Habits and Rituals

They say that our habits could either make us or break us and I guess that is right. Cultivate good habits and something good will happen. Feed bad habits and it will destroy you.

But how are we able to create good habits in the first place, according to a 2009 European Psychology Study, it takes about 66 days for a habit to be formed. But this number still varies according to the degree of difficulty of a habit to be formed. Because some habit is easier while others are not. For example, the habit of waking up early maybe much easier than the habit of having to exercise at least one hour per day.

No matter what kind of habit you need to cultivate, I have discovered that doing small things every day is what counts versus doing something big right away. Going big right away usually clouds our minds that although we are motivated at first, we end up demotivated on the latter part and we just choose to give up after because it seems so impossible.

So what have I learned? Simple, inspired by the book Mini-Habits, just create small habits every day and do not force yourself to make big changes right away. Just do some small things consistently and .let it flow until you will no longer notice that it is slowly becoming a habit.

As what the book greatly emphasized:

• Be the person with embarrassing goals and impressive results instead of one of the many people with impressive goals and embarrassing results.
• A mini habit is a VERY small positive behavior that you force yourself to do every day.
• It is not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It is what we do consistently.

Reflection: Small things are important especially if those small things are built every day. Just as a puzzle. A small piece every day will give you the outcome you want to achieve soon. You just have to put one small piece every day and do not give up until you see the whole picture or habit you are trying to form.

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