Your Habits will Determine your Future

When you woke up this morning, what did you do first? Did you visit the bathroom, jump in the shower, get dressed or checked your mobile phone? Did you brush your teeth then go downstairs? Is it tea or coffee the first thing to be made? Do you have breakfast? Do you drive the same route to work each day?

Most of the choices we make each day are habit, it may feel like that these are considered decisions or actions, but they are not. They are habits and on their own they mean very little to us but overtime the chain of habits we will become hugely impactive. Now is the time to start to understand how habits work and how more importantly they can change us.

Did you know that over 60,000 thoughts a day are subconscious, making up about 90% of the thoughts we have and that 40% plus of our daily life is full of habit.

Health and Wellbeing for most of us is not either routine or habit but it is the creation of habits for health that lead to consistency and adherence which then becomes routine. So often it is these habits within wellness that seem to be harder to create and even harder to maintain, so why is that. Positive habits even though can enhance daily life and make you feel better will require more energy and focus to achieve and accomplish but in times of stress and trouble the mind will revert and drive you back to old habits. Things that you know, where life is comfortable and where our brains try to reserve energy in times of difficulty.

What causes a habit.

Habits are built through learning and repetition. A person is thought to develop a habit while pursuing aims and goals by beginning to associate their actions in line with the response that they want. Over time as we reward and understand the returns of these habits do, we then change our behaviour, recognise the triggers and the subsequent actions to these triggers. Your brain uses habit to save time and energy.

Why do we have habits?

We have habits for survival, we have habits for routine and to make our daily lives easier. Habits are often the things that we know and feel comfortable with and are not actions that we find difficult. Habits are repetition, actions that are automatic and you have very little awareness that we are doing them. Habits are efficiency of effort and the subconscious mind at work, this is where you wellness habit needs to sit allowing you time, effort and energies to be focused on other difficult areas of your life.

Building new habits:

The building of one new habit, the focusing on a new pattern known as ‘keystone habit’ will set the formation for what is to follow and will set the tone of what you can do without any need for willpower and persuasion.

Old habits can be difficult to shake, and healthy habits are often harder to develop than one would like. But through repetition, it is possible to form—and maintain—new habits. Even long-time habits that are detrimental to one’s health and well-being can be broken with enough determination and a smart approach. Often the formation of new habits around our health can take more effort and concentration over a longer period of time.

It is the incentive and rewards of new habits that will allows us to focus on what new habits bring.

New habits can:

• Create success
• New habits override old habits.
• The formation of one keystone habits can lead to others and great success
• Motivation
• Personal development
• Build confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth.
• Enables us the achieve and be responsible this increases performance.
• Allows personal growth and development
• Creates a positive outcome for body and mind
• Enhance the power of new habits and become more productive.

How to form healthy habits:

Forming healthy habits can be exceedingly difficult especially within the busy lives we lead. So, it is not all about more willpower to create habits but more of what you do every day to create them. This is the way that the mind naturally works to code a new behaviour pattern without you knowing it.

Create that habit:

1. Shape your surroundings- for example having healthy meals you have already prepared will help you eat better throughout the week and allows the new habit to form rather than returning to old ones of just eating anything that is available.
2. Repeat, repeat, repeat – an action that increases its adherence and an action that allows the habit to build if you are consistent. It is not enough to do it a few times, but evidence shows that often it may take six months to build a habit. This is where goals alongside habits can mean that over time, that the habit has a greater chance of becoming rewarding. So, keep habits for the things you really want to structure into your life, and for the things you want to experience and to appreciate each time.

Reward the success: Habits will smooth the way to that healthy you and as the repetition builds other habits will form.

Allowing even a minor reward for your efforts along the way will help cement that sense of achievement and help with the motivation as you continue. From a psychological point of view the brain reads unexpected rewards and so spurs the release of dopamine, imprinting the details of the rewarding experience into memory, and making it more likely that you’ll repeat the behaviour. This creates a habit that energizes and invigorates you to pursue actions that have positive consequences and meet your goals.