How do you form a habit and how long does it take? Do you have to break the old habit first, or can you focus on forming a new habit that could eventually replace the old one?
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Habits are formed by repeating an action over and over again. It takes a lot of practice to form a habit, so it could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks or even months to get into the habit of doing something regularly. To form a new habit, start by doing the action a few times every day until it becomes second nature. You don’t necessarily need to break the old habit first, but you should try to focus all of your energy into forming the new habit you want.
Habits are formed through a process called ‘habit formation’, which involves three stages:
1. Cue: The first stage is the cue, which is the trigger that prompts you to do something. This could be a certain time of day, a certain place, or even a certain emotion.
2. Routine: The second stage is the routine, which is the actual behavior or action that you take when you are triggered by the cue.
3. Reward: The third stage is the reward, which is the positive outcome that you get from performing the behavior. This could be something like feeling good after exercising or getting a feeling of accomplishment after completing a task.
Once you have gone through these three stages multiple times, the behavior or action becomes automatic and a habit is formed.
Depends what you are trying to do.
If it’s habit breaking, stopping smoking for example you may substitute something like a patch to help you break the habit. So you break the reliance on the product then the habit of needing to smoke on a tea break etc
If it is habit forming it can be harder. Let’s say you want to do a daily bible study, you could start by choosing an app that has an alarm to remind you at a certain time. This way you start and you do it often enough you don’t need the reminder any more, then you can’t imagine not doing it
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