Who doesn’t dream of changing their life for the better? If only I were a little more like this, if only I did that more often. But, you know the saying: If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. This saying, first coined by Don Meredith, depicts exactly what the problem is about self-improvement. Dreaming it seems a lot easier than actually doing it. Indeed, the thing with improving your lifestyle and your being is that you will need to face a lot of obstacles—all of them personal, I’m afraid—to achieve your goal. But there’s nothing that good habits can’t beat if you know how to train yourself to be good. Why do you need good habits to improve? Because your current situation—whether it is related to relationships, education, career, fitness, or health—is the result of bad habits. Changing your situation for the better means switching your bad habits for better ones.
Good habits need a routine. At the core of it, good habits are born from creating a routine to stick to. For example, if you’re struggling with productivity at work, then you could be looking into the tips from Activia Training to learn how to better manage your time. The training tips suggest creating a daily routine to stay ahead of your workload, including the removal of digital distraction and the writing of a to-do list. The lesson to remember is that if you want good habits to stick you need to build them into a routine that you will frequently repeat until they become part of your natural behavior.
Good habits need discipline. However sticking to a routine is more easily said than done. Even though you might have decided on a routine, there’s no guarantee that your mind won’t suddenly surprise you and go back to its old behavior. You know the kind: You’ve decided to lose weight and next minute you’ve emptied a pack of chocolate biscuits. That’s where you need to establish self-control gradually. First, learn to say no, to yourself and your friends if you know that you’re heading back towards your bad habits. Then you need to help yourself to improve step-by-step. If you want to quit smoking, switching from 20 cigarettes a day to none is unrealistic and doomed to failure. But reducing the quantity over a period will work and improve your discipline.
Good habits don’t need a reward. It can be tempting to reward yourself for your good habits. But beware, as you are likely to develop bad habits out of your rewarding strategy. Indeed, the purpose of a reward is to indicate that you’ve achieved your goal and that the journey is over. However, good habits are for a lifetime, not for a temporary period. Additionally, good habits, even though they might drive significant improvements in your life, should be part of a routine that you perform effortlessly and without consideration. Rewarding an established behavior seems a little counterproductive. Surely the reward is the continual improvement of your situation.
A better you is a you who can ditch the bad habits for good ones, by establishing a routine and developing your sense of self-control with no expectation of a reward but the satisfaction of creating the best version of yourself.
Mia Guerra
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