Atomic habits are small routines or practices that combine into the overall system of behaviors that make up your daily life. How in shape, happy or successful you are? All a result of your habits. Building a new habit is not easy and it often takes time (66 days on average), but it has huge positive benefits to your life. To start, think about what you do daily to generate awareness about your habits. From there, start your journey and build a system to improve them and become 1% better every day.

Change Your Identity

Decide for yourself who you want to be as a person. E.g. Your goal is not to go running but to be a healthy person. By going running you prove to yourself you are a healthy person. E.g. Your goal is not to read a book, but to be someone who reads books. By reading a page you prove it to yourself. Think about who you want to be and repeat it to yourself daily. Then prove it to yourself.

Best Way To Start a New Habit

To start a new habit you need an implementation intention: “I will do this HABIT (what), at this TIME (when), and this LOCATION (where).” E.g. I will go running, after I wake up in the morning, on the street. E.g. I will eat an apple, when I’m hungry, when I’m at home. Alternatively you can stack 2 habits. Therefor you can ask yourself: I will do this new habit, after I did this other habit.

Make It Easy To Do

You can make a habit easy by creating a tiny version of it. E.g. if you want to read a book, start with reading 1 page. If you want to run 1 hour, start with running 5 minutes. When it feels right you can scale up day by day. Think how you can create a tiny version of your new habit.

Secondly you can make your habit easy by reducing the time and effort to actually start your new habit. E.g. If you want to go running you want to have your running clothes ready. Make sure it takes less than 2 minutes to start your new habit at the moment you want to. Make the triggers to start your new behavior visible in your environment. E.g. fresh fruit in the fridge.

Make Your New Habit Attractive

Some new habits you may want to build doesn’t seem attractive at first but you can think about making them more attractive. E.g. when you go running, listen to your favorite music or take time to be creative and plan your day. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do. The brain is a lot more motivated to do something when it anticipates a real want, so take benefit of this!

Make The Reward Satisfying

The main reason you start your new habit is in anticipation of some of reward. To remain motivated to sustain your habit it’s important that you receive the reward immediately after having finished the habit. E.g. when you go running, reward yourself with a feeling of strength. Think about which immediate rewards your new behavior can give you. People often want to lose weight, but after 1 training they won’t have lost weight so there it’s important to find an immediate reward.

How To Stick With Good Habits

Commit yourself to stick to a fixed schedule. E.g. commit yourself to go running every 2 days or commit yourself to read 1 page every day. It is possible that you miss on your schedule because of some reason, but remember to never miss twice in a row. Keep track of your progress: it’s easier to keep yourself committed if you have a system to track your progress. E.g. it can be an app that tracks the days you went running or you can also do it manually. As a last you can make yourself accountable to others. You can do this by joining a club, practice with a friend so you create the obligation to do your habit. We often do more for others than for ourselves.