The Importance Of Building Habits
When it comes to establishing a lifestyle that works best over the long haul, building the proper habits is incredibly important. Our habits are what comes to define our lives and while making goals is also crucial, there is nothing more important than the habits we create.
Goals have fixed time frames and it is human nature to let go of the rope a little bit once you have achieved them. Habits, on the other hand, are used to shape and define our lives, providing us with the level of consistency that we need.
Simply put, your habits are who you are. While you can make certain changes along the way and remedy aspects of your personality that keep you from reaching true success, habits are the things that we do each day without even stopping to think about them first.
For example, we do not stop to think about showering, brushing our teeth or sending a ‘good morning’ text to a friend or family member, these are all actions that are ingrained into our consciousness. If you want to build the proper life for yourself, you will need to start the right habits.
We cannot achieve our goals and dreams without building the proper foundation and by building habits, we are establishing a process that we can take pride in, a process that will carry us through all of the trials and tribulations that take place along the way.
Trusting in the process that we have created for ourselves is what building habits is all about. We are not always going to experience success on the first try or even the second one when we are chasing our goals and when we do not have the proper trust level in your habits, we place far too much emphasis on the end result, as opposed to believing in the process.
One of the best parts about habits is that they can be broken. If you decide that you have a habit that needs to be changed, it is possible to make alterations that have a lasting effect. Let’s say that you wish to eat in a healthier manner and lose a certain amount of weight over the course of the next few months.
All you need to do is change your daily routine and add the new habit to your daily schedule. While it will take a few weeks for the habit to become ingrained into your consciousness, it soon becomes second nature and you will find yourself wondering why you did not make this change earlier.
After all, our goals cannot be achieved in one fell swoop. If you wish to have a certain career, you cannot simply jump into the field with both feet and reasonably expect immediate success. It takes weeks, months and years of establishing the right habits to lay the groundwork for achieving our goals.
Trying to achieve goals without establishing the proper daily habits is like heading out for a work out without doing the correct stretching exercises to warm up first. If you want to be able to chase your goals in a sustainable manner, your habits are the real life equivalent of the aforementioned stretching exercises.
The habits that you engage in on a daily basis are what will come to define you over the long haul. If you focus on being a positive person who is hardworking, your habits should reflect this decision. They are the first step that you are going to take on the road of achieving your life goals and their effectiveness determines your future.
It can be difficult for humans to find the proper level of motivation on a daily basis, as our first instinct is to avoid all things that are overly challenging or will threaten to push us out of our comfort zone.
These instincts cause us to waste a lot of time along the way, as we allow these difficulties and challenges to steer us in the wrong direction. Creating good habits leads to a higher level of overall efficiency, reducing the amount of time that we are needlessly frittering away by letting our fear of the unknown derail us.
Habits are also useful when it comes to powering through those inevitable moments when our motivation starts to flag. We all have days like these, when we do not feel like working and it seems impossible to summon the motivation that we need to make things happen.
When the right habits have already been established as second nature, those periods of low motivation do not have the same effect as they would on a person who does not have the proper habits.
Let’s say that you have decided to take a break from your diet and have a cookie or two, just this once. While some might struggle with this idea and allow themselves to go into free fall mode, those who have created good habits for themselves are able to withstand momentary temptations like these and remain on the straight and narrow.
By creating a helpful foundation of healthy habits, you are giving yourself the best possible chance to benefit your life both today and tomorrow. Building good habits is the furthest thing from impossible and when you remain truly committed to the concept of doing so on a daily basis, you will see your life blossom into everything that you have always hoped and dreamed of.
Umair Khan
The original post is published here.
