Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Haider Al-Mosawi from Personal Growth Map.
Forming new habits is often seen as a huge commitment that only a few fortunate souls - blessed with a naturally high dosage of willpower - can ever accomplish. The rest of us can only content ourselves with silly attempts to change, only to default to our old ways.
But the problem isn’t really with forming new habits. It’s our approach to forming new habits that makes life difficult.
To make your life much easier, here are two simple ways you can use to form new habits that will help you get great results without really trying!
Half Habits
The most common approach to forming a new habit is to attempt to create it with a single leap from your old way to the new way, without any transition period. You smoke and you want to quit smoking. You drink coffee and you want to cut it out of your diet. You don’t exercise and want to join the gym to exercise on a daily basis. To achieve your goals, you rely on commitment and willpower.
But as you have experienced time and time again, your willpower will dwindle a few weeks down the road (if you survive that long) and drag your commitment down with it, leaving you with your old ways… if not worse!
That’s because to go from one way to a totally new way is unnatural. It comes as a shock to your mind, body and soul and they will fight fiercely to return to a way that is familiar to them.
What’s the solution, I hear you ask?
Well, that’s a good question, and I’m glad you asked it :)
A solution I would recommend would be to go for half habits.
What does that mean?
Rather than trying to commit FULLY to a new habit, you simply take a step in its direction.
For example, instead of immediately joining a gym in order to become healthy, if your body has almost forgotten what “physical activity” means, incorporate a mini-exercise routine at home. That way, you don’t feel guilty that you’re not going to the gym every day, and you’re not taking something on that will be met with resistance. It’s a small adjustment that you won’t have difficulty keeping up.
An advantage to half habits is that you accept that you need to go through a transition period from old habit to new habit. You accept this as something natural and not a failing on your part.
Your focus then turns to the progress that you are making instead of the times you fall off the wagon!
“Oh great! I exercised four times this week!” instead of “OH MY GOD! I haven’t exercised for THREE days this week!”
And with half habits, you can effectively take on a number of habits without feeling any pressure!
I managed to cut down on coffee and soft drinks, started blogging almost daily, reduced the amount of food I eat, began waking up early in the morning and developed a range of other mini-habits that have popped up here and there without me making any serious attempt to form them. The last time I drank a soft drink I actually felt disgusted because I didn’t enjoy the taste (my preference is moving towards drinking water). I didn’t force myself to stop drinking soft drinks. I simply said to myself: I would like to start drinking more water and removing soft drinks from my diet. And I went in that direction with the acceptance that I might be having a soft drink occasionally.
Another great advantage to half habits is that some habits help reinforce each other!
Cutting down on coffee helps you get more quality sleep, which helps make it easier to wake up early, which gives you more time to do quality work, etc.
You transition towards new habits without feeling burdened by unrealistic commitments and can enjoy making progress in your life.
And what’s the other way you can form habits easily…?
Timeless Habits
One of the major obstacles we face in trying to adopt new habits into our lives is simply that we don’t have the time to do so!
If you want to start exercising, you need to fit exercise sessions into your schedule. But that involves some planning, and you might already have too many commitments that stop you from squeezing in exercise into your busy week.
But that doesn’t mean you cannot develop new and positive habits!
Not having the time is no reason to remain stagnant. There are many small adjustments and changes we can do here and there that require no extra time whatsoever!
Do you need any extra time to replace coffee with green tea, or soft drinks with water?
Do you need any extra time to sprinkle your day with a few more smiles?
There are SO many ways we can move forward in life without needing to make any hefty time commitments, and these changes will help us realize how easy it is to form new habits and will also lead us to enjoy the many benefits these habits can bring to our lives!
Give these two ways a try, and find out how easy it is to form new habits and move your life forward!
The Golden Nuggets From This Article
To make the application of the lessons in this post easier to apply, here’s a summary of the key points mentioned, split between Theory (the ideas you should bear in mind) and Practice (what you need to do to make use of what you just read)
Theory
- Forming new habits isn’t hard, nor does it require a lot of willpower. The problem is with our approach to habit-formation
- There are two simple ways to habit-formation that makes it easy to accomplish: 1) Half Habits 2) Timeless Habits
- Half Habits: Rather than aim to form a new habit fully, aim to make progress in the direction of the new habit. You will gradually re-adjust, and the approach is much more natural than expecting to form a new habit with a single leap
- Timeless Habits: There are many, many habits we can develop that require absolutely no time commitment. Replacing coffee with green tea, or soft drinks with water doesn’t take any extra time to do but can bring about great benefits into our lives
Practice
- Half Habits: For all the habits you intend on adopting, instead of focusing on the destination (forming the new habit fully), think of the next step you can take in the direction of these habits and make a slight adjustment to adopting these habits
- Timeless Habits: Come up with ways you can make simple changes to what you eat, how you behave, etc. that can bring about positive results in your life, without needing to free up any time on your schedule to form these new habits
To read more from Haider Al-Mosawi, check out his blog: Personal Growth Map.
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译文:
轻松养成新习惯的两个简单方法
养成新的习惯一直被视为有很强的意志力和决心的一小部分人才能侥幸实现。其余的人只是糊里糊涂的为使自己满意而改变自己，还是默认了以前旧的生活方式。
但是问题并不在于养成新的习惯，而是养成新习惯的方式使我们的生活变得更费力。
要让你的生活变得更简单，这里有两个容易的方法帮助你轻松的取得成效。
半个习惯
最常见的养成新习惯的方法就是从旧的生活方式向新的直接转变，没有过渡。你本来吸烟，但是想戒烟，你喝咖啡但是却想戒除，你从不锻炼却加入了健身俱乐部每天锻炼。为了实现你的目标，你得依靠强大的意志力和决心。
当你体验过一次又一次后，你的意志力便一周周的减少（如果你可以坚持几周的话），你的决心也不那么强了，最后你还像以前那样，不变得更糟已经不错了！
那是因为从一个生活方式向另一个完全转变是不切实际的。这好象是给你的意志，身体，灵魂带来了一次冲击，所以它们会竭力反抗以回到它们熟悉的方式。
我听到你在问，那要怎么办呢？
我为你提出这么个好问题而感到开心。:)
我推荐的解决方案就是先养成半个习惯。
那是什么意思？
你只要在养成新习惯的方向走一步而不是完全的投身于其中。
例如，如果你的身体已经不知道体育锻炼为何物了，那就不要马上到体育馆去锻炼，不如在家做点小运动。那样的话，你就不会因为没有每天去体育馆而感到不安，你也不会做一些令身体抵抗的事。这是个小小的调节，坚持对你来说不会很难。
养成半个习惯的好处是你意识到了从旧习惯到新习惯间会有过渡。你意识到了这是很自然的事，而不是自己没做到。
你的坚持会变成你的进步，而不会造成你的旧瘾复发！
“哦！太棒了！这个礼拜我运动了四次！”而不是“我的天啊！我这个礼拜没有运动到三天！”
懂得先养成半个习惯可以使你有效的养成许多习惯，并且没有压力。
我曾成功戒掉咖啡和软饮料，开始每天写博客，减少我的食量，每天早起，并轻松的养成了许多小习惯。我最近一次喝汽水时甚至感到厌恶，因为我不喜欢那个味（我的口味已经开始向喝水靠近了）。我没有强迫自己戒掉软饮料，我只是对自己说：我更愿意喝多点水，从饮食习惯里剔除软饮料。并且想我有时候还是能偶尔喝一喝汽水的。
养成半个习惯的另一个优势是有些习惯会互相巩固！
不喝咖啡使你的睡眠质量更好，帮助你更容易早起，使你有更多时间做高质量的工作，等等。
向新习惯过渡，并不需要为了不真实的决心而感到有压力，能使你享受你生活中的进步。
其他能使你轻松的养成新习惯的方法有什么呢？
不受时间影响的习性
我们在养成新习惯时遇到的困难之一就是我们没有时间去做。
如果你想开始锻炼身体，你要把锻炼这个项目排进你的时间表。但是那需要一些计划，你也可能无法在繁忙的时候抽空锻炼。
不过那并不意味你就无法发展新的积极的习惯。
没时间不是停滞不前的理由，我们有很多不需要花多余时间就可以做到的调节和改变。
你需要很多时间不喝咖啡去喝绿茶吗？还是不喝汽水只喝水？
每天多笑一些会需要很多时间吗？
有那么多轻松的方式使我们可以在生活中取得进步，这些改变能使我们意识到养成新习惯是多么的容易，并使我们能享受这些习惯给我们生活带来的益处。
这两种方式都试一下，你就知道养成新习惯，完善生活是多么容易。
这篇文章的金玉良言
为了使文中的经验更易于运用，这里是我所提到的重点的概括总结，我将理论与实践相分开，这样就可以分清什么是应该记在脑子里，什么是你应该去做的。
理论
· 养成新习惯一点也不难，也不需要很强大的意志力。问题在于我们养成习惯的方式。
· 有两个方法使新习惯的养成变得很容易： 1) 先养成半个习惯 2) 养成不受时间影响的习性
· 先养成半个习惯： 与其一下子养成一个新习惯，还不如先朝这个习惯的方向迈近一些，你要渐渐的重新调节，这个方式更自然，而不是一撮而就。
· 养成不受时间影响的习性: 有许多习惯的养成不需要我们花很多时间，喝绿茶而不是咖啡，喝水而不是汽水都不需要我们刻意花时间去做，但都给我们的生活带来了很多益处。
实践
· 先养成半个习惯: 对于你想养成的习惯，不要急于最终的结果（完全养成这个习惯），而是要想一想你下一步要做什么，再自我调节来适应这些习惯。
· 养成不受时间影响的习性: 稍微改变你的饮食方式，或你的行为方式，等等，可以使你的生活有积极的改变，而不需要为此将你的时间表空出来。
更多请关注Haider Al-Mosawi的博客“个人成长地图”。