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How To Make Your New Habits Last
Small steps lead to big changes
Habits define our lives. Without realising it, we all have numerous little habits that we practice from day-to-day.
It could be going on your mobile phone first thing in the morning when you wake up.
It could be chewing your fingernails when you’re nervous.
Or, it could be smoking cigarettes.
Whatever your habits, they impact us more than we like to think.
Because these habits are second nature, we often do them without thinking. We are essentially running on auto-pilot when we do this.
When I reach for my phone in the morning, it’s not out of some urge to discover the latest news, it’s because I have become accustomed to doing so. It is now a reflex action, it takes more mental energy to not reach for my phone than to reach for it.
This is what you are battling when you try and change your habits and establish new ones. You are working against existing neural pathways in your brain. You are going against the very nature of your ways, it’s not going to be easy.
We like to try and make dramatic changes in an effort to eliminate bad habits, but this very rarely works. Drastic, sweeping changes are often hard to keep up with.
