How to create a new habit in 21 days

21 days is all that you need to create a new habit, to convert any action in something automatic. You can convert very healthy actions, as eat more fruits or vegetables, breathe deeper or practice sport more often, into automatisms. It is just a matter of repetition.

Conditions for repetition

It is necesary to reach some conditions:

• What you want to make automatic has to be something important for you. You need to have a strong and highly emotionnal motivation for changing it.
• You need to know that any change will generate anxiety. Be prepared, this anxiety will reduce while the new habit will install itself.
• Repeat the action in the same conditions. If you want to make automatic, for example, the fact of eating an apple at midday, choose the perfect moment to do it.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat the habit. In less than two months it will be automatic. So you wouldn’t have to put energy in trying to do it, you wouldn’t wonder if you like it or not, it will just become one more automatic routine as driving, brushing your teeth or washing your hands.

How to break a habit?

Again, motivation is the key. The habit you want to quit has to be very important for you and you have to be convinced that you want to stop it. Then, you have to start changing the way in which you are doing things.

For instance, if you want to eliminate the habit of always eating a biscuit on your way to work, the first thing to do is to choose another path to go to your job, and when you are close to the place where you are used to eat the biscuit, for example, you can put a few drops of mint essential oil on your wrists.

At that moment of changing how we do things, the brain starts generating another way so we start to disconnect the “automatic pilot”. Obviously, the first time, you will realize that you did it again, and it will be late, but little by little your atention will overtake the action. The better would be to have alternatives to make something different when it happens.

We could convert our brain into our better ally. To create healthy habits, to finish with undesirable habits, everything is possible under a short-term. You just need the adecuate motivation and repetition during at least 2 months. Enjoy it to build up a new life according to what you dream about. Are you ready to try?