Daily habits shape lifelong habits.
Think about everything you do every day. From morning habits, like your breakfast routine, to nighttime rituals, like how you deal with stress. The choices you make every day compound over time to become your long-term health, happiness, and wellbeing.
Here’s the problem. Most people never realize how these tiny daily decisions affect who they become in the long-run. Whether it’s full flavour smokes on their smoke break, skipping breakfast, or watching TV all evening… These daily choices add up.
Quick question: do you know how many cigarettes are in a year?
If you smoke one cigarette a day, that’s 365 cigarettes annually.
If you smoke a pack a day, that’s 7,300 cigarettes per year.
These seemingly small moments start to compound pretty quickly.
And it’s not like they only impact your life today. They impact your life next year, 10 years from now, and even 50 years from now.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why Do Daily Habits Matter?
- How Habits Are Formed
- How Tiny Decisions Compound With Time
- How To Break Bad Habits And Create New Ones
Why Do Daily Habits Matter?
Here’s something not many people realize…
Every time you repeat a behaviour, your brain creates a neurological path that makes it easier to repeat that behaviour again in the future. Eventually, you perform that behaviour automatically.
Your morning cigarette. Your afternoon coffee break. Your nightly scroll through Instagram. They’re all habits your body and mind default to because you’ve done them so many times before.
According to The World Economic Forum, 70% of deaths globally can be linked to four primary lifestyle factors:
- Physical inactivity
- Poor diet
- Alcohol
- Tobacco use
Think about that.
4 out of every 10 deaths that could have been prevented comes down to your daily habits. Not genes. Not a chance. Daily choices.
Smokers with a taste for full tobacco flavour usually gravitate towards smoking canadian full cigarettes all day long. Whether you smoke full flavour cigarettes or tobacco cigarettes, your brain starts to make that choice for you after enough repetition.
And that’s why your daily habits are so important to understand.
How Habits Are Formed
“How long does it take to form a habit?”
It’s a common question with a myth as the most common answer. Many people believe it takes 21 days to form a new habit.
But that’s not what the science shows. One recent study looked at 23 previous habit-formation studies and concluded:
New habits take approximately 59 days to form.
That ranges from 18-254 days with most habits forming between 59-66 days.
18 to 254 days.
That’s much longer than most people think.
This matters because your daily habits are only automatic because you’ve done them enough times in the past. And if it takes closer to two months to form a habit, you can change those habits fairly quickly with enough motivation.
Here’s a deeper look at how habits work.
When you perform any habit, there are 3 steps your brain goes through.
- Cue: Something in your environment triggers the habit.
- Routine: You perform the behaviour you’ve come to automatically do.
- Reward: You receive some sort of reward that your brain likes.
Your brain is lazy. It wants to run on autopilot whenever possible. That’s why habits feel automatic.
So when you crave that cigarette, your brain is running through that habit loop whether you realize it or not.
Tiny Daily Decisions Compound With Time
Compound interest is the best example of how tiny decisions can add up over time.
If you were to add $5 to a savings account every day that earned 3% annual interest, you’d end up with $19,926 after 30 years. The money you deposited alone is only $54,750.
Your daily habits are very similar.
One cigarette isn’t going to harm your lungs. One workout won’t make you “fit.”
But do that cigarette every day from the age of 20-70. Not smoking for the same amount of years and…
You can immediately see how your daily habits shape your long-term health.
Here are a few more examples:
- By eating just 1 less slice of pizza per day, you’ll eat 365 fewer pizzas in 1 year
- By walking 5 minutes a day, you’ll walk over 912 hours in 10 years
- By smoking 1 pack of cigarettes a day, you’ll smoke 36,487 cigarettes by the time you’re 70
- By sleeping 30 minutes less each day, you’ll lose 1,825 hours of sleep by the time you retire
It’s tough to argue with those numbers.
Everything you do on a daily basis is sculpting the person you will become 5, 10, 20 years down the road.
Those who understand this will dramatically outpace those who don’t.
Sure, they all have to make healthy choices over time. But the people who know how compound interest works in real life make those small healthy choices consistently every single day.
Whether good or bad.
How To Break Bad Habits And Create New Ones
Ok, but how do you actually break a habit?
It starts by understanding your habit loop. Most habits are subconscious, so the first step is figuring out what triggers that routine you’re trying to replace.
Once you know what causes the behaviour. Modify the routine and keep the reward.
Here’s how it works…
If you want to stop drinking soda, don’t go cold turkey. That’s not how the brain works.
Instead, follow these steps:
- First, identify what makes you want to drink soda. Do you drink it when you’re bored? Stressed? After dinner?
- Second, replace the routine of drinking soda with something better. If you crave soda when you’re bored, go for a five-minute walk instead.
- Lastly, keep the reward. Your brain craves gratification, so if you’re going to replace your routine you better reward yourself.
In most cases, your new reward should be better than the original vice.
Breaking habits and creating new ones isn’t about willpower. It’s about making small adjustments to your daily routine.
If you want to start building better daily habits, try a few of these tips.
- Make it SIMPLE. Don’t try to overhaul your life overnight. Start with one habit and track it for at least 60 days.
- Habit Stacking. Try attaching a new habit to a habit you already do. For example, if you want to drink more water each day, drink a full glass right after brushing your teeth in the morning.
- Track your progress. Write down your daily habits and progress. It’s hard to stay motivated if you don’t see how far you’ve come.
- Be Patient. Remember, it takes most people between 2-5 months to build a new habit. Don’t quit after 2 weeks.
You can’t control every daily habit you form. But if you can start with 1 or 2 and consistently do them every day, you’ll be well on your way to creating a healthier lifestyle.
Putting It Together
Daily habits build the foundation for your long-term lifestyle.
What you eat every day, how often you move, whether you smoke cigarettes, and even when you go to sleep each night… they all add up.
Start with these facts:
- 70% of preventable deaths worldwide are caused by daily lifestyle habits
- Habits take between 59-66 days to form
- The habit loop consists of a cue, routine, and reward
- You can build good habits or bad habits. The choice is yours.
Knowing how habits work is step 1. Implementing this knowledge is step 2.
Choose one tiny habit you’d like to improve on and start building that neurological path TODAY.
You don’t have to go crazy. Remember, small daily habits compound into huge results over time.
Start small and watch those small decisions turn into lifelong habits.
