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Jenny and Erin in their quest for understanding have started a contest in which they ask:

“How big of a role do habits play in your daily life? Do your habits typically form intentionally or unconsciously? What approaches have you found successful in shaping them?”

 This is a question that I feel strongly about, so without further ado - Here is my post:

The Role Of Habits 

“We are what we continually do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” - Aristotle

Are habits are the essence of who we are.  We create our lives by our actions, and 98% of what we do, we do out of habit.  Therefore, in order for us to live up to our potential, we must not only become aware of our current habits but, we must also know how to change them.

The ability to change our habits, gives us the power to control the direction of our lives.  This one skill can become the deciding factor in your ability to reach your goals. 

When a new skill becomes habit, we no longer have to think about it.  It becomes automatic, and you are able to complete the task without conscious thought. Freeing our minds from dull repetitive tasks, and allowing us to focus our efforts on what is new and different.  Without habits even menial tasks such as eating and walking require enormous effort.

It is important to know and remember that the ability to change habits is a skill, which we all have the capability to master.  We are not at the mercy of our habits; our habits are at the mercy of our knowledge and our decisions.

Learning to change habits is like learning to play a sport.  In order to become good at a sport you must develop skills in many areas for instance: if you wanted to play basketball you would need to become good at running, dribbling, passing, shooting baskets, and blocking other players.  These are the basics of the game.  You can play the game as long as you have a basic understanding of each of these but, in order to be really good at the game you must become good in each area.

If you want to really take control of the direction in which your life will go: study and develop these techniques.  Then use them to create the life you want to live.

1. Self Discipline-  Self discipline is like a muscle the more you work it the stronger it becomes.  Start light with something you know you will succeed at, then slowly increase the weight as you progress.  Soon, you will find that you can require far more from yourself, than you may currently think possible.

2. 30 Days to Condition- Steve Pavlina teaches that it takes 30 to condition a new habit to the point that it becomes automatic.  I suggest choosing and working on one habit per month.

I like many others have learned that if you really want a habit to stick it is best not to try to change too many at once.  It is easy to get excited about your new power and attempt to change several habits your first time out.  The consequence though may be that you may not succeed at any.   

3. Replace Old Habits with New and Better Ones-  When we try to just drop an old habit such as smoking or over eating, there is a time space where we would normally be doing the old habit, this time is a potential danger zone in which it is easy to give in to temptation.  In order to minimize this affect and increase our chances of success we need to be prepared. 

The best way to prepare is to have a replacement habit.  This is a habit that you will do instead of the old one.  For example you may choose to drink water, and chew on a straw rather than smoke while driving.

4. Make it Painful to Fail-  It is human nature to avoid pain and to chase after pleasure.  Use this knowledge to your advantage.  Tell a friend or family member that you will pay them $1,000 or that you will give them your car if you do what you said you will not.  (The catch to this is you must be prepared to follow through.  If you decide to do this and you fail you will lose your car or your money). 

The idea here is that it will cause more pain to fail than whatever reward your old habit provided.  Yes, there are rewards for your bad habits- if there wasn’t you wouldn’t do it! 

5-  Reward Success-  This is the complimenting technique for #4.  Like I stated above, it is human nature to avoid pain and to chase after pleasure.

You want to create a reward strong enough for you that it will be worth it to overcome any obstacle in your way.  I wrote more about this here .  

6. Control Your Environment-  Our environment is a strong factor in habit change.  Dr. Phil once said he could guarantee 100% success on getting a man to quit smoking by putting him on a deserted island with no cigarettes.

The truth is our environment does create a major impact.  If you want to stop eating junk food, don’t buy any.  Don’t keep any at your house, or in the place where you work.  If you work in an ice cream shop or a bakery QUIT AND FIND A NEW JOB! 

This may seem extreme and honestly it is but, do you want to succeed or not?  What is more important your health, or your job?