When I was in university, I used to plan for exams differently and what I normally did was to go night classes. Some of you may not understand what this means this means but it means going to school at night to read overnight. The only reason why I normally do this is because I can never concentrate at home. I need to leave my house to go and read in school. I know not everybody has to use this strategy to pass, but it’s a popular thing in Nigerian universities to go for night classes before exams so that anything that triggers you at home or distracts you at home from reading won’t have the opportunity when you go for night class. You will neglect your own space and go for a new one.
Sometimes you don’t have to go to night class, you can just go to the library or go to your friend's house to read and what you’re trying to do is to avoid staying at home so that you won’t be distracted. This has been a proven strategy over the years but what people don’t know is that for you to create a new habit you need to do this, we have to understand what are the things that trigger us to stick to old habits, what are the things that are holding us back. When we look at ourselves very well most times people build their lives around their habits and for you to create a new habit you have to change so many things in your surroundings.
Changing it or rearranging it
Just like many students in university, they admit that they can never study at home. Sometimes, you must admit that you have to change your environment and change your friends, You must change things around you for you to change your old habits because they are the triggers that are holding you back and if you don’t do anything about changing them, it would be difficult for you to make progress. Some people will tell you that the easiest way to develop a new habit is to change your environment, but sometimes it is very difficult to do this, That is why most people opt for rearranging.
Rearranging simply means you restrategizing in your life. Sometimes we know that our phone is a big reason why we don’t go to bed early. There is sitting on your phone that will turn your phone off at a certain time and doing this is a form of rearrangement because you know you cannot do without your phone, but if your phone turns off at a certain time at night, you’ll be forced to drop the phone and go to sleep. You can make simple changes like this in your life to create a new habit, sometimes creating a new habit it’s not about staying away completely. It’s just about changing a little little things that can’t keep things that trigger you away.
You can do it
If you don’t understand your triggers and find a way to stay away from them, your old habits will always be part of you and you might even call it fate. Sometimes it is left for us to understand that we have a lot of work to do when we are trying to create a new habit. Most of our old habits are automated by our brain and what makes our brain automate them is the triggers in front of us, if you can build your life in such a way that you avoid your triggers completely, the unconscious decision you’re making concerning your old habit will stop. It will take the power away from you not knowing and it will give you the power for you to make decisions for yourself.
Thanks for your time.