Writing the New Year is Practice for Creating a New Habit

Happy New Year!

How exciting to change the calendar. We say goodbye to the year past, celebrate our successes and our progress, and say hello to something new – something we get to create! It’s a chance to start over.

So the other day when I began writing the date, I almost wrote 2008. I’ve actually been pretty good at writing 2009 since then because I’ve been paying close attention. It usually takes me weeks to get used to writing the New Year. Other people mentioned how they struggle for weeks too.

And it occurred to me that this simple thing like writing the correct year is a habit! On average it takes 21 days to create the neurological connections in your brain that are needed to develop a new habit of thought. So during the first three weeks of every year, we all struggle as we create these new neurological connections.

Why doesn’t this happen every month? Because neurological connections become stronger with use so by the end of a month, the connection has just been created making it fairly easy to start with something new. 

If you pay close attention, as I have been (trying) to do, then with awareness you can more easily write the correct year and create the new neurological pathway making it habit, and after while, you won’t have to pay as close attention; you’ll do it automatically.

Neurological connections never disappear completely. Much like a muscle, if you want to strengthen it, you work it out. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. And if you stop working the muscle, it atrophies. Old neurological pathways “atrophy” when new, stronger pathways are created.

So you can consider these first few weeks of the year an excellent time to practice the skills required to create new habits and develop new neurological connections!

Isn’t that exciting?! Why is this important, you ask?

Og Mandino tells us in his best seller, The Greatest Salesman in the World:

In truth, the only difference between those who have failed and those who have succeeded lies in the difference of their habits. Good habits are the key to all success. Bad habits are the unlocked door to failure…

As a child I was slave to my impulses; now l am slave to my habits, as are all grown men. I have surrendered my free will to the years of accumulated habits and the past deeds of my life have already marked out a path which threatens to imprison my future… Therefore, if I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits. My bad habits must be destroyed and new furrows prepared for good seed.

I will form good habits and become their slave.

As you practice with something as benign as changing the date, you’ll develop an aptitude for the effort it takes to create change – real, sustainable change. This will be useful when you decide to create bigger changes in your life, relationships, and business.

Let me know when you are ready to tackle something bigger.

Your partner for success,

Julie