Habits and their formation. Types of habits Formation of bad habits and their prevention

We are what we constantly do. Perfection, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle.

Habit occupies a dominant role in our daily life - we do a lot of things automatically only because these actions have been developed by us as a result of repeated repetition. In other words, these are conditioned reflexes that are formed in the process of life.

How habits are acquired

1. Constancy. As you know, a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. Daily, constant actions gradually form into a habit. We walk the same route to work, we eat the same foods, we buy clothes from the same shops, and so on.
2. Positive emotions. A habit is easier to form if the actions cause the person to experience positive emotions. Conditions must be comfortable. It doesn't matter if the habit is good or bad. The habit of exercising in the morning is caused by the pleasure of exercise. And a person explains the habit of smoking with pleasure from the very process of smoking, although later he may want to get rid of it. One might object, but what about the fact that a person is used to going to a job he hates for years without experiencing joy? Isn't that also a habit? The answer is no, it is a forced necessity.

Myths about habits

It takes 21 days to form a habit

Perhaps this is the most common myth. You have repeatedly heard that any habit is formed in 3 weeks. This is not entirely true.
In the middle of the last century, the plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz deduced a curious pattern - in order to get used to his new face, the patient needed about 3 weeks.
In his book Psychocybernetics, he described his experience as follows: “As a result of numerous observations, it was established that it would take at least 21 days for a new mental image to fully form and replace the old one.” Not surprisingly, the book soon became a bestseller. The idea of ​​changing your life in less than a month seemed attractive to many.
But the followers completely missed the fact that the surgeon meant "at least 21 days", which in itself meant the possibility of a much longer period. This is why some habits take months or even years to form.

Habit is forever

Any habit can be broken by forming a new one. For example, even a heavy smoker who smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day can easily give up. To do this, you need to replace the negative habit of smoking with a positive one, say, the habit of leading a healthy lifestyle. Do you understand what we are talking about? Do not stick strictly to willpower, looking with envy at people who smoke, but to displace thoughts about smoking with the habit of taking care of your health.

It takes effort to get used to.

You can train willpower as much as you like, forcing yourself to go for a run every morning - one day you will break. You will look for excuses and you will definitely find them: either it’s raining outside the window, or you didn’t get enough sleep, or some other reason. And all because you do not have the most important thing - motivation. Without it, even the most titanic efforts are doomed, but motivation + efforts work wonders!
A simple truth follows from this: before you set the goal of acquiring a habit, figure out why you need it. You must have a clear motivation, a clear idea of ​​​​the final result, otherwise all efforts will be in vain.

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If you analyze your typical day, you will surely find dozens of habits that make life difficult. For example, checking the phone immediately after waking up, sitting in front of the TV or on the Internet, heavy meals at night. All these things, which can be hundreds, not only eat up time, but also have a negative impact on life. But in this article, we will focus on good habits, consider their nature, tips for forming, and also present a list of habits that every person needs to cultivate.

Any habit consists of psychological and physiological aspects. In the case of the psychological, with repeated repetition, there are no longer any difficulties of a volitional or cognitive nature. Whatever your attitude to the skill being formed, after a while you stop experiencing strong positive or negative emotions about it. So it can also work the other way around if the habit is bad for you. If we talk about physiology, then we mean the formation of stable neural connections.

If you seriously want to instill a few habits in yourself, they should ideally affect different areas of your life. Thus, after some time there will be a very tangible positive change in your personality. That is why we have compiled a list of habits from completely different areas of self-development.

Science has not yet found a clear answer to the question of how long it takes to form a habit. Yes, and will not be able to find, because everything is individual and depends on the complexity of the habit itself. An action becomes a habit when it is performed without opposition from the body. Therefore, there is a difference between drinking a glass of water every morning or jogging for several kilometers. The range can vary greatly - from 18 to 254 days. But the number 66 is considered canonical - it is this number of days that you will need to stop motivating yourself and showing willpower. After this period, you will perform actions on the machine and you will not need additional efforts. During this time, the brain ceases to resist and finally forms stable neural connections.

Contrary to popular belief, it's not that hard to start forming a habit. All it takes is a little motivation. Difficulties arise when a person ceases to motivate himself with the onset of regression. Primary euphoria disappears and weekdays come. This moment is the most difficult and most people give up their plans.

What you need to know about habits in the first place?

1. For any missed day, you will have to pay several.
2. The more complex the habit, the more days it will take to form it.
3. Habits associated with physical activity require more time.
4. Two important skills contribute to the formation of a habit of any complexity - the ability to motivate yourself and developed willpower.
5. Ideally, the habit should be formed immediately after waking up or before going to bed. In these cases, the resistance of the brain is partially absent, and the subconscious mind is an active participant.

Below we present you a list of extremely useful habits for a person who wants to develop in all areas of his life. You may not be able to implement all of them due to the short amount of time, so you can focus on a few. Do the formation of the rest from time to time, because even in this case they will have a positive effect on your brain and body.

Reading

This skill is in the first place for a reason. Reading almost any literature helps to concentrate and form creative and imaginative thinking. In the age of the Internet, our attention is constantly switching from one object to another, which leads to the fact that we cannot focus even during a conversation. Read every day and remember that reading social media feeds and price tags doesn't count.

Jogging

If you are thinking about health and exercise, and time is extremely short, practice jogging. They help to lose weight, are one of the most affordable types of exercises and involve the maximum number of muscles. Running improves your mood and automatically makes you think about proper nutrition.

Walk

It's not the same as running. While walking, you can focus on thoughts or notice things that you didn’t notice before. Many geniuses liked to take a walk during creative crises, and they knew almost everything about the ways of inspiration.

Meditation

Daily meditation practice will allow you to increase your emotional intelligence and awareness. You will be able to deal with stress much faster and more effectively and learn to keep your emotions under control. also teaches patience and concentration. Thus, by forming one habit, you cultivate many others.

brain exercises

Now there are many ways to improve. If you make it a habit to study, after a while you will see how much better they began to remember information, make decisions and concentrate. Choose the most uncomfortable games and puzzles for you. Only in this case you will achieve excellent results. Remember that the brain will resist very strongly, but only at first.

Eating fruits and nuts

We are accustomed not to think about the diet and eat what is at hand. Get in the habit of buying and having fruits and nuts on the table. The most affordable apples, peanuts, walnuts and pumpkin seeds. They contain incredibly important and useful substances. Make sure that when you run into the kitchen for a quick bite, these products are in your line of sight. They will not bring harm, but the benefits will be enough for the brain and to satisfy hunger.

Self-confidence

Oddly enough, but this is also a habit. We are what we do all the time. And if we make decisions and take actions in all situations, then we will become self-confident. Read books on the subject and immediately move on to practice. Self-confidence increases only when you receive confirmation of its presence. Keep the correct posture, do not mumble, and always clearly know what you want.

Planning

Planning is considered by many to be a boring process that also makes life predictable. This is true if it's okay for you to constantly leave your projects or goals halfway through. The beauty of planning is that it allows you to instantly clear your thoughts and focus on what's important. You will never again realize that you have been surfing the Internet aimlessly for an hour. Planning allows you to see, feel and appreciate time.

Lack of criticism

Hundreds of psychologists after him wrote about this. Any criticism leads at best only to a short-term result. And at worst, it leads to failure and the collapse of relationships. Criticism causes a person to feel resentment and a desire to defend himself. Everyone can criticize, for this you do not even need to be any reasonable person. Therefore, if you, for example, do not like the results of another person’s work, learn to indirectly and unobtrusively point out his mistakes and not cause a negative reaction in him. With this method, a person will draw conclusions himself and do everything as it should. Therefore, train yourself to suppress the first desire to criticize and think about how to get around the protection of a person.

A diary

The benefits of journaling are underestimated. But this way you can find an interlocutor who understands you - yourself. The opportunity to reflect and stay with thoughts one on one is a very useful pastime, because most of our time we do not think, but simply absorb information.

All these habits will allow you to bring your life, body and mind to life in a relatively short time, which will invariably have a positive effect on work or study. Good luck in forming good habits!

Not so long ago, people mistakenly considered certain habits to be character traits. Everyone knows that smoking and drinking alcohol are bad habits. But laziness, an irresponsible attitude to tasks or throwing things around anywhere are qualities of character, there's nothing you can do about it.

And that's not true! Studying the mechanisms and causes of the formation of character traits, psychologists came to the conclusion that the whole complex of our daily actions is based on habits. We acquired some in childhood and can hardly imagine how it happened, while others we got in adulthood and vaguely guess about the reasons for their origin.

We know many ancient sayings and parables about the influence of habits on character, but I will give here only one:

“Sow an action, you reap a habit; you sow a habit, you reap a character; you sow a character, you reap a destiny.”

And this means that we can get a happy fate - but for this we will have to consciously take up the formation of good habits.

How long does it take to form a habit?

Unfortunately, bad habits take much less time to form than good ones. Why do parents so zealously warn their children against experimenting with cigarettes, alcohol and drugs? Because it is enough for people prone to addictions to smoke or drink a glass of vodka once to be in the clutches of vice. But the development of good habits takes much longer - up to several months.

No doubt you have heard that to form a habit, you need to repeat the same action for 21 days. Where did this statement come from?

Its author is cosmetic surgeon Maxwell Maltz, a cosmetic surgeon from the USA, who noticed in the 50s of the last century that the patient needs about three weeks for psychological adaptation after the operation, the awareness of a new image. He described this effect in his book Psychocybernetics, noting that it took him three weeks to form a new habit.

But the thing is, Maltz was talking about a minimum of three weeks. Consolidation of different habits requires a different amount of time - from 21 days to several months. It all depends on how far the desired result is from the state of affairs at the very beginning of work on oneself.

If a person goes in for sports, eats right and takes care of professional development, this indicates the presence of the practice of self-development. A new useful habit - for example, waking up an hour earlier - will be given to him easily and quickly. But for someone who is used to lying on the couch and eating one serving of fried potatoes after another, it will be much more difficult to make an effort on themselves - which means that the process will take longer.

Even the same person at different stages of development of self-discipline will spend a different amount of time on the formation and consolidation of new habits.

The duration of the work depends on the complexity of the implemented action. For example, accustoming yourself to wash your face with cold water in the morning is much easier than jogging. The first action requires less effort and takes less time than the second, so it is easier to persuade yourself to do it.

How to form a habit, where to start and how not to abandon this noble cause halfway? You can find out more how to develop a good habit by clicking on the link, so we will not delve into step-by-step “recipes”.

Let me remind you of just a few important points:

• In any case, the most important thing is the first step. If you want to make your life better, don't wait until Monday. For some good beginnings, you don't even have to wait for tomorrow - something can be done right now.
• Easy and pleasant habits are fixed easily, difficult ones require a lot of time and effort. Therefore, try to connect the process of forming a habit with pleasant emotions. For example, you decide to start eating right. An organism grown on hamburgers, ice cream and sausage will desperately rebel, inciting the psyche to act with it in the same gang against the captain, that is, you. Your team was deprived of what they liked, so they need to give something in return. Pleasant music and beautiful plates, on which vegetables and fruits are artistically laid out, will please your rebels. If they are not aesthetes, distract them with something else: a walk in the park, going to the cinema, a dog show, or shopping. You need to prove to your starving subconscious that life has not become worse - it just has changed a little, and perhaps even for the better.
• Don't overdo it. In the first three days, the new lifestyle may seem easy and pleasant, which can lead to an overdose. “I thought it was hard, but it's so cool! I can do everything! Another 20 laps around the stadium, and I will be almost perfect! To prevent this from happening, you need to think of a certain pace of work and not deviate from it, even if it seems that you are capable of more. The first few days the body lives by inertia and consumes the accumulated resources, then fatigue and dissatisfaction with oneself begin to increase. In general, a month is better than a week to exhaustion.

When improving your own character, it is important to take care that get rid of bad habits. After all, you must admit: if a person smokes, then morning jogging will not add health - and maybe, and vice versa, will cause unexpected side effects.

Anyone who wants to be successful and fulfilled in their favorite profession should eradicate habits that interfere with work. We do not even consider these cunning animals harmful - but they greedily devour our working time, attention and strength.

Habits need not only be formed, but also learn to understand what results each of them leads to. In order to “catch” secret saboteurs, I advise you to start a diary (you can use an electronic one) and write everything you do there. In a month, isolate the most regular actions in your notes and think about whether they are beneficial or vice versa, harmful to health and reduce performance?

Exist habits that prolong life: some of them may seem funny to us, but they really work.

With the knowledge and understanding of how a habit is formed, it is much easier to start changing your lifestyle. Of course, reaching a new level of self-development is always accompanied by difficulties, everything will not work out quite easily. But it is one thing to wallow helplessly in the dark waters of experiments, and quite another to consciously and thoughtfully go step by step towards a renewed "I".

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Habits count. They cannot be underestimated. After all, they significantly affect the fate of a person and are considered the defining positions of his capabilities. However, anyone can change their habits. Psychologists say that habit formation entirely subject to human desire.

Develop a good habit- the task is not easy. It takes a long time for it to come into being. The process of forming a habit consists of several stages. By following certain rules, you can easily develop a good habit.

Stages of habit formation

1. Habit formation starts with one. If you want to implement several habits at once, believe me, nothing will work. For example, go for a run every morning. Do this regularly, without breaks on weekends or holidays, for several weeks. When this activity is fixed in your mind, you can easily perform it. Once a habit is established, you can begin to form the next one.

2. To develop a good habit, you need motivation. Ask yourself a series of questions. For example: Why do you need it? How will this habit change your life? Write down your answers on a piece of paper. Remember, the answers must be honest.

3. Make a habit formation plan. Divide it into sub-points and gradually follow it step by step. This will help you achieve maximum results. And it will be much easier to control the stages of execution. Make a plan as detailed as possible, it does not hurt to make a daily routine and steadily implement it.

5. Remember, the key to developing a good habit– the constant performance of certain actions on a regular basis. Invented excuses or reasons for not fulfilling your plan will not help you achieve the desired result.

6. Create a diary, where you will write down your plans for developing good habits. Be sure to set deadlines for their implementation. After getting the result, fixing the habit, cross off what has been achieved from the plan and proceed to the next item.

7. Remember that it is not advisable to miss more than one day during the consolidation of the habit. However, it happens that you need to change your plans for one or two days. Believe me, this is serious, but acceptable. But, if you put off fixing the habit for three days, then you will need to start all over again. Don't blame yourself, just start over. The main thing is not to change your mind. Move towards your set goal.

8. Don't make concessions. After all, a small weakness can cross out your previous achievements. Do not indulge your weaknesses, otherwise you will not be able to consolidate a good habit.

9. Remember and drive yourself into a blind corner of the implementation of the plan is not worth it. Positive direction will help you develop a good habit. Give yourself small gifts related to the habit. For example, if you're a morning jog, get yourself a new leotard or running shoes. Any little things will be motivational and positive.

10. Make daily notes about your progress and achievements. Note how much time you spent today on developing a habit, and how much distance you covered.

11. Give yourself a positive break. Go to the park, sleep in, chat with friends. A positive attitude will allow you to accumulate strength for further work on the habit. Know that way habit formation gives more pleasure, so aim for it, and the end result will not be long in coming.

There is no way to say how many days it will take to establish a habit, psychologists tend to think that this process takes 21-40 days. Listen to your body, it will tell you exactly when the habit has become entrenched and has become your usual way of life.