Healthy Habits Are Learned in the Same Way as Unhealthy Ones - Through Practice
Healthy Habits Are Learned in the Same Way as Unhealthy Ones - Through Practice.
"Well then," you might ask, "and how long do I have to practice until I learned my new healthy habit?"
Short answer: anywhere between 3 weeks or up to 12 months, with a little over two months being the average period after which a new habit becomes automatic.
It is often said that it takes 21 days to learn a new habit. This number goes back to the findings of the surgeon Maxwell Maltz, who, in the 1950s realized that "it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell," as he wrote in his book 1960 book "Psycho-Cybernetics."
But while 21 days is the minimum, depending on the habit and the personal circumstances, it can also take much longer to really make a new habit one's own.
However, no matter how many days it will take you to own the habit fully, the important thing is that you keep up practicing it. As the saying goes: practice makes perfect - and just as with any practice, it doesn't matter if, from time to time, you skip a day or two or "fall off the wagon." Dust yourself off and restart. If you keep practicing, it is just a matter of time until you will have added a solid new healthy habit to your personal toolbox of self-improvement. Success guaranteed!