5 Rules of Successful Habit Formation

You have decided that you want to change your life. You’ve got a goal in mind. What can you do to ensure that you achieve success? You know that you will need to adopt certain success habits. The following rules will help you ensure successful habit formation.

Plan

Success habits don’t just happen by accident. They are created by design. Creating a plan will increase the chances of your successfully creating a new habit. Think of the plan like a roadmap. Include your starting point, the final goal and all the steps along the way. Don’t forget to note down potential stumbling blocks and how you will overcome them.

Many people include a vision board in their planning. This is a great way to see what your goal looks like and when placed somewhere that you will see it regularly can reinforce the goal you want to achieve.

Focus

You must be committed to your goal of creating a new habit. If you are not committed, then the chances of succeeding in attaining it reduce dramatically. It is important to believe that you will create your new habit and to be able to see yourself doing it.

Write down a positive statement that affirms you have created your new habit.

For example, if you want to create the success habit of waking early then you could write, ‘I wake at 5.00 am every day refreshed and ready to start my day. I use my extra time to run for 20 minutes and to eat a healthy breakfast. I spend 30 minutes reading a motivational book because I know that it helps me improve my knowledge and will inspire me. Before I start my work I make sure that I plan my day and make sure that I know which tasks are important for helping me to achieve my goal.’

Know Yourself

Self-knowledge is crucial to creating new habits, as well as eliminating old ones.

You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. It is important to know where you are right now, where you want to be and what needs to change.

By knowing yourself you can create a growth mind-set. This ensures that you understand that action is important as by taking action you create change which leads to success.