While you are busy creating goals for yourself, there is one thing to make sure you are aware of: habits are as important to reaching your goals as setting your goals is.

Why do you need to create new habits?

When you want to have your best year ever and have identified your goals for the year, it is hard to complete the tasks required to achieve these goals if you have not formed a good habit first. To be able to do that, you need to identify the habits you wish to form to get you to your goals.

You need both goals and habits to gain focus and momentum, improve your daily life, and get the willpower you need to accomplish more in your life.

This is one exercise I gave to my private clients at the beginning of the year. I asked them to review the different areas of their lives they wished to improve this year. Then I asked them to identify different habits they needed in order to improve that one area. Then from there, you can just pick one small habit to start with and build on it.

Start with One Small Habit

When you create new habits, there are two important things to remember:

1. You should start with just one habit at a time.
2. You want to start small.

You may have a vision of these complex and intricate lifestyle habits you want to develop one day, which is great! But it is difficult to keep up with more difficult and elaborate habits when you haven’t started with the simple ones.

It is like running a kilometre versus running a marathon. If you can’t run a kilometre, how can you run a marathon? Start with the kilometre first, or in this case, the small and simple habit.

Create a list like this:

Topic
     Main goal
1. Habit 1
2. Habit 2
3. Habit 3
4. Habit 4
5. Etc.

Then move onto choosing the first habit that makes sense for you to implement.

How to Choose Your First Habit

Deciding on new habits to form in your life is all about what you can achieve, and what you want the end result to be. When choosing a good habit to start with, choose something you can do today, right now. It can be making the bed, flossing twice a day, making your own breakfast instead of picking up doughnuts on the way to work. These are very simple habits, but ones that ultimately will do wonders for you.

Learning New Habits

You will come to a point when you want to develop other healthy habits, which is great news. Just make sure your previous new habits have become, well, habitual! These should be things you do every day, without really having to think about it.

As a good place to start, try to do each habit for at least 30 days before moving on to the next one.

Is Your Habit Not Working?

Don’t feel like you have to stick to a new habit forever if it isn’t working for you. Just remember WHY you want to change or stop it. It shouldn’t be because it’s too hard or you just don’t want to do it anymore, but because you don’t feel it is benefiting you like another habit in its place would. This is what you need to remember.

Are You Ready To Make Your Health Goals A Reality?

If you’d like to look at making your health goals a reality, I invite you to join this upcoming masterclass: Make Your Health Goals A Reality {Video Class}

If you are a member already of the Optimised Health SILVER Membership, this is where you can add your questions, and see what to expect: Make Your Health Goals A Reality Video Class

If you are not a member yet, you can still join a SILVER membership by following the link; with discount code 100OFFSILVER, you can get COMPLIMENTARY LIFETIME access to any of the annual SILVER memberships I have (value: $99-$199 annually).