Each of us has habits we wanted to break. Smoking, eating, love life, driving; habits abound in our lives. Some habits support our well-being, like how we choose to eat, how we choose to exercise, or how we choose to deal with other people. Other habits simply drag us down, cost us money, and generally add to the gunk of daily life. So how do we change a habit?
The most successful way to change a habit is to replace that habit with a more affirmative action or thought. Simply telling ourselves we are not going to do that anymore doesn’t work. We want to fill the space in our lives which used to be held by that habit with the thing we want to be our new habit otherwise the old habit still has a place to return and grow again.
Some very knowledgeable folks, including the author of A Complaint Free World, Will Bowen tell us that it takes about 21 days to change a habit from one we no longer wish to have to a habit we do wish to have. Can you image that the habit you have which has come to rule you can be banished in only three weeks? It can! You will have to be an active participant of course, you will have to identify the habit you don’t want, then identify what you would like to have as a habit instead. 21 days is all it takes, and if you slip and have more calories than you have targeted today, even if is day 19 of the 21 day process, you go back to day one. 21 days of success in doing what you want rather than what you don’t want, pretty cool huh?
