Two Principles That Will Help You Form Any Habit

1. The main principle for establishing a new behavior: Think only in the frame of 24 hours.

Even though the research says 66 days, you shouldn’t think about that much in advance.

In our human nature is to overburden ourselves, and this tends to demotivate us.

So even if your goal is to lose weight in 2 months, think about just one day.

For the next 24 hours, your job is to do your best to eat as healthy as you can. That’s it.

Just one thing, and one small action towards it.

No significant changes, no big leaps.

Once you do it in one day, your job is to repeat it again tomorrow.

Learn, improve and act.

Quite simple.

Now let’s see what can be done about the behavior we are trying to eliminate.

2. The main principle for eliminating the old negative behavior: Postpone the negative behavior for tomorrow.

In the book 1984 (Nineteen Eighty-four) by George Orwell, there is a part where the members of the Outer Party are torturing Winston (the main protagonist), trying to break his spirit, and as they are beating him, there was one particular sentence he kept repeating to himself:

“I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.”

This got me thinking. Usually, when we want to establish a good habit, we tend to procrastinate. We postpone the positive behavior.

But what if we use that for the negative behavior?

So, I decided to do an experiment.

Just one habit, and to focus on it in the span of 24hours.

If I feel the urge to break it, I will postpone it. For tomorrow.

It was eating healthy. I went to buy groceries, and I had a sweet tooth.

When I saw the ice cream, I told myself:
“You can have it tomorrow, but today get some veggies.”

And I did. It was hard, but the idea that tomorrow ice cream was waiting for me was enough to let it go today.

When I got up in the morning, I followed the rule for the establishing the habit.

I focused on the eating healthy part, in just one day, and that was it.

When I thought about ice cream, I told myself the same thing: “You can have it tomorrow.”

After I repeated this for 3–4 days, it became easier. My body was cleaning from sugar and I didn’t feel it anymore.

And from then on, this is what I have been doing.

Procrastinating on bad behavior.

It works like a charm.

But I have to warn you about two things.

First, people often want to reinvent themselves and the way the lead their life.

This usually implies that they want to eliminate several habits and start several new ones.

My advice is to start only with one habit unless the other habit you want to start is a supplement to the first one.

This means that if you want to start with your health, you can start with healthy diet first, but exercising is a supplement.

Eating healthier will give you enough results on its own, without jeopardizing your habit. You can add exercise if you want to achieve this faster, but it should be added slowly and without pressure.

Second, it’s easy to break habits.

That’s why you must have this in mind.

The longer the habit lasts, the harder it is to break it. The shorter it lasts, it’s easier to break it.

For example:

If you eat healthy for two months, even if you cheat for a day or two, it will be simpler to go back to eating healthy.

But, if you had only started a habit five days ago, and you cheat even once, this can jeopardize your habit. Twice, and you probably won’t go back to eating healthy.

And then it will take you most likely several weeks before you motivate yourself to start again.

So, try to be diligent.

That’s it.

Now, I know that you have a habit you want to start.

Go easy on yourself, and think in a span of 24hours.

One small action towards it. And tomorrow just repeat and improve.

Thank you for reading and hitting the 💙 if you enjoyed this article. This will motivate me to keep on writing.