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How can some people attain long term goals whether it’s being healthy, keeping their finances in order, or completing a big project without seeming to try? The answer is habits. Rather than focussing on an outcome, it can sometimes be more useful, easier and more fun to stop thinking about the end goal and to focus instead on adopting the habits that will lead to you there.

We hear a lot about bad habits �?? bad eating habits, smoking, drinking and so on. I don’t want to focus on them. But they do demonstrate a point. Although one packet of biscuits won’t do you any harm, over time a packet of biscuits every week would almost certainly cause you to get unhealthy and overweight. The same goes for smoking. In a way, what smokers say is true �?? one cigarette won’t kill you. But one cigarette followed by another and then another for months and years very likely will. In each case seemingly trivial acts build up to have a very large impact over time.

But let’s turn this around and think about good things. In exactly the same way that the damage of bad habits comes not from doing them once but repeating them over a period of time, one of the best ways to achieve a really big positive change in your life is not with a single big effort but by developing a habit that will lead you towards it.

This is rather different to what we’re often taught. People tell you to �??focus on your goal�??, �??keep the end in mind�?? and so on. That can be useful, particularly for relatively short term aims. For longer term goals, though, the end can sometimes seem so far away that focusing on it can just be dispiriting and demotivating. These are the times when it’s better to focus on the habits, the processes that are going to get you where you want to go.

An example from my own life is running. I’m a reasonably keen runner but I’m not super-fit either. If I set off on a half marathon or 10k run thinking about the finish, it just seems so far away I can’t believe I’ll ever get there. So instead, I focus on the rhythm of my steps, my breathing patterns, music I might be listening to. Instead of struggling towards the finish line, I’m absorbed in the process and I promise you, makes it much much easier and a lot more enjoyable.

Cultivating the habits you need to achieve you goal works in the same way. Say you wanted to lose weight. If you eat next to nothing all day and work out like crazy in the gym for a couple of hours, you’ll be completely exhausted and probably won’t notice very much difference at all. Your healthy weight could probably still be a long way off and you could feel demotivated and stop.

Instead, why not think of a habit you would be prepared to do that would lead you towards that goal. It might be much less dramatic �?? walking to work, say. Now, instead of constantly watching your weight, you can focus on cultivating and developing that new habit. Don’t do something you absolutely hate, but it’s OK if you feel a bit reluctant to do it occasionally. Sometimes you have to get yourself by the scruff of the neck a bit.

That’s because it’s much easier for your mind to continue on autopilot doing the same old things it’s always done. That’s the great power of habits. It’s also why, once you have them, they just become second nature and it’s no effort to continue them. Once the habit has become normal for you, it will feel odd not to do it. You can just continue doing it, confident that the results you want will come over time.

And the great thing is that this way, instead of seeing an imaginary finish line miles and miles away from you, you can have success right away. As you learn and adopt each new habit, that is success. You already have succeeded and are succeeding every day. Instead of watching a pot that never boils, you can be enjoying success every single day confident that the outer world will catch up with you in time.

There’s another bonus to the power of habits. Unlike in my running example, in life finish lines are imaginary. You don’t reach them and stop. When you have ingrained habits in yourself, they’re just markers along the way of the success that you have already accomplished.

That’s one reason why a lot of people on severe diets reach a healthy weight and then start to put it back on again. They are been thinking in terms of the finish line and then, once they’ve reached it, they just gone back to how they were before. When you have learned new habits, by the time you reach your aim it will feel so natural that you’ll just carry on anyway without any effort. It will just feel normal.

The same goes for other things you might want to achieve. Say you want to save money to put down a deposit on a house or pay off your credit card debts. If the goal is within reasonable sight, you can use goal-oriented thinking. That’s fine. But if it seems a long way away, you might find it better to focus on a habit instead. Like staying within a weekly budget, for example, and using the extra to pay a certain amount off each month. That way, when you’ve paid it all off, your new spending habits will be so ingrained that you’ll have that money extra to put towards something else.

Or how about writing a novel? Lots of people like the idea of writing a book but are put off by the size of the project. What habit would help you write a book? Well writing would seem to be a good start! Van Gogh said “If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter,’ then paint and that voice will be silenced.” He’s talking about a habit. How much you might write or when depends on your circumstances. It might be an hour a day or an hour a week. The important thing is that you make it a habit. It might feel a bit odd at first while your body and mind get used to it but pretty soon it will become just as automatic as making your breakfast in the morning.

That’s the powerful thing. Once you have a habit, it’s not an effort. If you had to think about what you were going to do when you woke up every morning or what route to take home from work, it would be a real chore. But most people have developed automatic routines and you can do it without having to make any big effort.

That’s how these people I mentioned at the beginning manage to achieve their success without seeming to try very hard. It’s because for them it’s not difficult! It’s only difficult when you’re struggling towards a goal that is contrary to your ingrained habits �?? like trying to lose weight while you still have the habit of driving everywhere or trying to become a great musician while you still have habits in your lifestyle that mean you’re too busy to practice.

Your habits are like a river carrying you along. The easiest thing is to ‘go with the flow.’ But what if the river is carrying you somewhere you don’t want to go? If you try to accomplish a goal without changing your habits, it’s like trying to swim against the current. And that’s really hard. But by making a small change in your habits you can divert the flow of the river so it’s going to a different destination. Once you’ve done that, you can continue to go with that new flow just as easily and comfortably as before, except now you’re being carried to somewhere you actually want to go and because you’re not focussed on the end result you can enjoy the journey along the way.What would you like to achieve? And what habit would take you there? The Greek philosopher Aristotle said �??We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.�?? For good or ill, the big changes in your life tend to come not from single events but from repeated habits that have a big effect over time. So if you want to consciously make a big change or complete a large task, instead of putting your attention on a distant imaginary finish line, which might be demotivating, focus instead on the habits that will get you there. That way you can enjoy success right now and when you reach that goal, instead of stopping there or slipping back you’ll already have the habits to lead you on effortlessly to more and more success in the future.Thanks to the musicians for permission to use their music.