The Role Habits Can Play in Reaching Your Goals

When we think and talk about personal growth, it often starts with a thought. A thought concerning something we want that we don’t have:  a physical object, a new skill, or a change to something we do have (e.g. change our body by losing weight). When that thought plants a seed and grows into a desire, we often turn it into a goal.

Goals are crucial for personal growth. In some manner of speaking, if there is any one single thing you are striving for, it is a goal. I, personally, have many goals: I would like to lose weight, eat healthier and get stronger; I would like to leave my corporate job; I am currently trying to keep our heads above water financially while my husband transitions to find a new job; and I strive every day to raise my children to be their best possible selves, just to name a few.

Making goals is something we do so often. Society lives off of New Year’s Resolutions, it is talked about by everyone, including mainstream and social media, leading up to January first. We make yearly goals, quarterly goals. At work I make 6-month goals twice a year. Yet, it seems like sticking to these new grand awesome goals of ours and then actually completing them is so difficult. It can often feel impossible, like it’s not worth it, or it’s just too hard and time consuming. Over the last several years, I’ve come to learn there is one thing that has the ability to help an individual reach their goals, or, if they aren’t careful, it can completely derail all their efforts. And that thing is their habits.

Habits are so incredibly deeply engrained in our brains; we don’t even know they are there. That’s the point. They start when we are babies. I’m currently trying to sleep train my daughter, and even she, at 5 months old, already has a habit I’ve helped her form. We have been co-sleeping since she was about one month, and it is very obvious that she prefers it that way, despite my efforts to get her used to her bassinet. She struggles with sleep, because she has become used to being by my side. I have to try to help her retrain her habit to be comfortable with sleeping in her bassinet. To make matters worse, habits last forever. A person never really loses a habit, so once you form a bad habit, you have to work really hard to keep yourself from performing that habit.

A habit is formed when we do an action that is triggered by something, and receives a reward. Take, for example, eating out. I used to do this all the time. I have a fairly long commute at about one hour one way. I’d leave the house, often running late without breakfast, and automatically stop for breakfast as I drove by Dunkin Donuts. I did this so frequently, for a while I didn’t even think about it. Every time I drove by Dunkin, I stopped. My trigger was driving by. The action was buying a tea, donut or breakfast sandwich, the reward was instant food/drink that I didn’t have to cook.

Habits can be absolutely crucial towards meeting a goal. Almost any goal can be broken down into building habits. Do you want to read six books in a year? Develop a habit to read 20 minutes daily, before bed or some other time that works for you. Do you want to have more gratitude or grow your faith? Make keeping a gratitude journal and praying a habit. Do you want to lose weight? Focus on building a habit to make healthy meals at home, or a habit of working out consistently. Habits can create a backbone to helping us reach our goals and grow ourselves.

Right now, my big goal for this blog is to be more consistent in my frequency of posts. It’s a new blog, and writing is new to me. Plus, I have an infant at home, so I don’t have a ton of time. I am choosing to focus, not on the posts themselves, but instead on building a habit of making some time to write daily. I’ve made a promise to myself that it doesn’t have to be post worthy, or even related to the blog, but that I just need to put pen to paper and write, every day. I’ve been technical for so long that I just need to get into a habit to practice writing.

Likewise, though, a habit can equally sabotage your goals. It can be directly related to your goal, but it doesn’t have to be. My example earlier of going to Dunkin Donuts was clearly sabotaging any goal I had of losing weight (and of saving money, if we’re being honest here!) On the flip side, I also have a terrible habit of being on my phone, scrolling FaceBook, playing games, or talking to friends. This habit, while not directly related to my goals, is still hurting me from completing them, because it’s stealing my time. Instead of being more present with my kids, or writing, I’m killing time on my phone.

The good news is by focusing on building new good habits we want to have we are more likely to stop doing the bad ones. Last year I decided I needed to stop going to Dunkin Donuts every day. At first, I just focused on not going – straight to the heart of the goal. Just don’t stop when I drive by. But it didn’t stick. Eventually, I found myself right back in that drive thru, or even worse, I was starting to pick up a new habit of buying breakfast when I got to work instead. I had to shift gears. I started to focus on having breakfast on hand, and making my tea either before I left the house or once I got to work. By making sure I had a plan and a ready to go easy breakfast option (that I didn’t have to cook – that was key) already available, I naturally started stopping at Dunkin Donuts less on my way to work.

Similarly, now, if I focus on the things I want, they distract me from my phone. Making sure I get my writing time in, means that much less time I’m not playing games. Sitting on the floor with no phone in sight and paying full attention to my kids, even for just 15 minutes, starts to grow a stronger connection to my children, and doesn’t show them attachment to a phone is a good thing. I am slowly becoming less attached to the phone, though I still have a long way to go. Even the 15 minutes focused on my kids lessens my desire to reach for my phone. But the more I am on my phone, the harder I find it to put it down and be attentive towards my children or productive towards my goals.

I encourage you to take a good look at your goals and your current habits. Are they helping you reach your goals, or are they sabotaging you? What habits can you start to build that will help you? By focusing on building good habits, slowly but surely, we can overwrite our bad habits.