Why habit is important

Even the most comprehensive lifestyle plan, including detailed diet and exercise instructions can still fail unless it includes a sound behavior modification component. One of the largest aspects of behavioral change centers on our own habits. If we can develop and focus on the right kind of habits, this gives us the power to turn our best intentions and knowledge about lifestyle like diet and exercise into reality.

It is very helpful to learn more about habits, including the science behind them, to enable us to actually develop healthy positive habits for lasting lifestyle change. Our everyday routines, from the time we get up in the morning until the evening when we go to sleep, are filled with countless actions and choices, almost half of which may actually be habits. There is no one precise definition of habit, as it is often described differently by psychologists and neurologists. However, the most common definition seems to center around the following concept: habits are automatic behavioral responses to environmental cues or triggers.

This can work to your advantage! Unless you intentionally fight a bad habit and replace it with new routines, the pattern will unfold automatically over and over again every time the habit is activated by the trigger or cue. The key to creating positive change for yourself is to make your desired actions into habits. All habits can be ignored, changed, or replaced. TheWorldCounts demonstrates that we live in a time of great challenges.

Something must be done about climage change, the biodiversity crisis, extreme poverty, massive pollution, etc. Yet, it is easy to show what is wrong with the world.

Changing it is a different matter. Spread the message. Make a donation. If a bad habit is created, you need to rewire your thinking and replace it with a new one. Habits are a series of events where you have to recognize the cue, create a good response habit , and receive the same reward or outcome. In order to replace a bad habit with a good one, you have to change the response. At Zephyr, we recognize the power of good habits. In order to build the habits you want to stick with, you have to be intentional with your actions.

Here are our top 5 tips to forming good habits and actually sticking with them. Consistency is more important than how much you do something or the size of the task at hand. For example, you could start with a mini habit of making your bed in the morning versus making sure your entire house is spotless every day of the week. The reason that we need to limit the number of decisions that we make each day is that human beings suffer from decision making fatigue.

The more decisions we make before a period of rest, the worse we are at making them. As an example, a recent study found that it matters a lot what time of day a convict hits the parole board. Those that sat in front of the board at the end of the morning session before lunch, and also at the end of the day, were disproportionately likely to be denied parole.

The judges are suffering from decision making fatigue, and so go with the easiest safest answer, which is no, rather than to fully assess the case. Of course, this is all subconscious and the judges are unaware of what they are doing, just as we are pretty much unaware as we reach for that glass of wine or block of chocolate late in the evening.

So successful people not only limit the number of decisions that they need to make every day, but they ensure that they do the things that are most important and require the most brainpower first. In other words, use your fresh brain for creative tasks rather than answering emails. Beethoven believed in waking up early and working until midday, when he was the most creative. It is probably no coincidence that Leonardo Da Vinci took a minute nap every four hours, which would have helped refresh his decision making and creative synapses.

As a general rule, successful people aim high and have big ambitions.