You may have heard it said that it takes 21 days to change a habit this idea can be traced back to “Psycho-Cybernetics,” a book published in 1960 by Dr. Maxwell Maltz and well worth a read if you haven't >>>>>>
Psycho-Cybernetics
Maltz didn't actually make this claim but rather referenced this number as an observable metric in both himself and his patients at this time but this is the basis on many challenges and it really does seem to work and the reason behind my own 21-Day Habit Challenge? If you want to take charge of your health, life, and happiness, it requires some change and often, we feel overwhelmed if we try changing too much too quickly. But if we start small, it’s amazing how we can train our brains and bodies to do something new, little by little.
If you think about it, we already have thousands of daily habits that are second nature to us. We take showers, lock the door behind us when we leave for work, give our kids a kiss before bed—all without even thinking about it. When we do things repeatedly, the brain builds strong connections with those actions, until eventually we hardly think about them. This is the idea behind habit stacking. Instead of trying to make a major change and retrain the brain all at once, you instead take advantage of the habits you already have and build on them.
For example, if you want to be better at flossing, you stack that with another habit. Every morning when you turn on the shower and have to wait for the water to warm up, you use those 30 seconds to floss. Then pretty soon, just like turning on the shower every morning, flossing while the shower warms up becomes second nature to you.
All habits work on a loop. We first experience a cue, then we perform the habit, after which we receive some sort of reward. That’s how all habits are formed, if you are into training dogs - you are probably already familiar with this concept but how often do you apply it to yourself and retrain your habits! We become so used to these daily habits that we don’t notice the cues triggering them. The good news is this means you can use specific and deliberate cues to trigger habits you want to adopt, and then reap the rewards. If you’ve been wanting to make real changes in your life, know that small habits make big, lasting change.
So start small and before you know it, habits you used to dream about will come so naturally you won’t even have to think about them!
I am running a 21 Day Habit Challenge to focus on building healthy habits which will help us in a huge multitude of ways and form a solid foundation for all our health goals - from eating right, rest and managing stress, exercising more, reducing toxic load and informed self-care.
What are your 2022 health goals? How would it feel to be hitting them in 21 days?
Download the free eBook so you can take part and hit those health and wellness goals, it has 21 days of assignments, easy peasy stuff, a habit tracker so you can log your progress and some recipes too and ideas for things to try and things to change.