Developing Habits Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

by Barbara Latta

Make the progression toward a goal become a habit.

We are three weeks into the new year and hopefully you have written down the goals you want to achieve before December 31 rolls around again. If you made a vision board you now have a visual aid to focus on what you want to do. Now we need to find a way to make the progression toward achievement become a habit as we seek the finish line of the goal.

Once upon a time, it was thought that a habit could be formed in 21 days, but research has shown development is closer to 66 days. Once we have built our goals into a format we can work on every day, we will be making habits that can be a foundation for rising higher in our lives. This can also be a foundation ready to build on for next year’s goals.

The importance of creating goal-setting as a habit is so our lifestyle can change.  Do you know why 95% of people who go on a diet and lose weight gain it back? It’s because they do not change their lifestyle. They follow the diet through will-power or determination for a few weeks, have some success, but the will power wears off because it is hard to do. Changing small things such as portion size, cutting out a few unnecessary food types, and taking some extra steps each day would develop a habit that would impact the lifestyle and the weight loss would be permanent.

We know one of the important tasks of writing down our goals is so we will have our mindset

Track your progress for success.

on the steps needed to accomplish the task. An easy way to track your progress is with an app called HabitBull. Five habits you want to develop can be listed on the app for free. If you want to choose more, you can opt for the upgrade to premium.

This app is simple to use and allows you to:

• List activities in daily, weekly, or monthly format
• Choose a target date for completion
• Track your progress

With this tracking device, it becomes easier to keep up with what you want to do and avoid having to remember what and when you need to accomplish.

Using a Bible reading app develops a habit of reading.

I started a plan for reading the Bible in a year. This was listed as my first task, marked as a daily occurrence, and once the reading is complete I can mark it done on the app. The Bible app I am using delivers a reading to my email every day so I can simply click on it to view that day’s post. While I do read my Bible and study different biblical subjects, reading as a year-long plan is developing the habit of reading the scriptures every day in order to read the entire Bible.

Another one added was walking on my treadmill. I review my written goals every day, but having this on the app helps me to remember this if I get busy. I can view HabitBull and see that I haven’t done my walking yet today, and if I want to have 100% of my goals done I am reminded to go walking.

Anything we can do to make our goals more attainable is a positive step in the right direction.

What do you do to keep yourself on track toward your target?

Develop habits to achieve your goals (click to tweet)