Time For Your “Mind Gym” – How Do You Build Your Habits?

When you consider the many habits you have, you’ll be surprised at their number. Forming habits is adaptive as you become pre-wired; & this preserves your mental energy expenditure to tougher tasks requiring more focus.

Some habits are good; others are bad. Naturally, we’d want to create the good ones & get rid of those that don’t serve us well. It’s not very easy to do that. It requires, again, some mental energy expenditure & focus. Is the new habit worth that – you wonder?

If it is, & you’ve accumulated enough reasons to make the change, you need to know that forming habits changes your brain. Each time you perform an act (take exercise for instance), you form a neural wire of connections (I’ll spare you all the other neuroscientific details).

So when you repeatedly do that, the wires add up becoming like a thick cable with time. It’s been said that you need 21 consecutive days to kick in the new habit. This thickens the cable; & the act becomes automatic requiring less mental energy expenditure & focus.

Three more months, & your new habit will be well engrained. The reverse is true for eliminating bad habits. Their cable weakens each time you “don’t” perform the habit & trigger you no longer…. Don’t freak out if you regress. It’s normal & part of the change process.

“Adding up to what you already do, requires your giving up doing something. Finding the right substitutes to do, is also true, when you want to give up doing something.” ~3Ds

Think of it as practical math: add this & subtract that; multiply success & divide gratification on all. The functions of life areas are fraught with redundancy & perhaps it’s easier to learn than unlearn, right?

Do I see “Summer” resisting “Fall” these days? Oh well… the predictable seasonal cycle…. How different it is from your making STRIDES linearly forward….

Aren’t you glad it doesn’t take forever? On your marks!… Get set!… Let’s march on to wire that brain differently …

Oh, & don’t forget to bring in those good reasons with you… Cup cakes, anyone?

Your Personal Coach

Dania

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