Let’s face it, we all have a bad habit we’d like to break, or a new habit we’d like to start – like exercising in the early morning, or eating a healthy lunch (or for busy entrepreneurs, maybe something as simple as taking a lunch break every day). We’ve all read articles with titles like “The Top 10 Habits of Successful People” and have maybe tried to incorporate some of the habits of Steve Jobs or Richard Branson into our daily schedules with little success.
While following in the habit footsteps of others may not be the key to your success, forming a new habit, or getting rid of an old, unhealthy one, is the key to happiness and success, according to happiness guru Gretchen Rubin.
Rubin has made a career out of researching and speaking about happiness. “I’ve noticed when people mention a big happiness boost or a big happiness challenge they were struggling with, often it came down to an issue of habit,” she says. Being exhausted all day long, for example, was really a result of a lack of habit of getting enough sleep. In her new book Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives, Rubin spells out the four pillars of habit-making:
Monitoring.
Keeping track of your behavior can help you to change your behavior. If you’re trying to eat healthier, keep a food journal. If you’re trying to walk more, use a step counter. If you’re working on a project, keep track of the number of hours you spend on the project each day.“Just by monitoring something, you tend to improve your behavior,” says Rubin. Keeping track of your behavior keeps you honest with yourself about how much you’re really working towards your habit change.
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