Why Our Attempts at Making New Habits Fail - How to Make Habits Stick
Why Our Attempts at Making New Habits Fail - How to Make Habits Stick
We often here sayings such as “It takes 30 days to make a habit stick.” Or 3 weeks, or 60 days, or 120 days, or whatever number is thrown our way. Why is it that we do these new habits for this time frame and it doesn’t stick?
I will break this up into two parts, Time & Frequency and Mindset.
Part 1: Time & Frequency
The question then; is there really a magic number of time before a habit sticks?
I always felt there was something inherently wrong with our way of sticking a time frame. Upon reading the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, it was revealed to me why that is.
It is not about time, it is about repetitions.
Here is the section from his book that stood out to me:
“One of the most common questions I hear is, “How long does it take to build a new habit?” But what people should be asking is, “How many does it take to form a new habit?” That is, how many repetitions are required to make a habit automatic?
There is nothing magical about time passing with regard to habit formation. It doesn’t matter if it’s been twenty-one days or thirty days or three hundred days. What matters is the rate at which you perform the behavior. You could do something twice in thirty days, or two hundred times. It’s the frequency that makes the difference. Your current habits have been internalized of the course of hundreds, if not thousands of repetitions. New habits require the same level of frequency. You need to string together enough successful attempts until the behavior is firmly embedded in your mind and your cross the Habit Line.”
-James Clear, Atomic Habits (pages 146-147)
Now, that being said, of course time does play a role. However, it is not the most valuable variable that we should be after. In order to make a new habit stick, you must make a commitment to the number of repetitions that you will take over a period of time.
As of now, I am re-learning and adding to my comprehension of the German Language with the goal of being able to converse t in the language by the end of the year.
My commitment is to take 3 sessions per day of at least 5 minutes. Sometimes these sessions are 5 minutes, other times they are 25 minutes. The important part is the commitment to the frequency. 3 sessions, every day, now through the end of the year.
We cannot control time, but we can control our repetitions. The time will take care of itself, the repetitions will get you the desired result.
Part 2: Mindset
Now that we understand that there is actual effort we need to put into making habits stick rather than waiting for a magical amount of time to pass, let’s take this a step further. There are two major questions I like to consider as it relates to creating a change:
Why do you want to implement this change?
Who do you need to be to embody this change?
If you do not know why you want to make a change, this is going to be an uphill battle. Inevitably, there will be days that you simply do not want to perform this new habit in the early stages.
For me, I want to learn German for a few reasons:
I want to challenge myself to learn a new language to fire my neural circuitry in different ways
I like the German language and enjoyed the time I spent learning it many years back
The sister company of the superfoods team I work with is based in Austria with the primary language as German and I want to be able to best serve that industry
Who do I need to be to be a fluent German speaker?
Well I need to be someone who practices German everyday. I need to be a student.
Now your why could be a bit more concise; for instance, I want to lose weight so that I fit into my wedding dress. Who do you need to be to lose weight?
You may need to be a runner, swimmer, hiker, or weight lifter.
You may also be someone who cooks organic food rather than someone who buys fast food or someone who practices yoga & stretching before bed rather than someone who drinks and smokes until 3am.
Whatever your goal is, we need to be very clear.
Clear in our plan, clear in our why, and clear in who we need to be to make this change possible.
Thank you James Clear for your amazing Atomic Habits book which gave me the spark to write this.
Written with love and gratitude,
Rob Carney
Learn about working with Rob: https://www.wholehealthconnects.com/
Get your Organic Superfoods here: https://ishoppurium.com?giftcard=savings - Code savings to save $50 on your first order.
https://www.mushroom-revival.com/ Code wholehealth to save 15% on EVERY order.
EMF Protection with Aires Tech: Code wholehealth to save 10%
https://www.airestech.com/?ref=173
Follow on Instagram and Facebook!