Publisher's Synopsis
Habit of successful people
Willpower is not all that you need in adopting a new habit because saying, "I want to read books each day" is never a guarantee that you will actually read a book each day. You need more than willpower to help you adopt a new habit. What you really need is a well thought-out plan to help you fix the habit into your life. Habit formation is easy because it is something you want to condition your body to get used to. The following steps can help you build good habits that stick:
1.Start Small and Slowly Work Your Way up
The problem with most people is that they think that there is a direct formula to help them adopt a habit overnight; that is why most people fail. You need to understand that patience pays and learning from the bottom and working your way up is the best way.
2.Tackle one habit at a time
Dealing with too many new things at a time increases the risk of failure. I know you would like to adopt many beneficial habits so that you can achieve your goals but you need to deal with one habit at a time. Pick out one of the easiest habits then work on it. After you have successfully adopted it, you can move on to another one. This is the only way you can be sure of being able to succeed in developing the habits. The idea here is to create some kind of order so that you can avoid the stress of having to deal with technical habits all at the same time.
3.Anchor Your Habit to an Already Existing One
Forgetting to perform the habit you want to adopt is the first step towards failure. This might be because you have forgotten to perform the habit as in most cases because the habit has not yet stuck and become autonomic. Therefore, you need to make sure that you remember to perform the habit by attaching the habit to an already existing one, which is similar to it or leads to it. If you want to adopt the habit of doing some exercises each morning you wake up, then the best way is anchoring the habit to something that you already do every morning like brushing your teeth; so that each morning after you brush your teeth you will exercise.
4.Reward Yourself
Motivating and encouraging yourself is a good way to making sure that you succeed in everything that you are doing. In our case, you need to reward yourself each time you develop a habit successfully so that you can make it fun. This reward doesn't have to be that much of a deal but even celebrating with family or a friend is enough, so that you can be motivated to adopting the next habit on the list.
