45 Small Habits That Had A Massive Positive Effect On These People’s Lives

How quickly you build a habit depends on a wide range of personal and outside factors, including the person’s character and willingness to put in sustained effort, as well as the environment where they’re learning. Another important aspect to consider is just how complicated the new habit is. Drinking an extra glass of water every day or starting to floss your teeth, for instance, is incredibly easy. Getting to grips with an active and dynamic lifestyle if you’re an exercise-hating couch potato, however, is very difficult.

Verywell Mind points out that, according to some studies it takes an average of 66 days (just over two months) to form a habit. However, there’s no hard consensus, and some research shows that the process can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days. Eventually, you’ll succeed. The challenge lies in staying committed to the new habit for a long period of time and motivating yourself even when you don’t see immediate results.

Meanwhile, PsychCentral notes that forming a habit takes anywhere between 59 to 70 days, but a lot depends on each individual. If someone’s being monitored or they have massive incentives to develop the new habit, then they might make the new behavior automatic more quickly. In the meantime, someone who hates every single minute of the process and doesn’t see the point of the new behavior will struggle far more.

What truly helps is starting small. Really small. Tiny, in fact! Many of us have grand ambitions about how we’ll completely overhaul our lives next Monday/week/month/year in the course of a few short days. However, when we come face to face with reality and recognize how tough things actually are, those daydreams quickly disappear. By making seemingly insignificant changes to our daily lives, we can alter our behavior and quality of life without much suffering. Or, as the CDC puts it, some physical activity is better than none.

Something else to consider is to break down your (overly) ambitious goals into lots of bite-sized steps. So if your aim is to lose a few kilograms or to get a six-pack, you don’t commit to three hours of intense exercise every single day. No, you start with the basics, like taking a short walk, doing some simple exercises, and starting off lifting light weights.

Then, when you complete each step, you feel like it’s a small victory. Feel free to reward yourself for that in some small way to recognize your progress.

For some people, what also helps is accountability. That’s why it’s so helpful to go to the gym with a friend. You can motivate each other when (not ‘if’ but ‘when’) either of you starts losing motivation. What’s more, if you have set times when you meet up, it helps establish a routine for the entire week. And that can form the foundation of your new healthy lifestyle. 

What habits have proved to have a huge effect on the quality of your own lives, dear Pandas? Feel free to share them in the comments. And if you’d like to get to grips with some more useful small habits, check out Bored Panda’s previous feature right here.