Building habits is a key component of a healthy, productive and fruitful lifestyle in this day and age. Not only so, but even history proves to us that habits have been around for millennia and are here to stay. 

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” Whose quote is this?

Aristotle - one of the great minds of Ancient Greece. When someone like him praises the power of habits and their strength for building excellence, we should strive for excellence, no matter how hard it may be to achieve.

In today’s blog, we’ll be talking about the power of habits. Moreso, we will be tackling how to build a habit for the long run through different techniques.

Repetition is key to habits 

Starting off with creating habits, we first have to understand how important repetition is for habit building. At the Certified Coaches Federation, we like to practice everything we do - including our own courses.

That’s why when you’re enrolling for the Certified Coach Practitioner Course, we usually read the script to you several times in the first few courses. After that, we ask the students to record their scripts and rehearse them every day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

That is important, because, as a Romanian saying goes: “Repetition is the mother of all learning.”.

Train your mind on a daily basis

The human mind is capable of wonders, but in order for your mind to reach those wonders, you have to train it. Your mind is like a muscle. If you want to grow it, you’ll have to challenge it, every day, bit by bit.

Small exercises can do the trick, but at one point, you’ll know that short puzzles don’t train your mind anymore. In order to reach the habit, you’ll have to work harder, more and more, every day.

At first, try downloading Lumosity. It’s a great app that trains your mind through games. Also, make sure you practice reading every day. Ten pages a day are enough if you do it daily. After building the habit, you’ll see how those ten pages turn into twenty, thirty and before you know it, you’ll read a book in a week. 

Practice doesn’t make perfect

We all know this saying - practice makes perfect. Well, we are here to disagree. In truth, practice just reinforces a behaviour - even if it’s wrong.

If you’d like to learn how to ride a skateboard and you practice every day, but you don’t have anyone to teach you the right techniques, you are learning how to ride the skateboard in the wrong way. 

This is why mentors, teachers and coaches are important when you’re trying to build a habit. They show you the correct way, and then they enforce the practice. 

Routines build habits

Have you ever thought about how automatic brushing your teeth is? You just go in the morning and for 2 minutes straight brush your teeth on a daily basis. Why?

Because it’s a routine. You’re used to it. You got used to it through enforced repetition, in your childhood. 

When you want to build a habit, you have to enforce the same routine for those habits. Find a proper time in the day when you can read. Or journal. Or practice your pitch. Or go to the gym. 

Then, do it. Exactly in that moment, every day. Try to build the habit through a routine.

Habituation

Habituation is a short term for building habits by setting a clear frequency and time frame, in order to practice those habits. The term resembles the concept of routine but is far more strict with the time frame in which the actions happen.

Habituation is far better than simple repetition because it makes you repeat the right way of doing things. Every habituation session could be measured in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and so on.

Habituation has two important factors - frequency and duration. Frequency measures how often you practice that action and the duration measures the time spent, in each session, for that habit. Thus, you can practice skateboarding 3 times per week, one hour each session.

Spaced Repetition

Repetition is important, but when you pair it with a clear space and time frame, you obtain Spaced Repetition.

Spaced repetition acknowledges that about 90% of the information is lost within three days. If you repeat the next day, you’re going to reduce the amount of information lost. If you practice every day, on the third day you’ll have retained every bit of information you needed.

Give spaced repetition a go next time you’re trying to build a habit.

Which habit-building method will you practice next time you’re going to try a new habit? Let us know in the comments down below.