21 days to Success!

[ThaWholigan]

All it take is 21 days to make a new habit. Three short weeks. Anything you do consistently for that period of time will become habitual.

 

Want to be more healthier? Go to the gym for 21 days straight. Want more self awareness? Practice meditation for 21 days.

Ive tried this plenty of times for myself. Ive changed the type of food I eat, I stop smoking and even developed a habit of learning something new everyday.

If you ever come across someone who has been incarcerated, you could notice some of the habits they develop while in prison. I had a friend who did a 3 year bid. When he came home he would shower with his briefs and slippers. While using the bathroom, he would walk out with the toilet paper roll and hide it so no one would steal it (lol). His meals were Honey Buns and cup noodle soup (foods they serve in prison).

This information is helpful for two reasons:

First, you can program yourself to adopt to any new behavior for less than 30 days. Go and hit the gym for 21 days and then, you will notice a healthy habit you just develop. The new behavior will now be in place with out you having to think about it. Want to spend less money? Be frugal for 21 days and watch how your spending habits have changed.

Second, you can program yourself without being conscious of it. Let’s say you start hanging around people who have more money than you. You start living a luxury lifestyle were you spend more money than what you make. The money starts running out and your left with nothing but debt. That’s when its time to reprogram yourself and take the 21 days challenge.

One thing i learned from Supreme Understanding is

 

 

“Watch your thoughts, they become your actions, Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, the become your culture. Watch your culture, it becomes your life”

 

Anyone agree with this??

 

I'm starting a few challenges with 21 days the target in mind to test this theory.

 

1) Walking for more than half an hour every day

 

2) Maintenance cleaning of my house daily

 

3) Pushups, sit-ups and mountain climbers daily

 

4) No jerking off

 

Anyone have any habits they would cultivate or get rid of in 21 days?

[january2011]

Have come across this before and agree that it works.

 

However, there's also another system that can be used in conjuction:

 

trigger --> activity/habit --> reward

 

It helps to create good habits and to break bad ones. That is, you need to recognise your triggers for bad habits and create triggers for good ones. The reward helps to reinforce good behaviour (whether that's performing a good habit or not performing a bad one). As an aside, companies use this process in their marketing to get people to buy their products - I believe Procter & Gamble used it to market Febreze to housewives (as a reward after the household cleaning) in their ad campaigns.

 

Anyway, ThaWholigan, good luck with your goals. You might also find it useful to break it down so that they're SMART to make it easier for you measure successful completion. For example, you might wish to break down item number 2 to something like, "Spend one minute wiping down sink every morning before I have breakfast." And item number 3 could be "Do 20 press-ups every day as soon as I wake up."

 

I don't have any specific habits that I'd like to work on at the moment - but I do have a huge to-do list to work through during the summer break!

[denise_xo]

Great. I'm in.

 

- meditate 30 min daily

- reduce a certain habit to 30 min a day max

 

I think that will do for the first three weeks. One thing at the time