Habits are powerful because as you go about everyday, the small and consistent results of habit far out exceed any individual effort that you might have. Habits are not difficult to establish really, you just need to be focused on doing so. Not everything you try out should or even could be a habit either. That is where the 90 day rule comes in.
If something is not going right in your personal, professional life and you are able to identify what is wrong, than you should be able to see a small incremental thing you could do to improve this goal. Once you figured that thing out, you can then try to make it a habit. The thing you decided to do, should be something that you can do everyday and maintain successfully for at least 21 days or so. If you are able to keep that up, and the new habit you are forming is starting to have an impact then you can realize the power of the 90 day rule.
Keep that habit for 90 days. If you are able to do that, then you have something that could be a life changing habit – if you keep the commitment for 90 days or more. That is the real test of a habit. The reason is that 3 months of time is enough to have things like vacations, sickness, and other life difficulties occur. If you can get past all of that, and still maintain the habit, then you are on to something real. You can make it harder depending on your comfort level, but above all keep the habit going.
You probably will have a lot of starts and stops. Attempts on habits that prove to be too difficult or too easy. Habits that are just impractical, or really not that helpful for what you are trying to achieve. That is good, failure in this process should be welcome. The refiners fire will help you get to the core set of habits that will develop the new you. The point is you have to keep pushing, keep trying, even though you might have several day ones, the point is that you should definitely have some day 21’s and even more importantly some day 90s. I am focused on a core set of about 6 habits right now that I have built well past day 90, but I have a few more that I am working on getting to day 90, and many of them have ended in dismal failure resulting in a day 1 all over again.
Building a life changing habit is hard work, full of failure and struggle. However, the rewards are amazing and the benefits you get from habit forming behaviour are all worth it. So we should take stock. Habits take a long time to get in place, at least 90 days, but once that happens you will find be amazed at how much closer to your goals you really are.
Guy Reams
