It just isn’t fair that bad habits take seconds or minutes to form while good habits can take weeks, months or even years. All it took for me were a few cigarettes to get me hooked. During college I worked on a golf course as a greenskeeper. It was tiring and labor intensive. Since it was an outside job all of my coworkers smoked. After about a year of watching the plumes of carcinogens and smelling the noxious fumes I decided to try a cigarette. The shortness of breath and the incessant hacking and coughing that I witnessed didn’t deter me from trying. One cigarette lead to two and two to a pack. It took about two years to unhook myself from the clutches of tobacco.
I learned an important lesson through my battle with nicotine. If you get hooked on something quickly and expeditiously it is probably not good for you. If it takes you weeks and/or months to develop a taste or affinity for something, it is probably good for you. Although I have no research or studies to point to on this topic it is all largely anecdotal. Case and point, I used to hate running but over the course of two months my body and mind started to love jogging. Running a half a mile a day turned into five and then into 10 miles a day. The same thing occurred with swimming. I hated to swim laps but after about two months of consistent swimming, my mindset changed and I couldn’t swim enough. Today, exercise is a part of my daily routine.The day does not feel complete if I haven’t put in my thirty minutes to one hour of exercise.
My charge to you is that when you are trying to develop a good habit, give it a good 60 days. I can guarantee that after 60 days you will have developed the foundation and infrastructure both mentally and physically to keep that good habit alive and kicking.