Building Better Habits

January is the month where most people try and form new and better habits for the new year. Orchard at Brookhaven is committed to finding ways to help both our residents and staff create good living habits for the new year. In this article we’ll discuss some steps for building better habits in the new year.

Building Better Habits

How do most people feel when they start a habit? It’s thrilling at first. We tend to feel more vibrant, more aware, and more energetic than usual. But how much more rewarding is it when they are able to stick with that habit and begin to see positive results?

As human beings, we thrive on change, growth, and development. But these things take time. It can seem impossible to make a positive choice that day, let alone to begin a habit that you want to last for a lifetime. Therefore, before you begin to try and form a new habit, take a look at the big picture, and look at what you truly want for your future, the sacrifices you make today seem less painful.

Tips To Build Better Habits

Here are some tips to help form better habits for the new year.

• Set attainable goals – Write out your goals surrounding your new habit and post them in a place you can see. This keeps your goals at the forefront of your mind and offers a kind of personal accountability…you see my goals and know if you are committed to forming good habits around them
• Take small steps – If you try to take on too much at once, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Big changes don’t happen unless small changes happen first. If you want to transform some area of your life, start by doing something small
• Be intentional – Forming positive habits requires intentionality.
• Plan ahead – especially when you are just starting to build a habit. Set aside a specific time each day when you will work on creating this habit
• Get a partner – Find someone who will go along with you and keep you motivated if you feel like quitting.
• Find a reminder – What might you use as a ritual right before starting your habit. If you wanted to wake up earlier, this could mean waking up in exactly the same way each morning. If you wanted to stop eating cookies, you could practice snapping your fingers each time you felt the urge to eat a cookie
• Substitute, don’t subtract – If you are giving up something in your habit, make sure you are adequately replacing what you have lost. If we stop eating the food we like, we need to replace that need with something else that we enjoy.
• Forgive yourself – Don’t expect all your attempts to change habits to be successful immediately.  When you hit a roadblock or are not perfect, let it go and move on.
• “But” – When you start to think negative thoughts, use the word “but” to interrupt it. “I’m no good at this, but, if I work at it I might get better later.” When we say the word “but” it negates whatever was said before it.  Therefore, our subconscious will hear whatever we say after the word “but” and focus on the positive statement.
• Remove Temptation – Restructure your environment so it won’t tempt you in the first thirty days. Remove junk food from your house, cancel your cable subscription, throw out the cigarettes so you won’t need to struggle with willpower later.
• Spend time with people doing what you want to do – Spend more time with people who model the habits you want. The single most impactful thing that helps us change our behavior is to see someone else doing it.

Orchard at Brookhaven is a senior living community in Atlanta that looks to build better and healthy habits for our residents. Please contact us more information about our community.