The other day of filming…

To give you guys up a bit of behind the scenes here, we actually shot the same video (above) earlier, but at the beach…

The camera ran out of battery - we forgot to bring the extra battery.

The sound of crashing waves overpowered my voice - we forgot to bring a mic

....solid day of filming right?

I failed to remember bringing these simple little pieces because I started filming on the go only a few short months ago. In other words, I have not built my habits long enough to be able to facilitate this new behaviour of filming when inspiration strikes.

How long does it take to build a habit?

Some speculate 21 days, other says it has to be longer. In the latest study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Phillippa Lally and her research team decided to figure out just how long it actually takes to form a habit.

The study examined the habits of 96 people over a 12-week period. Each person chose one new behavior or habit for the whole 12-week period and reported each day on whether or not they did the new habit and how automatic the behavior felt.

Some people chose simple habits like “drinking a bottle of water with lunch.” Others chose more difficult tasks like “running for 15 minutes before dinner.”

Just to mention before we get to the results, depending on the complexity of the habit, more time is needed to hardwire the new behaviour. (Ex: Drinking a bottle of water is easier than running before dinner)

At the end of the 12 weeks, the researchers analyzed the data to determine how long it took each person to go from starting a new behavior to automatically doing it without thinking.

The answer?

On average, it takes on average more than 2 months before a new behaviour becomes hardwire into your brain, 66 days to be exact.

And how long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behaviour, the person, and the circumstances.

In other words, we all have the wrong expectations of habits. The truth is that it will probably take you anywhere from two months to eight months to build a new behaviour into your life.

Let's see how far the rabbit hole goes....

How do we actually reverse engineer-building habits though?

Habits are an accumulation of the daily actions that we take. Our actions are an accumulation of our thoughts and our thoughts are an accumulation from our beliefs.

Habits ---> Actions ---> Thoughts ---> Beliefs

We are really creatures of habit if we think about this. We love having various subconscious routines.

“ Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately so is losing.” – Vince Lombardi

Therefore, if we want to build towards anything and we want have a greater success in our life, we must make sure that we build the right habits to facilitate that type of process.

Going back to the filming

This morning we were at the beach and we were fascinated with the size of the ocean. What is an ocean anyways?

The ocean is nothing but a multitude of drops and each drop counts towards building that ocean.

The same can be said about your lives. You are nothing but a multitude of your actions, your thoughts and your beliefs.

Do not be carless with any of your thoughts or actions. They ultimately build up to the whole image and fascination that is your life.

Live with passion, live your dream and live it now!

Jay

PS. Got any feedback? Agree or disagree? I love to know. Comment in the section below and let's have a conversation about habits.

PPS. Stay tune for my upcoming "Redefining Goal Setting" course... it's going to help you not only crush your goals, but to start operating at high levels of productivity. Subscribe at the bottom for more updates and weekly videos.