A habit is behaviour that is automatic.
Habits occur through you picking up cues in your environment and acting subconsciously.
Habits are not performed through your mindful decisions.
Forty to fifty percent of your daily actions are habitual.
Habits are shaped by repetition. When you do things over and over again, you create a habit.
Habits operate below your conscious awareness. Oftentimes you are not even aware of the things that you do.
Habits are stubborn. Once learnt, they are hard to change. It is not about discipline.
Habits help us by:
Saving mental energy,,
Increasing consistency,,
Reducing decision fatigue,,
And maintaining healthy routines.,,
The downside is that bad habits become automatic too.
Examples of habits is as follows:
Brushing your teeth on a schedule.
Going to bed at the same time each night.
Clearing your desk at the end of the day.
Most people believe that change depends on motivation and willpower. But science tells a very different story.
When it comes to increasing your happiness, it may become necessary to make change to the habits you already have.
Sustainable change happens when new behaviours become automatic.
Forming new habits:
Willpower alone is not enough to create change.
Habits form through repetition in a stable context. This means:
The same cue. Habits rely on cues from our environment. Creating new cues can help with the formation of new habits. For example: Putting a photo on your wall of your favourite pet. The photo becomes a cue. When you see the photo, it can trigger an action.
The same action. When you see the photo, get yourself to practice gratitude every time. Gratitude for your pet and gratitude in general.
Repeat it again and again. Repeat this every time you see the photo.
Taking these three steps creates the environment for creating a new habit. Your actions should be done consistently over a period of time.
Science indicates that the average time to reach a high level of automaticity is 66 days. Keep on practicing your new routine for at least 66 days.
You can also co-opt your existing habits.
For example, Karen puts her children to bed and then lies down to relax. She picks up her phone to scan social media. Karen changes this habit so that she does ten minutes of conscious reflection before looking at social media.
Joe goes to work every day. The first thing he does is make a coffee and read his email. Joe changes this habit to first read his gratitude journal in order to put himself in a positive frame of mind before his day commences.
More things to know about habits:
When tired, stressed, or distracted, people fall back on habits—good or bad. Do not be hard on yourself if you find you are reverting to old habits. This is normal.
Start working on bad habits by making them harder or less rewarding.
Make good habits easy.
Habits work best if there is a reward. Your new happiness habits will have their own reward: an improvement in your mood and your overall wellbeing. This can be measured through happiness questionnaires.
To find out more about developing new habits that promote happiness, go to our program by following the link.
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