I know its seems really hard but I have a word of encouragement for you……….If you stick with your new behavior for 21 steaight days it will become a new positive habit…..you can do it!
According to Ian Newby-Clark, here are some other points to conscider about the new positive habit you are trying to form:
1. What kind of habit are you trying to establish? Some will be easier to establish than will others. For example, if you’ve been eating the same fat-laden sugar-rich lunch for the past 10 years and you’ve decided to switch to salad, it’s going to take some time. There will be setbacks. But, if you’re “tweaking” some behavior of yours, the time to habit change will likely be much shorter. That’s one of the reasons why I recommend that people take baby-steps when they are changing a behavior. You’ll see some progress fairly quickly. You can solidify that progress and move on from there.
2. What are the benefits to continuing with your bad habit? We have bad habits because they give us short-term payoffs. It’s that feeling of a juicy burger melting in our mouths, or gleefully sinking into the couch instead of schlepping to the gym. To be sure, you’re not the biggest fan of yourself for having a bad habit, but you wouldn’t have it if there weren’t some benefit. I don’t know too many people who regularly hit themselves over the head with a big stick. Although, some behaviors do come kind of close to that.
The more immediate and tasty the payoff, the harder it will be to break the bad habit and replace it with a good one.
3. How often/automatically do you perform the bad behavior? The more often/automatically you do it, the harder it will be to change it. After all, you have to be aware that you’re doing something bad in order to replace it with something good.
That last point reminds me of the one of the steps for effective habit change: Repeat, repeat, repeat! It’s like learning to drive a car. If you drive, you must have remarked to yourself how easy it is to motor along now compared to when you first learned. You don’t have to coach yourself through every move (check my blind-spot, signal . . . ) You just do it. That’s because of one thing and one thing only: Lots and lots of practice. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Read and learn more @http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creatures-habit/200912/how-long
