According to Google online dictionary the word habit defined is, “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up, ex: “we stayed together out of habit”.

One of the practices I like to do as I read and learn is to look up word definitions to get a better understanding of the word. It often opens up new insight and understanding for the topic I am studying. When I read the definition of the word habit I was actually shocked at what I read. The definition itself makes the word out to be more of a negative action than a positive one. We often associate the word habit with negative actions such as smoking, biting your nails, or drinking alcohol. There is also a huge market for selling items and resources to help people break bad habits. We hear of support groups for people with addictive habits to help them break the bad habits, but what about helping people to create good healthy habits? The word habit seems to have gotten a negative wrap and I want to bring some clarity to that and help you look at creating habits in a new perspective that will want you to better yourself to create healthy ones.

One thing required to build a habit is consistency and discipline. If creating a new habit is something you want to start, you are going to have to commit to being consistent with the action and be disciplined to stick with it. The benefits of creating healthy habits is definitely worth the commitment and discipline.

Here are a few things to consider when you are ready to begin a habit. 

A great book I recently read on creating habits is, “Atomic Habits” by author James Clear. It’s a great read that helps you to discover results in creating new healthy habits. Here are some great takeaways I got from the book that I feel would be great things to think about and consider before making the commitment to start a new habit:

• Take a look at your behaviors. Do they align with who you want to become?
• The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
• Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks
• Habits do not restrict freedom! They create it, the people who do not have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom.
• The ultimate purpose of habits is to solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible.
• One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behavior on top of it. This is called habit stacking

So now you are ready to start developing new habits in your life….where do you start? Well here are a few easy steps that will help you to begin your journey of creating new healthy habits.