One Way to Look at Things

Once you have selected your new healthy or lifestyle habits, it is time to do them and keep doing them. Starting your new habits is the easiest part. It is sticking to them day after day that is the biggest challenge. Here are some tips for making your habits stick.

Why it is Hard to Stick to a Habit

First of all, you should understand exactly why it can be difficult to actually stick to a habit. Creating a new habit is truly the simple part. Sometimes, it is just a matter of not having the right motivation, but in other cases, the problem is in the habit itself.

If your habit is too difficult, you probably won’t stick to it very long. See if there is a way to simplify it.

A habit you can stick to is one you are able to enjoy. Even habits like exercising can be enjoyable if you choose the right one. Hate running? Then do something else! Find something you enjoy, this will make the habit ten times easier.

You need to fit it into your lifestyle. Just because someone else is starting a habit where they get up every day at 3 am doesn’t mean that is going to work for you. It needs to be attainable.

Find Your Purpose

When you are still in the process of choosing a new habit, make sure you understand why you are doing it. You really need to understand the purpose and how it will benefit you in order to stick to it. This means analyzing the habit, how it will change your life or routine, and what the lasting benefits can be. Sure, you want to make your bed every morning, but do you know why it is important to you? This is what you need to focus on first in order to have a habit you can stick with.

I will give you a great example for me... A couple of years back I had some pretty serious health problems. I was over 300 lbs and having some issues. My doctor gave me a simple choice to lose weight, eat better, or die. As you probably guessed, I chose to lose weight and eat better. Anyway, I had a purpose. I will be honest, it was not hard to change my eating habits after that doctor visit (and subsequent hospital stays).

Remember Only One at a Time

This is something you will hear repeated over and over again regarding forming new habits, because of how important it is. Start with just one new habit at a time! Once you feel comfortable and confident in your new habit, you can then start adding more to it. When we look at my example of losing weight and eating better, that is exactly what I did. I made 1 small change. I found a simple way to make a smoothie (with fresh fruit and lettuce) and began to have that for lunch instead of a sandwich. After a couple of weeks of consistently doing that, I began to have a smoothie for breakfast too. Once I had gotten into that habit, I began trying to eat better at night and not go out as much. You see, I did one thing at a time to improve. Not all at once.

Commit to a Short Period of Time First

It helps to track your habit and try to pick a short period of time where you will do it every day. A good way to start is by doing it for 30 days, though some you might want to extend to 90 days as this is the amount of time it really takes for a new habit to take effect.

Improving yourself only takes a couple of minutes a day. For many of us, we think changing our lives for the better is a monumental task. The idea of improving ourselves can sound like we need a lot of motivation, and that in itself can lead to procrastination. But there's no hocus pocus to improving personal growth - everything starts with a habit.

A fail-proof habit, called a micro habit, when done consistently and repeatedly, creates a big impact on our lives. When we make these small habits, we might not see immediate results, but what we are actually doing is building the foundation for bigger behavioral changes.

Here are small but important habits that can promote your personal growth.

Develop A Morning And Night Routine

While most of us already have a routine, the routine we have grown accustomed to might not be working in our best interest. Try to look at your own morning and night routines - what are the things you do first thing in the morning, and what are your activities before going to bed? Chances are, there are some things about them that you can improve.

First, you can try stretching upon waking up. Morning stretches can boost your energy levels and improve blood circulation. Another thing you can do is to drink a glass of water upon waking up to increase alertness and kick-start your metabolism. One easy habit you can also do in the morning is to make your bed.

The entire room will look more organized if once you have made your bed and the whole thing only takes less than 5 minutes to do. Wouldn't it be nice to come home to a nicely made bed, too?

To help you wind down from a busy day, a calming night routine can greatly help. Unplug from social media once you get to bed and pick up a book instead. Start by reading a few pages first, then slowly increase it. Not a big reader? You can try listening to an audiobook. Reading at night, opposed to being glued to your phone, can help you achieve a deeper and more restful sleep.

Avoid Eating At Your Desk

You might think that you are accomplishing more by working while eating, but in reality, you are just overworking yourself. While it is understandable that we want to maximize our time to get a lot of things done, not being able to take adequate breaks throughout the day can lead to an increased level of stress and work anxiety.

It is almost certainly not mindful eating either. When we eat while working, we may not notice that we are consuming too much food or barely eating at all. By eating away from your desk, we take a quick break to refresh our minds and simply recharge.

Listen To A Podcast Or A Watch A TED Talk

Podcasts and TED talks are amazing sources of information. We can choose from a wide variety of topics that interest or intrigue us, and by the end of a talk or discussion, not only were you entertained, but you are also a bit smarter now than 15 minutes ago.

You can listen to a podcast on the way to work or watch a quick TED talk while taking a coffee break. The nuggets of wisdom and knowledge from these sources are a way to promote personal growth.

Go Outside

When things get stressful, overthinking, anxiety, or disagreements can cloud our judgments. We need to refocus our perspectives to gain a better insight and arrive at a decision. One way to declutter your mind is to simply go outside. Take a five-minute walk or simply breathe in the fresh air. Sometimes, we need to remove ourselves from the situation we are in to help us think more clearly. Just by being outside and taking a quick break can also improve your creat...

Taking care of ourselves goes beyond just ensuring we look well and healthy from the outside. Apart from caring enough to staying in shape physically, hitting the gym, eating a balanced diet to stay fit, we often overlook nurturing ourselves from the inside.

This may, unfortunately, be due to the reason that we always simply judge ourselves by how we look outside. We sometimes don't appreciate that not all smiling faces reflect real joy, but are just a façade. Many people are struggling with their emotions, hiding the truth about how they really feel or simply don't know how to deal with life's ups and downs.

The hardest things to deal with are those that people don't see because these are the things that impact us the most. Everyone deals with all kinds of emotions daily and we all should be able to deal with it healthily, even if they're not always positive or easy. What most people don't realize is that, sometimes, all it takes is a few tweaks to their habits. The way many or even most people feel inside is just a direct reflection of their daily routine and things they're constantly exposing themselves to.

If you know that changing some of your habits could dramatically impact the way you feel inside, you are on the right track to feeling much better. You have a great deal of influence on how you feel, whether you know it or not, based on what you're doing and consuming regularly.

Making these habits a part of your life can help boost your mood!

* Making an effort to Get Moving - We never run short of this advice; make exercise a part of your daily routine. It is a proven fact that physical activity not only helps keep our physical bodies fit but also nourishes us mentally and emotionally. Though it can take some effort for physical activity to become part of people's routine, making an effort to do that will always benefit you physically, mentally and emotionally.* Getting Enough Sleep and Rest - We all need to give our brains enough time to rest by getting adequate sleep each night and, if necessary, to even supplement that with a quick 20-to-30-minute power nap during the day. If you're using your brain heavily at work, you'll benefit from squeezing a quick day nap into your daily routine. Sleeping enough hours each day enables the immune system to function at its peak as well. People are more alert and in a better mood with sufficient sleep and rest.* Keeping A Journal - Using a journal to unload your thoughts and emotions regularly gives you a private space to process what you're going through during the day. Having a bad day? Write it out. Feeling good? Write out the reasons why you feel grateful for it. Keeping a daily gratitude journal has proven to be one of the most effective ways to stay happy and keep a positive disposition every day.* Starting Your Day with A Healthy Breakfast - It's not only important to eat healthy to stay physically fit; it's even more crucial because food nourishes you from head to toe, including your brain! What we eat often has a direct impact on what we feel and how we function daily. Being more mindful of your daily consumption is not just for your fitness, but it can be key in managing your energy levels as well.* Socializing More & Lessening Your Social Media Use - More and more people limit their socialization to social media, and it's not the healthiest way to go about it. Many people are not completely aware that they're isolating themselves socially, but becoming more and more vulnerable to the toxicity that overflows on the internet. Although this has been a growing lifestyle trend, sometimes, doing the exact opposite could dramatically enhance your life and your mood for the better.* Take a Walk and Get Some Fresh Air - Being with nature is an immense luxury not everyone can get access to,

A baby who is learning how to walk does not become a walker overnight. They will first roll over, then soon they will be crawling, and before you know it, the baby is beginning to take their first steps. Once mobile, their goal of exploring the rest of the house on their own can be fulfilled. What then can we learn about goals and habits from babies?

Two words - baby steps.

When we have goals, we often neglect the part where we think small. Oftentimes, we focus on the end result so much that we forget that big things start from small beginnings. While the big, hairy, audacious goals we come up with can motivate us, it is the small, baby steps that help us reach those goals.

Micro habits are those baby steps we can take that can get us to our bigger goals. These small, seemingly trivial actions, when repeatedly and consistently done, can lead to life-changing results. Micro habits provide the foundation for bigger and more profound changes or goals in your life.

The idea here is that these micro habits are small and do not require too much effort on your part to carry out. Because you are not putting your willpower to the test, it is almost impossible to fail at doing them. It is easier to stick to these habits, and over time, achieve your desired outcome.

What micro habits you form depends on the bigger habits or goals that you wish to achieve eventually. Incorporating many micro habits over time can greatly transform a person's life for the better.

Here are some micro habits you can start doing that can make a big difference in your life.

Read A Page Of A Book Every Night

Reading for pleasure has a lot of benefits - an increase in vocabulary, better critical thinking, and a more developed self-awareness are just some of the many positive results of reading for pleasure. But for some, the act of reading a book is just not a habit, because the time has rarely been set aside to do it. You can start by reading a single page every night. No matter how tired you are, try to make time to read just one page. Before you know it, you will have finished the entire book.

Prepare For The Next Day Before Going To Bed

For most of us, our mornings are usually rushed - missed breakfast, a hurried shower, etc. To avoid the rush in the morning, do something that your morning self will thank you for by preparing for the next day before calling it a night. It can be as simple as preparing your clothes for tomorrow or prepping your lunch.

Even just decluttering your work bag can create a big change in terms of your productivity. Spending less time on these trivial things at a critical time will allow you to spend more time on things that truly matter.

Change The Bad Habit One Step At A Time

All of us have formed negative habits over the years, whether it be smoking or staying up too late. One reason why these habits were formed is that we get immediate gratification from doing it as opposed to forming positive habits that may take longer. One way to lessen and eventually banish a bad habit is to gradually decrease it.

If you want to quit smoking, you can start by smoking one less cigarette a day and maybe replace it with a healthier habit of talking a five-minute walk, the same amount of time that will take you to finish that one smoke.

If you wish to have a longer and more restful sleep, start by going to bed an hour earlier than your usual time. You might not get to sleep immediately, but by going to bed an hour earlier, you have already started to form a micro habit that will give you more sleep.

Excellence begins with a habit. But we all know that habits, especially the positive ones, are not always easy to develop. Often, we intend to create new habits but eventually abandon them after some time, usually because we simply cannot make them stick, because our willpower lets us down.

One way we set up ourselves to fail in making new habits stick is when we want to develop big, life-changing habits in a short amount of time. This is where the concept of micro habits can help.

So what are micro habits? Just like what the name suggests, these are small habits that we can do consistently and relatively easily. They can lead us into our bigger goals and help improve our lives in the long run.

Here's an example to illustrate the idea. You want to drink more water, since you have noticed that you don't drink enough water in a day, and we all know that water is good for you. But you are having a hard time remembering to drink throughout the day.

To help you in achieving your goal of drinking more water, you can simply set a couple of alarms on your phone to remind you. That simple act of setting alarms instead of relying on unreliable memory is a micro habit that trains you to develop the bigger habit of drinking sufficient water.

By having these micro habits, we make bigger, more life-changing habits easier to develop and stick to. Here are some ways in which we can do to create workable new habits and actually stick to them.

Come Up With A Plan

Before starting to develop a new habit, the outcome must be clear to you first. What is it that you want to achieve by developing a new specific habit? By defining it, you are able to make this new habit more personal to you and therefore more realistic to achieve. Once you are able to identify the outcome, you can think about what micro habits you can form which can help you achieve the goal.

Say you want to run your first marathon. Being able to run a marathon takes time to practice and develop enough stamina to last throughout the course. To help you achieve your goal of running a marathon for the first time, you can plan a routine of running daily every morning.

To help you stick to that routine, a micro habit that you can practice is to lay out your running clothes the night before so you can simply get up and go first thing in the morning. The act of setting out your running clothes and shoes is not exactly a big change, but it will help you achieve your desired outcome.

Allow Yourself Time To Develop New Habits

Old habits die hard, and new ones can be difficult to form. We need to understand that habits take time to develop. According to some research, it takes a minimum of 21 weeks to cement new habits, and this is just an estimate. Instead of giving yourself a specific time frame in developing a new habit, what you should do is to aim for repeated and consistent practice.

Coming up with micro habits can help you with this step because tiny changes are easy to do consistently. If you fail to do it for one day, there is no need to punish yourself for it. You can simply look at the factors that led you to miss the action and think of ways to address it. By not giving yourself a time limit, you allow yourself to further examine your plan and constantly improve it as you go along.

Keep Track Of Your Progress

When trying to develop a new habit, it is important to keep track of your progress as a reminder of how far you have come. Seeing how often or how seldom you have done the action can motivate further motivate you. More importantly, if needed,

"Humans are creatures of habit." How many times have you heard the saying? Since we're creatures of habit, it would be a breeze to create good ones, right? Err, no. It takes more than knowing what habit you want to form to actually develop and make them stick.

Because we are creatures of habit, it can be very hard to change a behavior that has become second nature to us. But changing is necessary when those habits have consequences that are impacting our lives. If you have identified some habits that you need to break, you need to replace them with better ones.

Before you can make a change to any of your behaviors to create a good habit, it's necessary to examine your existing habits. What do you need to add or subtract? For example, if you want to create the habit of exercising every morning, you need to identify what you are currently doing in the morning that you would no longer do. Discover your triggers and obstacles. What usually triggers your behaviors, and how do you react to them?

Here are some tips that will help you get started towards a better you:

Develop a Plan

Decide exactly when and where your behavior will take place. Intentions like "I will exercise more starting next week" is too vague. You have to set your intentions clearly and specifically. Then you need to devise a strategic plan on how you will work on your new behavior. Give it a real slot in your schedule so it will be done when it should.

Creating a laundry list of the habits you want to do all at once is a recipe for failure. Instead, pick one habit that you want to change before you attempt to do another one. Creating a good habit requires effort, especially if you're replacing a bad habit that has been established in your system for so long. Start so small that you hardly need willpower to do it. For example, instead of running on a treadmill for 30 minutes, you can start with 5 minutes. This will help establish the actual behavior first; then you can move to increase the effort once you get used to doing the new behavior every day.

Use Visualization and Affirmations

Visualizations and affirmations are great tools that make it easier for you to adopt a new behavior. They allow you to feel and imagine yourself already enacting the new habit, which helps your subconscious accept it and become automatic. This programs your subconscious to adopt the habit faster.

Make a conscious commitment that you will develop a new habit. That means that if you plan to eat a healthy breakfast every day, you should commit to doing it as scheduled, never missing a day. Invest effort and really get hooked on your habit. Mark your calendar every time you accomplish it, and soon, you will find a chain that you don't want to break.

Reward Yourself

We develop bad habits because at some point they make us feel good, or they give us comfort. So when developing a good one, find a way to reward yourself for your small wins. Treat yourself to a movie or a spa. Buy something that you've always wanted to buy for yourself.

Make the reward appropriate to the goal - don't use food as a reward for dieting! Rewarding yourself for doing well reaffirms and reinforces the behavior, so your subconscious soon begins to associate it with the pleasure of the reward.

Enlist support from your friends and family members. When the going gets tough, they are the ones who will motivate you to push forward. Surround yourself with people who are on the same page as you, so you will be inspired to keep doing the behavior that you want to develop.

Bad habits are the things and behaviors we constantly do. They can ruin our health, waste our time and energy, and even destroy our relationships with other people. But why do we keep doing them? What creates bad habits in the first place?

Well, bad habits don't just pop out of nowhere; they are a result of certain triggers, not simply because you lack willpower. So if you are thinking about breaking a bad habit (which would be one of the best decisions you'll make), you must be aware of the cues that trigger your bad behavior.

The Habit Loop

Author Charles Duhigg, in his book titled "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," shared a framework that explains pretty well how we form habits. He calls it "The Habit Loop."

First, there's a cue (or reminder) that prompts our brain to be in automatic mode and tells us which habit to use. Next in the loop is the routine (either physical, mental, or emotional), and then there is a reward, which helps the brain decide whether this loop should be remembered for the future.

"Over time, this loop - cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward - becomes more ingrained and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges," he wrote.

Bad habits provide us with perceived benefits (rewards), which is why we keep on doing them. At the conscious level, we may know they are not good habits, not in our best interests. But at one time or other, our brain got a dopamine hit when we did whatever the routine is, and our subconscious now thinks it is serving us well to repeat it.

For example, you tend to reach your smartphone whenever you have idle time or when you are bored, because scrolling through your socials make you feel connected. At the same time, you know it can be a major source of distraction that can harm your productivity.

Alleviating Boredom

Stress and boredom are two of the biggest culprits in creating bad habits. Stress and boredom, however, can themselves be rooted in deeper issues, which you need to think about more clearly when you want to change your habits.

Everybody Is Doing It

Meanwhile, there are bad habits that we learn to do because everyone else is doing it. These are behaviors that you know are bad for you but have been generally accepted and people have been rationalizing doing them. So if you are trying to fit into a social group or wanting to be more accepted, you tend to do what everyone else is doing.

The Triggers

There are five main categories of cues that trigger a bad behavior: environment/location, time, emotional state, other people, and immediately preceding action.

Your surrounding is a huge influence on how you develop your behaviors, as well as the day or time they manifest. The bad habit of drinking too much alcohol, for example, can happen when you are at a bar, or every Friday and Saturday night.

How you feel at any given time is a regular trigger for many habits. Maybe you drink sweetened drinks when you are tired, or smoke cigarettes when you are stressing out about something.

Your social environment is also a huge contributor. Think about the people you are with when you indulge your bad habit. For instance, you tend to smoke when you are around certain people, or you tend to binge-eat when you are alone.

Then, the events that typically happen before you enact your habit can also be huge triggers. Maybe you immediately open your social media accounts after setting off the alarm in the...

When we aspire to change in our lives, we usually try to take things logically, but of course, there is huge emotion at play. We've been told to always have an end in mind, so we create goals. And, although goals are very important in providing direction and hopefully a preview of our desired outcome, it's fair to say that not all goals end up a success.

The fulfillment of a goal, especially a long-range one, is often subject to many factors. The success of a goal is determined by a person's motivation, determination, hard work, luck, access to opportunities, connections, and other factors also.

Many variables could affect a goal's chances of success, and a problem with many of them is that they are variable themselves. Take motivation, for example. At times we feel so strongly about a goal that we feel that it will be at the forefront of our minds every waking moment and while we sleep as well! Yet, at other times the same goal has us feeling very indifferent to it.

To be more certain of achieving our goals and desires, we shouldn't be simply relying on goals as much as we ought to rely on creating habits that take us to the attainment of our goals. Habits are proving to be better drivers of success because they're more instinctive, reliable, and automatic.

Goals versus Habits

How good would it be if we could set a goal and then put it on autopilot?

Goals are both logical and emotional, and there is often a struggle between them. They are very subjective. Goals depend mostly on extrinsic motivation and are subject to a person's level of motivation that understandably fluctuates, so often require 're-motivating.'. Goals are created by our conscious mind and require that mind to apply the whip to get results. Because it is our conscious mind, it is subject to forgetting.

Habits are intrinsically sourced and directed. Habits are instinctive and automatic. Habits are internally set. They are the domain of the subconscious mind. Whichever habits a person is subscribed to will ultimately set their path and often, even their destiny in life. When firm and established habits exist, it's possible to predict results. A person's habits are so deeply ingrained and interwoven into their character, that much of what they choose to do and could potentially do is determined by it.

Stephen Covey, the famous author of The Seven Habits book says, "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny."

Without allied habits, motivation needs to be strong enough to cause action and constant repetition of behaviors that lead to success. If not, there will be a lesser impact on efforts that result in the successful achievement of a goal.

Merely Relying on Goals Can Be Ineffective

Studies have shown how the actual process of goal setting impacts people's brains and from the standpoint of someone who wants to succeed, it is not very encouraging. Some research claims that goals tend to make people more complacent.

Our brains tend to label the goal-setting as an achievement of the desired outcome itself, even when we have not yet put in the effort to achieve it. This could be a very risky misrepresentation of goals for someone who needs to put in a lot of work to make something happen.

The effect could be more pronounced when people willingly tell others about their goals. Though it's seemingly a good thing to commit to a goal by telling other people about it, it may not serve you well, and it could backfire. According to some recent research, a person has better chances of succeeding if they keep thei...

Habits are what make you the kind of person you are, and the personality that you portray. Your habits reinforce your beliefs; if you know your belief system is not supporting you, changing your habits can be an effective way to reframe them.

Habits form over time, and when you repeatedly do the behaviors, they become automatic. There are habits or behaviors, good and bad that you don't even have to think about because you've been doing them for a long time. Habits are a product of repetition and learning, a point wherein a behavior does not need conscious attention.

How Do Habits Form?

Habits are a common part of our life that play a crucial role. Habits are formed on a psychological and physiological basis. When we do a specific behavior for a number of times, it triggers connections in our nervous systems that affect other sensory and motor actions. This is the essence of so-called 'muscle memory.'

These connections are further enhanced and strengthened as the triggers are repeated, and responses are obtained. In the psychological aspect, habits are formed through learning and retaining what we've learned.

Science has shown the cycle of how habits work, which is what we call the 3 R's of habit formation-Reminder, Routine, Reward. It is also known as the habit loop. Understanding the pattern of how habits form and work can help you form better habits to make better changes in your life.

The 3 R's of Habit Formation or The Habit Loop

Reminder

Reminder pertains to the cue or trigger that prompts the behavior. A reminder can be a piece of information that predicts the reward or what you would get out of doing a specific action. It could be a material reward, such as money, or intangible benefits, such as approval from someone or a personal sense of satisfaction.

When you want to create a new habit or break an old one, it is a fact that you are bound to fail if you rely solely on your willpower and motivation. Relying on memory to do a new behavior will also not cut it. You need a working reminder that will prompt you to do the new behavior that you want to develop.

Say, for example, you want to improve your reading habit. You could try to do it while drinking your morning coffee (or afternoon tea). Drinking coffee or tea is something you already do, so it can act as an effective reminder that you should read a new chapter of a book.

Routine

Routine refers to the action itself. You have to repeat the behavior many times until it becomes automatic. There is really no magic number of how many times you have to repeat a behavior before it takes hold as a habit. But as you begin to form a new habit, what is important is that you stick to it.

You may have several new habits you want to develop. The best way to go about this is to start small. Begin with a habit that is so easy you won't be able to say no. So, if you want to develop a better reading habit, you can start with a few pages each day or one chapter at a time. Be consistent and build up your performance. From there, you can increase the number of chapters you read or the frequency of your reading time per day.

Reward

Of course, you won't be able to stick to doing something if there is nothing in it for you. Reward is the benefit that you obtain out of doing the behavior. The reward doesn't have to be grand - as long as it is positive, it will help you keep going with the new habit you're trying to form.

It can be simply talking to yourself in the mirror and saying, "You did well!

One of the best pieces of advice you will receive about forming new habits is that you should only form one at a time. When you attempt to change too much at once, it almost always leads to failure. Trying to change too much at once will overwhelm and frustrate you. When this happens, you feel like you can’t accomplish what you set out to, and discourage you from trying again in the future.

Keep reading to learn more about the importance of forming just one habit at a time.

You Can’t Change Everything at Once

Remember that you can’t do everything at the same time, just like you can’t develop a bunch of new habits at once. Creating new habits requires a good amount of focus and concentration, so trying to conquer multiple at once is almost impossible for anyone to accomplish. If you have 10 different daily habits you want to change, choose ONE first, then move on to the next habit.

It is simply too much to try to change your entire life in one day and expect your mind to wrap around that, and suddenly become a completely different person. Just like when you create goals, you need to be realistic with your new habits and take your time.

You Want to Succeed

Trying to do too much at once is just setting yourself up to fail. If you really want to create lasting, lifelong habits, you need to choose them one at a time, and only focus on one new habit at once.

As an example, imagine you are starting a business. When you start a new business, you take it one step at a time. You think about the type of business before choosing a name, then you decide on financing, before hiring people. You are not going to create the entire business from beginning to end in one day, and be making money by tomorrow.

Be patient and give yourself time. This is how you will succeed when creating new habits.

You Need Complete Focus on Your Habits and Goals

Remember that creating new habits is similar to goals. You want complete focus and concentration on your new habits, otherwise it is going to be hard to stick to them. By choosing one habit at a time, you increase your chances of success, gain momentum, and can track your progress before you even think about other habits you want to add to your daily life.