Habits are the small decisions you make and actions you perform every day. Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits. How in shape or out of shape you are? How happy or unhappy you are? How successful or unsuccessful you are? Everything is as a result of your habits. What you do, day-in-day-out, makes you the person you are today, your belief system and your personality.
In the light of the above, to build good habits is a behavioral change which requires a fresh start, patience and perseverance keeping in mind how significant the change could be to you and the people around you.

1. Start small, silly! Change of habits is a struggle which needs constant upkeep and motivation. But this journey needs to start with something small which should not be something entirely insignificant. Our willpower declines as and when our day progresses and subsequently our motivation does too. Hence, picking a habit that is too easy but not unimportant can help you inculcate it without the need of either much motivation or a lot of stress. For example, instead of directly exercising early in the morning for an hour, start with just waking up early first! And then gradually start exercising for a few minutes till you know you can do it for an hour; and so on and so forth.

2. Simple disciplines every day! Be constant. Instead of taking on something too big every now and then, just do small good things every day. Every tiny grain of effort towards doing something good on a continual basis is better than making errors of judgment about taking up something incredibly huge right at the beginning. Along the way, your willpower and motivation will increase, which will make it easier to stick to your habit. Discipline is key – just simple ones! To help you remain on track or disciplined, Sneh Desai has designed a powerful product ‘The Last Lap’ which will ensure your everyday action in order to achieve any results you want. You cannot NOT achieve your goals with this product.

3. Be reasonable! Let momentary motivation not go to your head so much that you lose vision and become preposterous. Be practical with yourself. Break the habit you want to pursue into smaller parts; this way you will gain a steady momentum and the habit will become easier to accomplish. For example – if you want to build up to 20 minutes of meditation every day,split it into two segments of 10 minutes at first.

4. Quickly get back on track! In case while building a habit, you fail – there should be a quick mechanism for rehabilitation so that you get back on track. You shouldn’t expect to fail, but you should plan for failure. So quit being a perfectionist; it is not an extremist situation! Everybody fails, but only those who get back on track quickly succeed!

5. Patience for sustenance! New habits should feel easy, especially in the beginning. If you stay consistent and continue increasing your habit it will get hard enough, fast enough. Learning to be patient is perhaps the most critical skill of all. You can make incredible progress if you are consistent and patient. Patience is everything. Do things at a pace which you can sustain.

6. Set a reminder! If you’re a human, then your memory will fail you (most of the times!). This is why a reminder is such a critical part of forming new habits. Reminder does not depend on motivation; it depends on strategically managing your new behavior with your old one. Since all of us are visual beings, setting up a visual reminder is more effective. For example, you want to become more grateful then remind yourself that before taking your meals, you will focus on one thing that you’re grateful for. This way every time you sit for breakfast, lunch or dinner you shall remember to say thanks!

7. Reward yourself! It’s important to celebrate. We want to continue doing things that make us feel good. And because an action needs to be repeated for it to become a habit, it’s especially important that you reward yourself each time you practice your new habit. Give yourself some credit and enjoy each success. Sneh Desai shares some secret habits in detail that all the successful people follow (but people don’t know) in his ‘Winning Habits’ Seminar.

TAKEAWAY: Decide on which habits are important to you; the ones you want to relentlessly pursue instead of listening to others and follow their footsteps. Just be patient and consistent.