Think Positive

Make Your Resolutions Stick Long After January Ends With These Creative Habits

It’s claimed that success doesn’t happen by accident, but by the choices we make as a result of our daily habits. It’s tradition – or you could say a habit – to set new goals at the start of the year. “This is because a new year signifies a new beginning and the potential for better days to come,” explains clinical psychologist Dr Lillian Nejad.

“As humans we’re inherently hopeful and therefore predisposed to strive to do and be better, so every year we tend to set goals from a place of optimism – that these are achievable if we want them enough,” adds Dr Nejad.

And one of the best ways to achieve these goals and keep them at the forefront of our minds is to structure daily habits around them.

“Breaking your goal into smaller, more specific, simple habits and repeating them consistently over time generates a ‘habit loop’, which means they automatically become part of your day and naturally much easier to attain,” she says.

According to Dr Nejad, neuroscience has shown that our brains have the remarkable capacity to change. “No matter how entrenched a behaviour or strong a neural pathway has become, you have the power to weaken current pathways and generate new ones by altering habitual patterns of behaviour, which confirms that if your brain can change so can you.”

Here we share three daily habits that can make that possible.

Set up an early morning routine

“None of the world’s best and brightest leave their mornings to chance and this is not a coincidence,” says Benjamin Spall, co-author of My Morning Routine.