Our lives are full of habits. Unfortunately a great many of them are bad habits. One way to break these bad habits is to fill our lives with good habits. Most people decide one day that they need to make changes to their lives and then they go all out making big sweeping changes. This may work for them for the first few days, but then they get burned out. Pretty soon they are back to their old habits and nothing has changed. This is a very unproductive way to spend your time and energy.

The key is to change a little bit at a time. Say your goal is to get up an hour earlier every day. One day you start setting your alarm for an hour earlier and you keep this up for one week. Then because we are naturally resistant to change you go back to your old habit. A better way is to set your alarm one minute earlier every day. After two months you are getting up an hour earlier and you will not even notice the change. It may take longer, but with this approach you have a good chance for success.

This approach can work for just about anything. If you are exercising for a half an hour everyday and you want to increase that time to one hour then add a minute everyday. After one month you will have reached your goal with very little resistance from your body and mind. Changing slowly eliminates the greatest barrier we have to change: fear.

This method of change is gentle, but very powerful. Think of everything you can accomplish if you just continuously improve a little at a time. The change itself creates the momentum you need to keep going. Soon you will find yourself reaching your goals with almost no pain involved. What one minute change can you make to your life today?