, if you have a solid plan then you can quickly get back on track.

Remember that slipping up on a good habit is normal, not a failure. What makes the real difference between people who adopt good habits and those who give up is a good plan to deal with failure. So, make sure that you don’t start building a good habit without a plan.

Your friends and family have a lot to do with your change in Habits. If you let them know regarding which habit you want to build, then they will definitely offer you a supporting hand that can make things easier for you.

Put this way, let’s suppose you want to take sugar out of your life because you realize the influence it has on your belly fat. If you tell your friends and family about it, then they will try their best to keep you away from all the tempting food that increases your craving for sugar. It not only makes the process of adopting good habits easy but also boosts your confidence, thanks to their moral support which adds a lot in achieving your goal to develop a good habit.

Celebrating small wins brings you the motivation towards achieving something bigger. It not only helps you in minimizing the chances of slipping back into the old habit but also pushes you towards making a good habit part of your life.

When you reward yourself for making progress, you stimulate the reward circuit of your brain that gives you a sense of achievement and motivates you to do even better.

So, it’s a good practice to reward yourself after every successful step towards victory because it boosts your strength and power to make even the impossible happen.

You can never deny the significance of the environment in developing a good habit. Suppose you have decided to eat clean, but when you open the door of your fridge, you find all the junk food in it. How hard it will be for you to resist all that?

If you will not focus on changing your environment, then it can be a bit of a challenge to get rid of your bad habits and replace them with a better ones. So, better to make the right changes to your environment that are in concordance with your goals.

If you want to add a good habit in your life, then you must focus on doing it on a daily basis because once you do that regularly, then you will not only be able to practice that habit more, but it will become a part of your daily routine.

Charles Duhigg, a best-selling author, once said: “The key to victory is creating the right routines.”

Let’s try and understand it through an example. Suppose you want to quit smoking. The major reason why it is difficult for many is the fact that it is an intrinsic part of their daily routines. In order to cut this habit, you need to mold your daily routine and add something better, replacing this habit.

Journaling is commonly considered a good habit, because it does not only help you know about the wins and mistakes of your whole day, but it helps you improve your skills to convey your message.

Whenever you implement a good habit in your life, you are highly likely to achieve many victories towards the way along with some mistakes. If you create a journal and list all your wins and mistakes in separately, then you can easily look back at all the mistakes at a glance that was not in concordance with your strategy to develop a certain habit.

Next, it can help you minimize these mistakes, so you can remove hurdles in developing that good habit and you want to replace it with a bad habit.

Doing this not only helps you identify the roadblocks but also enables you to accelerate your progress in developing a good habit.

Before deciding to include a good habit to your life, you must be clear regarding why you want to adopt this habit, what importance it has in your life, how it helps you in achieving your goals.

If you don’t have clarity in mind, then you can easily become confused and stressed. That’s why you should develop clarity first to get your direction right and have a purpose.

When your intentions are clear regarding a habit in your mind, then you can sacrifice anything to develop that good habit because you are well-aware of the outcomes that it will bring to your life if done successfully.

If the good habit that you want to include in your life is quite harder and you said to yourself that it will be too tough for you, then the probability of having a bad outcome will be much higher. Instead of judging yourself, it’s better to motivate yourself with a can-do attitude to make it happen even if it is difficult for you.

The reason behind that is that when you work on the phenomenon of self-judgment, then you take responsibility for various mistakes on your shoulders which creates the feeling of guilt and shame. These feelings tend to have negative consequences.

That’s why it’s better to think towards a good habit with self-compassion instead of self-judgment so that you can give yourself some empathy and love, using which it gets easy to make a good habit a part of your life.

Forming a new habit is a time taking process. If you are expecting that when you start working on a good habit, then the next day or week it becomes easily adaptable to you, then you should stop dreaming because this is never going to happen.

The reason behind that is because habit formation is a long-term process for that you need to give enough time to your body and mind to get used to it. You need to be patient and continue doing it once it becomes a regular activity of your life, otherwise; you will not be able to build good habits.

So, you have decided to implement good habits, and you have a list of good habits to adopt. Now, if you have the mindset of working towards all the good habits together, then you need to prepare yourself to face failure in adopting most of them because that’s not the way it works.

Let’s say, you have decided to eat healthy food, and exercise at once. What happens with that is you quickly become exhausted from both of them because you are demanding too much from your body in a short amount of time.

The best approach to get both of them done successfully is to do them one by one. What you can do here is to prioritize the list of all the good habits that you want to adopt and work towards them one by one.

You might have heard from someone that it takes around 21 days to create a habit, but in reality, that’s not the case. To build a good habit, you need an excellent plan, motivation, and routine, otherwise; it is near to impossible in the real world.

When you repeat a habit for a long time, then it automatically becomes a habit. You don’t need to put a lot of extra effort to develop good habits in your life. It’s just the starting phase that needs a lot of attention.

So, invest some time working around these tips and start adding good habits in your life to make the most out of it.

More Posts