Building a Successful Habit Takes Hundred Decisions

You do not have to be a superman to achieve creating a good habit. The only thing you need is to be patient and keep practicing. Because practice makes perfect. Because what you focus on gets bigger. As Horace Mann, the 19. century American education reformist once said: “Habit is a cable, we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.” You must think from many aspects to build a new habit instead of just one. You need to choose between this and that. Sometimes, it will be challenging; other times, it will be super easy. In this blog post, we try to explain why you need to build a habit with the necessity of a million decisions. Joking aside, people need to think over many perspectives to make a successful habit during their lifetime. Reading further, you begin to understand better why and how to make a good habit with many strong decisions.

The Science of Habit

Have you heard of anything about building a habit in 21 days? Most probably, you have. Twenty-one days is not said at random. On the contrary, it has a very scientific point: brain wiring. Say that you start to drink a glass of water every morning as soon as you get out of bed. You do it regularly and unconsciously. It comes automatically. At that point, your sensory nervous system starts to monitor for actions. Actions to make your body excrete dopamine to make you feel relaxed and happy. Dopamine is a brain chemical that is for reward. Any habit results from the desire of our brain’s reward or punishment system. You start to do something new, and you do it every day. Your brain helps you remember that action by wiring synaptic connections. Those electrical connections are formed completely in 21 days. Finally, when your brain realizes a pattern, it keeps that pattern in the related part of the brain to release it whenever needed. So, your brain has countless synaptic connections for every habit. It helps us move automatically and effortlessly throughout the day. That’s why building a good habit takes 21 days. Long story short, if you want to build a good habit, keep repeating the action for 21 days. At the end of the process, you have a brand new habit!

How to Build a Good Habit in 5 Easy Steps

To be a better version of yourself, you must make many life decisions. It would help if you worked hard and systematically, maybe renouncing many things. Let’s consider that you need to build a running habit every morning. Even though it is rainy or windy, you need to get up and run. The first decision is about getting up early from your warm bed. Your body says no when your brain encourages you to get up. Which one would you choose? Steps to building a habit may be like the road to hell if you cannot keep doing it: both are paved with good intentions. The other decision is to nerve yourself to get out and feel the morning chill. Once you do it, the mission will be completed. As you can see, many decisions may be behind making a good habit. Now it is time to learn more about how to build a habit in 5 steps.

1. First, you need to set a goal for yourself. At this point, it is crucial to be specific. Set up certain parameters for your target. Stating a clear time frame or location can be a good start.
2. Right after setting goals, you need to scheme it. Again, you need to work in detail. For example, let’s say your goal is to work out every day for 15 minutes. Your scheme should be anything like this: “I will work out every day during my lunch break for 15 minutes in my dining room.” And if you support this scheme with a calendar where you can leave checks every time you finish that day’s workout, it will be more than welcome. This makes everything perfect and prevents you from forgetting the action.
3. Remembering that you do it regularly, your habit better includes some kind of joy. For example, try listening to your favorite playlist while working out. In this way, let alone getting bored, you may even start to look forward to doing it.
4. All aside, you must avoid the things that take you far from this habit loop. Your friends, colleagues, family members, and social media accounts coming your way should be ignored when the time comes. Only in this way can you build the habit and make it a part of your life.
5. After gaining certain sustainability in your habit-building process, you have the freedom to be more flexible. Please don’t push yourself hard to stick to your scheme unless you totally skip it. For example, you can start your workout at 15:00 instead of noon time.