HOW TO BUILD A NEW HABIT

 

How to build a habit?

To learn how to build a habit, you need to first learn what a habit is. A habit is something you do often and almost without thinking, especially something that is hard to stop doing. We all have habits - some good and some bad. Bad habits are also called addictions. Good habits are what is responsible for a good life.

In this article, I'm gonna go through the science and psychology behind the formation of habits in the brain. If you want to learn how to build a habit, read the full article. Let's dive right into it.

UNDERSTANDING HABITS.

Before you learn how to build a habit, let's just talk about it a little bit. We all unknowingly build habits for ourselves and we don't even know it. We all build eating habits, sleeping habits, and talking habits unknowingly. We do those things without even thinking about them. That is what is known as a habit. 

If you want to identify your habits, you need to focus on your daily patterns. You need to find out what are your habits and then filter good and bad habits. See, once you know what are the habits that are affecting your life negatively, you can eliminate them. Understand your patterns and what you do every day and focus on your habits.

YOU CAN NOT ERASE THEM.

One of the misconceptions that many people live with is that they think they can erase their bad habits. No, you can never erase any of your bad habits. When you add new good habits to your life, you don't erase the previous bad ones, you just replace them. So, the question you should ask is not, "How to build a habit and erase bad habits?" The question you should ask is, "How to build new habits and replace them with bad ones?" 

Don't ever try to get rid of your bad habits (addictions). In my article on "How to break an addiction", I wrote a point that tells you to replace your habits and that is the most effective step to take to break an addiction. So, now you know you have to replace your habits. But how?

CHANGE THE PATTERNS.

What I said earlier was that you have to analyze and identify your daily patterns. Once you identify your patterns, try to understand the time of the day you perform a specific habit or an addiction. Once you identify the time you engage in some activity daily out of a habit, you can write them down.

Write down at what time you do what. Then the next step is to replace the activities you want to get rid of with other activities. Then follow the new pattern with the new activities. Maybe, there will be some days you will not be able to do that because the new pattern is not a habit till now. The only way to build a habit is to do it anyways.

21 DAYS TO GO.

I think most of you have heard of the 21 days concept to build a new habit. Right? But what actually is this and why does it take 21 days and why not 25? Listen, it takes 21 days to build a new habit because of a neurological concept. If you do something daily for 21 days, your brain forms a neurological wall - the 21 days act as the bricks of the wall. After doing something for 21 days consistently, the neurological cells change their way and form a habit.

If you want to build a habit of waking up early in the morning, what you need to do is just wake up at a specific time every day. This will be very hard and uncomfortable in the beginning. But when you will hit 21 days, it will become so much easy for you to wake up early in the morning - even without an alarm. 

Note: It does not mean that you will completely build the habit in 21 days. No, it doesn't work like that. After 21 days of consistent efforts, you will "start" to build the habit. Obviously, you will need to keep going with discipline, or else everything will come back to zero.

DOPAMINE HIT.

Do you know the feeling of pleasure while playing video games? Or do you know the feeling of pleasure that comes after eating your favorite junk food or cold drink? We feel that pleasure because of the dopamine - a pleasure hormone in the brain - hit we get while or after performing these types of activities. 

This dopamine release is what is responsible for any addiction. The dopamine hit makes you feel short-term pleasure and the human brain always seeks short-term pleasure. When you do something that makes you feel that pleasure again and again, you get addicted to that activity. Your brain will automatically find ways to get that pleasure again. That's the reason it gets converted into a bad habit.

But what if I tell you that you can use your dopamine to build good habits? Sounds good, right? The next point will cover this.

EXPLOIT DOPAMINE

Now, you know what the heck dopamine is. So, let me tell you a hack to take advantage of it. Dopamine is responsible for building addictions as well as for building habits. What I want you to do is to find pleasure in the effort. 

Look, take an activity you want to make a habit. Then, focus on doing the activity today and then every day. And then, when you accomplish the task every day, feel the pleasure of accomplishing the goal. Short-term pleasure for short-term goals will release dopamine in your brain and when you start to do it regularly, it will eventually turn into a habit. That's as simple as that.

Let me tell you an example. Let's say you want to build the habit of waking up early in the morning. Again! Yes, I know. So, when you wake up, don't just feel the effort you are putting to sacrifice your precious sleep. You need to feel the pleasure of waking up. Wake up and go out for a walk and feel the pleasure it gives you when you come back home. Feel the energy you get the whole day because you woke up early. 

This will release dopamine in your brain and your brain wants more of it. So, your brain will do the same automatically when you practice this regularly. Building new habits will be hard in the beginning but then, it will take momentum, and you will no longer have to put the effort. 

Thank you for reading the article. I hope you got some value from it. If the article was helpful to you, share it with your friends and with those in need. 

If you want to learn how to build self-confidence, click here and read my ultimate guide to building self-confidence.

If you are an overthinker and want to get rid of overthinking, click here.

If you worry too much about what other people think of you, read my article to get rid of this habit by clicking here.

Now you can get lost!