Habits are formed when we repeat a behavior daily after a trigger and ending with a reward. Habits are labeled as good when the behavior is beneficial to your physical or mental health. Forming good habits makes for a more productive and happier life. So, how do we keep the good habits we’ve formed?
One effective way of sticking with your good habit is by creating a good habit chain. A good habit chain is basically the string of days that you have successfully performed your desired habit. The idea is to keep track of how many days in a row you’ve stuck with it and use that streak as motivation to keep progressing.
There are several ways you may choose to use to track your successful chain of days. Some are dependent on the habit itself. Like, if daily exercise is your goal, a fitness watch makes tracking your progress incredibly easy. You can also track progress digitally by using your phone to log your days. This is convenient for a lot of people because most of us have our phones with us all of the time. Another way to use your phone to help you track is with the use of apps. There are tons of apps available that are made to help you not break your good habits. Writing your completed days down on a calendar, a journal or notebook works well too. As long as you have a designated space to mark it down.
With so many ways to log your good behaviors, it couldn’t be easier, right? Well, not necessarily. Keeping up with good habits can be a difficult thing to do. It really requires the desire to change for the better. Without the strong want for change, it’s doubtful that change will occur. Once you’ve decided that you really want to keep up with a good habit, every day that goes by where you were successful in doing so, helps solidify the behavior. The psychology behind tracking your progress essentially boils down to not wanting to have to start all over again if you slip up. Think about how great you would feel if you were able to successfully complete your habit for 2 months straight. You can see your progress right in front of your eyes when you look at your log. Now think of how it would feel to skip a day and lose that streak. You would have to begin tracking again at day 1 – and that’s why logging progress is an effective motivation tool that helps you stay on track with your good habit.
