Habits Are Key to Goal Success

Habits are the Key Toward Goal Setting Success

Achieving our well thought out goals takes motivation and work past simply writing them down and hoping they will stick. We must incorporate forming good habits or breaking bad habits into our daily life around those goals.

In fact, it doesn’t take long after writing them down and starting to work on goals that we can begin to lose sight of what we hope to achieve.

After the first 3-5 days it is the easiest to lose focus on the goals we set. This is the point in our goal setting journey that we really need to double down and push through to forming habits that will stick for the long term toward success.

If you have not downloaded my free Goal Getting Guide, you can do that here:

Habits will begin to stick if we can push through the 10 day mark off our goal.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.

I have learned several habit forming tricks from Atomic Habits by James Clear. This book has been life-changing for me; and I admit I don’t always stick with my habits either (it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve done yoga at the time of writing this post).

However, implementing a few new simple habits into our routine can make a huge difference and push the needle toward our goals. As I mentioned last week, it’s all about those baby steps each day.

Let’s Break Down some Habit Forming Toward Goal Success

Following in line with Clear’s framework, there are some simple ways to create new, good habits around four laws:

Make it Obvious
Make it Attractive
Make it Easy
Make it Satisfying.

The most basic way to start a new habit is what he calls “habit stacking”.

Take a mindless habit you do every day without thinking about it. Some of the simplest examples are getting in bed each night, brushing your teeth, or setting your alarm clock.

Now, decide what new habit you can you stack around the mindless daily habit and let that be the trigger for the new habit. Easy Peasy!

Here is an example I incorporated last year as I wanted to start a daily gratitude practice:

I keep my gratitude in the daily entries of my bullet journal, so when I prepared my to do list for the next day, I write out my gratitude for the current day. Writing my next day list becomes the trigger to write out my gratitude.

Another one is taking my daily allergy medicine. I started putting my medicine bottle beside my coffee pot, then when I pour my first cup of coffee, I see the bottle and it triggers me to take my allergy medicine.

These seem so trivial and basic, but sometimes those are the most difficult habits to form. Now they are second nature habits for me. In fact, I could probably stack new habits around them now.

What new habit can you form toward a goal you have set for yourself?

Try habit stacking and begin making those positive changes. I would also purchase and read Atomic Habits before the end of the year so you can begin 2021 thinking more about reaching the goals you have set for yourself.

Prefer an audio version? I would invite you to try Audible. I have started reading much more since starting my Audible subscription a couple of years ago. You can get two free books to start by using my affiliate link to start Audible today: AUDIBLE