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How to Make Good Habits Stick

December 5, 2022 by Bethanie Ryan

Old habits die hard, but good habits can live longer. The ways to improve our lifestyle are endless. They come up in our conversations, in our internet searches, in the media we scroll through — we find good habits everywhere! Thus, the real struggle comes after the discovery of these golden nuggets: How do we make them stick?

Once we find a good habit we want to put into practice, we can give it a permanent residence in our daily lives.

Before we get into some helpful tips, there is one reality we need to understand: Scientific studies have shown that it takes an average of 66 days for a person to form a habit.

Sixty-six days. That’s a hefty amount of time. It’s important to walk into the following tips with this in mind, because it introduces the key ingredient to all habits: patience.

Approach your habits with a patient understanding that it takes time. This will help shape the right mindset and set you up perfectly for the endurance to come. 

With that said, let’s get into how we can implement good habits and keep them!

  1. Break up your habit into tiny chunks. It’s not easy to carry out huge life changes in one go. So, try to make your goals attainable by breaking them up into smaller milestones. For example, if you want to change eating habits, try to tackle one meal out of the day at first and build your way up from there.
  2. Connect a habit to an already-existing habit. Introducing a completely new lifestyle pattern may throw off what’s already set in your schedule. So, try to implement a habit that’s a matching puzzle piece, rather than a piece from a completely different puzzle set. For example, if you’re working on a new project or a book but find it hard to devote yourself to it, try dedicating 15 minutes a day to the project. As it becomes easier to devote that time, try pushing up your progress by 5-minute intervals. 
  3. Make accountability partners! Habits may be for your personal benefit, but they don’t have to be accomplished alone. Try letting a reliable family member or friend know of your desired goals, and ask for her or his help in holding you accountable. Then you will not only have to overcome your conscience but also your accountability partner’s counsel. For example, if you want to develop the habit of apologizing when appropriate, ask someone whom you trust and respect to hold you accountable in situations where an apology is necessary. Request for her or him to not stand by idly but to give you push forward in the right reaction.
  4. Remove temptations. Even if you have the right mindset, and even if you have many accountability partners, habits can easily crack under the pressure of temptation. Of course, this isn’t the case for all habits, but overcoming temptations is much easier said than done. So, try to remove the temptations that you can. For example, if you wish to create a habit to stop scrolling through social media before you try to sleep, place your phone out of reach.

While challenging, procuring new habits is achievable. Even by practicing these tips, you are creating healthy habits. If you approach every challenge with patience and positivity, good results are sure to follow. So, remember: This is no sprint but a race of endurance. Gear up, and tighten your shoelaces.

By Abigail Choe

Filed Under: Live, Self-Help

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Who is cutting the onion? 🥲I’m sharing this on the grid, because we all need a laugh.So this is not a poem.It’s about poo.And not even my child's poo.This is a story about the glamorous life of me right now.I'll keep it short, much shorter than my trip to the toilet.Both the kids were having screen time because quite frankly I had had enough and was at my limit, the move has been a lot and we were all a bit overwhelmed.Heidi had decided she wouldn't do her nap in the bassinet & so I strapped her in the carrier, seems to be the norm these days.Only, her nap lasted much longer than I had anticipated. An hour went by & the urge to pee was too great, yet so was the urge to not wake her.After careful consideration I thought I would attempt going to the toilet with her strapped in, surely I could manoeuvre all I needed to, and with a slight sway while weeing she may even stay asleep.Mother's can do anything right....But no, my body had other plans.Code brown alert.Not too far along post birth it was safe to say there would be no holding back. My mind was saying no... everything all postpartum down there was saying hell YES.So here I was, sitting on the toilet at my nanas house, kids out in the lounge while I was stuck on the toilet with my baby strapped to me taking a twosie.Other than the fact this was not my plan at all (and pretty unsanitary), she started to wake, of course she did.Now, unloading a baby from a carrier at the same time you're unloading timber is quite the awkward art. But here we were, my gorgeous little baby in my arms, carrier and pants at my feet with her apologetic mum just trying to finish what she unintentionally started.Luckily it was all smiles from her.I cooed & talked to her like it was totally normal for her to wake up in this little echoey room with her mum feeding the fish, and then it happened...her first official laugh.What a moment to behold.This is the way I live. This is what I do.Baby milestone book: place and date of first laugh 🚽✔️When Drew got home from work I needed a moment, just one moment alone to regain some dignity.I went to hand her over & he said,"yep just give me a moment to pee first" 🫠Art: @this_mama_doodles ... See MoreSee Less

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