[WI] How To Use Everyday Habits To Reach Your Goals

Reaching a goal takes some doing, but one of the key factors to ensure you reach a new goal, is to put habits into place that support that goal.

If the habits you currently have are counter-productive, you should change them or you will battle and come up short.

Take for instance losing a bit of weight to fit into your favourite outfits you have been wearing until it got a bit too tight ‒ diving into take-aways or huge, unhealthy meals won’t

How can habits help you reach your goals?

Let’s say you are working on tackling a marathon: if you are not running regularly ‒ meaning if you don’t already have the habit of running every day ‒ you are extremely unlikely to make it unless you can adopt the habit of running and exercising regularly. Running every day can help you to easily reach your goal in many different ways, also getting into a great physical shape and improving your endurance.

To develop a supportive habit can be easier than most people think, but so much more powerful than you think!

How to form the Habits You Need.

Before you try to create a new, positive habit, you need to determine which habits will help you reach your goals. Remember, for every goal there are many habits that can help you guarantee your success. Take a moment to think about your goals and what you can do to bring them about.

Work out a way to do the same thing at the same time every day. Use reminders or little sticky notes to help “programme” your mind.

Use these criteria for the habits you want to form:

1. Find daily Anything you do each and every day become much easier to put into place and keep it going than something that you do infrequently.
2. KISS ‒ Keep it simple, silly. The more involved or difficult any task, the greater the chance that you won’t stick with it or see it through. If you really need to do something that is difficult or complex, narrow it down to a simpler version and then increase the complexity as you go along.
3. Get down to the point. It is not sufficient to simply specify what you are planning to do. Add the three WWWs ‒ the what, when, and where as well. Time is of the essence when you are working at setting a new habit. Specify an exact time to do it every day and in which you wish to form whatever your new habit is.

• To simply say you are going to exercise regularly or even one hour every day, is not going to work! Be specific. Tell yourself you are going to swim from 6 to 7 every morning, every day from Monday to Friday, at the local gym, come rain or shine. This has the kind of detail you need to be clear about what you want to accomplish, including the WWW ‒ what, when and where.

Be ready to be challenged

Everyone of us has challenges, and there will be some obstacles in your efforts to create new habits or different behavioural patterns. Work out before the time what it can be so that you can word around it from the word go.

A few examples: If you decide that you are going to eat a healthy breakfast every day, get rid of all the junk food ‒ it is an obstacle waiting in the shadows to prevent you from creating your new habit.

Or it might be time interference. Maybe your partner doesn’t usually leave you alone for 30 minutes every night so you can meditate, write, read, or whatever it is you want to do towards your goal. Involve the people you live with ‒ let them know what you are doing and that you need some quiet time, but then stick to it.

Look for More Supporting Habits, not just one

When you use supporting habits to help you reach your goal, consider going even deeper into the details to find habits that will help you accomplish your goal.

For example, if it is to make it to the gym every morning by 6:00 am, there are several supporting habits you can incorporate to help you establish this new habit, including:

• Get out of bed by 5:15 am.
• Get to bed at 10:00 pm so that you are able to get up at 5:15 am the next morning.

• Make sure you don’t run late ‒ pack your gym bag the night before, or just after getting back home after work.

Supporting habits are instrumental. Take time to think about what additional habits you can develop to support your efforts.

Enjoy the power of good habits: Automatic Success

When an action becomes a habit, you perform it automatically, without having to ponder whether you really want to do it each time. You will automatically race forward, day after day, toward achieving your goal until you reach it.

The same way that negative habits can prevent you from reaching success, supportive habits can guarantee victory. Consider the habits that will best support your goals, make an effort to put them into action on a daily basis, and soon enough you will enjoy your new success!