How to change HABITS and transform your LIFE!

If you want to transform your life, you need to change your habits! As I changed my whole lifestyle in the past, today I will share with you the knowledge I used and I really hope it can help you to change your life as well!

Before you decide to change a habit in your life, you need to work on your commitment, discipline and consistency. My last post was exactly about that, click here to read.

A habit is something that you do so often that it becomes an automatic behavior, sometimes you are not even aware that you are doing it. That happens because of the neuro pathways that were formed in your brain and that brings me to the first topic.

How Neurological Connections Work in Your Brain

When you were growing up, you made a lot of neurological connections in your brain and associations in your subconscious mind, and they have a huge impact on who you are now and the habits you have.

For you to understand better, I will make a comparison. In your life, you tend to go always to the same places to eat, to do shopping, right? And for sure you go there without thinking, you know the way because you’ve been to these places so many times before.

The same happens in your brain, to create a new habit would be like exploring a completely different place. Initially you might feel a bit confused, might get lost a few times, but the more you go there, more you get used to it.

You have to repeat your new behaviors many times so they can form a clear and solid path in your mind, and you need to avoid the “old places” so they can become just a distant memory.

How to Change Bad Habits

Don’t eliminate a bad habit from your life, replace it, it will be much easier for you!

Look at your mind as if it was a child. If the child is used to play always with the same toy and you just take it away without giving a new one, what will happen? The child will cry, right?

The same happens to your mind, if you remove a habit without giving a new one, your mind will get lost, confused and will annoy you to bring the old habit back. It’s much easier to replace because when your mind goes to the automatic behavior, you just have to stop it and redirect.

And by the way, your mind does not like changes, even when you replace a habit, it will keep asking for what it knows, it takes time until it gets used to what’s new. You need to win a lot of mental arguments with yourself in order to implement something new. And to do that, self-suggestions and associations aligned with the things that you want, will help you a lot!

How to Use Words, Suggestions and Associations

Hypnosis is a suggestion work, I have a whole post about self-hypnosis where I explain in much more details what I will tell you now, click here to read.

You cannot eliminate a bad habit if you have a positive association with it, and you cannot build a good habit if you have a negative mindset about it.

In other words, how do you expect to quit smoking if you keep saying that you love it? Or how do you expect to start exercising if you keep saying that you hate it?

So basically the rule is:

• If you want to eliminate a bad habit, associate it with something negative
• If you want to implement a good habit, build a positive mindset about it

Be careful with what you say, words are powerful! You need to build self-suggestions that are compatible with what you want because if you keep saying things that go against it, there is no way you can make it happen!

For example:

• If you want to start exercising, your speech might be about how good you feel after the practice
• Or if you want to become skinnier, you might suggest to yourself that you feel much better when you eat less

You must repeat this kind of thoughts daily so you can reprogram your mind!

Another thing to be careful, focus on what you want, not on what you don’t because your mind does not understand the word “no”. When you say things like “I don’t want to be lazy, I cannot eat sugar”, the only thing your mind hears is “I want to be lazy, I can eat sugar”.

The only thing you get when you declare war on drugs is to create more desire for them. If you focus on freedom instead, is more likely you will have the results that you want!

My last advice about words, if you ask someone a favour and the person reply “I will try”, what do you automatically understand? That the person will fail, right?

Don’t use the word try because your mind will presume that you won’t do it. Instead saying “I’m trying”, use words that imply a positive action such as:

• I’m working on it
• I’m doing it
• I’m getting better at it

How to Create New Habits

To implement a new habit, the 3 Rs rule will help you a lot: reminder, repetition and reward!

Reminder is about connecting a new habit to one that you already have. For example, if you want to start reading before sleeping, you can leave a book on your pillow, or if you want to start exercising in the morning, you can leave your gym clothes near your breakfast items.

To create a new habit, you will need something to remind you to do that until the behaviour becomes automatic. You know the neurological connections that I mentioned before? You will need a lot of repetition to form a clear and solid pathway in your brain and your mind.

Now about the reward, it can be anything as simple as tapping your own back and complimenting yourself for having done it! Or it can be a gift that works as a complement to the things you want to achieve.

Depending on the habit that you want to create, exercises for example, in the beginning don’t worry about performance, focus on making the habit automatic. When you reach the point of doing without thinking, then yes, you can start to set goals as how long and how much you want to do it.

A lot of people talk about creating a habit in 21 days. Based on my personal experience after having changed my whole lifestyle, I can say that to create a habit to the point that if you don’t do it, you miss it, takes months! And to make a habit part of your identity, takes at least 1 year, sometimes even more!

Keep in mind that you spent your whole life becoming the person that you are now, you need time to build a new version of yourself.