The Highly Effective Habit of Habit Forming

In an unaccredited fortune cookie somewhere, the fortune reads that habits are formed by routinely repeating a pattern of behavior for 30 days. Other conventionally wise fortune cookies elaborate on signal stimuli and environmental influence that also lead to habit forming. Were these fortune cookies the words of lettered professionals, they would all likewise conclude that a habit is the product of persistent behavioral patterns.

Habits include smoking when bored or eating when anxious. Other habits include enduring excruciating traffic every morning and wasting another 9 hours at your lousy job.

What is most characteristic of a habit is that it requires little to no thinking. In other words, our habits are almost automatic and practically involuntary. While I have described what appears to be bad, unpleasant habits, and have otherwise painted a negative picture of habitry, I am about to encourage you to form… a habit (gasp!).

Wise cookie

Another important feature of establishing small goals is that they help reinforce the behavior you rely on to accomplish your goal. Call it training, call it a habit, but the frequent, regular routine of training should eventually become an automatic function in your life like brushing your teeth and teasing your hair. What? You don’t tease?

Herein lies the gist of Stephen Covey’s multi-platinum bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey’s premise is that the more we adopt leadership and results-oriented behavioral patterns and integrate them into our pathology, our very fiber, then we essentially train ourselves to become more effective, productive people. By making such behavior habitual, we eventually lose awareness that we’re trying to become more effective people, and we transform ourselves into automatically effective leaders. It is quite the transcendental premise. I encourage you to read Covey’s book.