subject: We Want To Know How Many Days To Form A Habit [print this page] How many days to form a habit? Officially, the answer is 30 days. However, there is quite a bit of fluidity to the true answer. In some cases it depends in part on the habit as well as the mind that is being challenged to form the habit. The free thinking mind will have a more difficult time forming a habit.
Some experts say that it takes 30 days of a repetitive behavior to form a habit. Is this true? What about the person that takes a sleep aid for ten straight days? If they can't sleep on night number eleven does this mean that they have formed a habit? It's hard to say, considering that they were most likely taking the sleep aid because they couldn't sleep in the first place.
Thought is the defining element to determining whether something is habitual. If you perform an action without thought it is said to be a habit. If you perform a thought with intention, it is considered to be a deliberate action. Take a moment to think about this and consider whether what you have really is a habit.
Interestingly, we refer to smoking as a habit and yet most smokers admit to being aware of their intention to light up before they take that step. In theory, the process of thought alone should disqualify it from being a habit.
Replacing one habit with another should really only take one to two weeks if it is done routinely and adamantly. Depending on the habit that you want to replace and the difficulty of replacing the behavior with something healthier, your time will vary. Smokers have a hard time replacing their habit with something healthier because there is a great difficulty associated with it.
If you go fourteen full days without smoking and replacing it with the habit of exercise, you are definitely going to feel a loss on day fifteen if you don't fulfill your habitual routine. So consistency is very useful. But don't beat yourself up and give up if you miss the occasional time, especially when you are first starting to make a new habit.
