How To Create Good Habits
It’s often said that we become our habits. However, sometimes those habits are unsuitable for us; unfortunately, bad habits prevail among many Americans. According to one report, over 70 percent of U.S. adults have at least one unhealthy behavior associated with chronic health problems. To combat this, it’s to create new habits that promote a healthy lifestyle.
Breaking bad habits isn’t easy, but sometimes, the best answer is replacing them with empowering new habits that positively change one’s daily life. “We often have habits that hold us back, like smoking or eating food lacking in nutrition,” says Dr. Rob Carter III, co-author with his wife, Dr. Kirti Salwe Carter, of The Morning Mind: Use Your Brain to Master Your Day and Supercharge Your Life (www.themorningmind.com). “A great way to start every day is with a series of empowering habits. Morning, in fact, according to some researchers is the best time to start making these kinds of changes in your life.” Carter has six ways you can create new, empowering habits and make them stick:
It’s essential to prioritize your habits.
To begin, Carter suggests what kind of empowering habits you’d like to establish in each area you want to grow. These areas could include health, wealth, social life, relationships, jobs, hobbies, self-esteem, interpersonal skills, positive thinking, time management, and life purpose. Focusing on one area at a time is essential, as we have limited willpower in the morning. Carter emphasizes the importance of using this energy wisely by concentrating on just one habit you want to change. For example, eating a healthy breakfast could be a good starting point. Doing so allows you to channel your willpower into establishing a consistent routine until it becomes a habit.
It is essential to be reasonable with yourself. The time it takes to establish the new habit depends upon how much resistance a person has. And sometimes, developing a new practice represents a long leap from where one currently stands. “That’s too daunting,” Carter says, “so break it down into more achievable steps. Incremental improvements add up to a big transformation and are often more powerful and sustainable.”
Commit specific time toward the goal.
Carter suggests nailing down a detailed timeline and committing a total effort toward forming the new habit within that time. “Write down what you hope to achieve, how many times a week you will practice the new habit, and when and where you’ll do it,” Carter says. “Having a specific goal helps keep you accountable to yourself.
Reward success
Have a reward in place to celebrate performing your new habit. “It has to be something that will motivate you to complete your habit,” Carter says.
Developing Habits
“The neural pathways of your pre-existing habits are well-traveled routes in your brain,” Carter says. “You can take advantage of this by building a new habit and associating it with an old and well-established one. This is a quicker way to create new habits than if you were to start from scratch. For instance, if you want to create a new habit of exercising in the morning, you can tie it to an existing habit of reading the newspaper every morning. By exercising immediately before you read the paper, you can make reading the paper your reward.” “Once you realize how simple it is to change habits,” Carter says, “you’ll want to make adjustments to all areas of your life.”
Dr. Rob Carter III and Dr. Kirti Salwe Carter co-wrote The Morning Mind. Rob Carter, a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, is an expert in human performance and physiology. He has academic appointments in emergency medicine, public health and health sciences, and nutrition. He holds a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences and medical physiology and an MPH in chronic disease epidemiology.
Kirti Carter was born in Pune, India, and received her medical education in India, where she practiced as an intensive-care physician before moving to Texas to complete postgraduate training in public health. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Stress (FAIS). She has more than 18 years of experience in meditation and breathing techniques and has facilitated wellness seminars for the past decade.
