21 Days to Form a New Habit

If you want to create a positive habit in your life, it can take at least 21 days for that habit to form in your subconscious and you have to recognize that forming a new habit is no easy undertaking. It won’t get formed on its own. And for that reason, you have to decide why and how important is that habit to you.

Ask yourself this:

What difference is it going to make to your day?
How will that habit help you achieve your goals?
How will that habit impact your life relationships?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you have to formulate your answers in an emotionally captivating language. By articulating them in an emotionally charged way, you are creating a new “narrative” of who you are. You are giving life to your new habit. Tell yourself this story before you go to bed. These mental image becomes the psychological glue, if you will, that holds you and your new habit together. Without that story, the habit won’t stick.

To keep yourself from getting off course, you would benefit from adding sounds, and even sensations of smell and touch to your story as you narrate it to yourself. You have to see yourself as already practicing your habit and living with its results. You’re not a person who wakes up early, you’re an early riser. You’re a runner. You’re a writer. You’re wealthy. By consciously identifying yourself as such, you’re demanding of yourself to work on the skills that will help you get there. The stronger and the more captivating your reasons are for your new habit, the more quickly you will acquire it and the more robust it’s going to be.

On the other hand, bland and unimaginative stories are easily forgotten. In fact, people who don’t tell themselves captivating stories are likely to lose their motivation so much so that they forget why they decided to take on their new habit in the first place. This happens because the story they told themselves wasn’t personal enough for the new habit to stick.