Gails Blog

I often talk about habits and how important it is to get busy forming good ones. Sometimes it’s in the context of the question: Why save when you have debt? Because saving is a habit, and the longer you take to form the habit, the less likely you are to get good at it. Sometimes it’s in the context of exchanging bad habits with good ones. This is a challenge I sometimes give my couples, and it works really well to bring home the point.

Habit can be your best friend or worst enemy. Get in the habit of whipping out that credit card every time you see something that makes your juices flow and you’ll be neck-deep in debt FOR FRICKEN’ EVER! Get in the habit of saving the money you want to spend on an indulgence before you go shopping and you’ll always be in the black. Wow! What a concept.

One of the things that can get in the way of forming a new, positive habit is not being clear about what you want to achieve and how you’re going to go about doing it. If you’re planning on tracking your spending, you need to have how you’re going to do that clear in your mind – what tools you will need, when you will do it == and you need to WRITE IT DOWN.

Focusing on one habit at a time is more effect than splitting your energies in several directions. Once you’ve established the habit, you can then look for a new positive habit to establish.  The idea is to make the thing you are doing – the habit you are establishing – so ingrained that not doing it isn’t even an option.

It’s useful to recognize the obstacles that may interfere with your habit formation as long as you don’t use those obstacles as your excuses for not continuing to establish the new habit.

The Japanese have an interesting approach to forming new habits. Kaizen focuses on continuous but small change, which helps to maintain momentum. So instead of saying you’re cooking all your meals at home from here on in, you pick one night a week when you’re going to cook and you stick to it, until The Wednesday Night Home-Cooked Meal is a habit. Then you add another day. And another. And another, until you’ve reached your final goal.

Rumour has it that it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I happen to take longer. I’m a slower burn. So I think the amount of time it’ll take before you move to the next level is dependant on your personal resistance to change.

The process of forming a habit is easier if the habit activity has a reward associated with it. A work out is rewarded with endorphins, a study session with a great grade. But the reward doesn’t make a habit. That comes with repetition and the neurological pathway. That’s why the more you practice piano, tennis or reading, the better you get at it.

It takes determination, hard work and self-discipline to develop a good habit. I once heard it likened to putting a satellite into space: at first it requires a huge amount of force and energy to get the satellite into space, but once there, it moves effortlessly.

Aristotle said:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

So what habits are you working to form? What’s your best habit and what did you have to do to make it a habit?