27（老外领读）你还在靠意志力和自律来“虐”自己吗？难怪你那么辛苦，还没有成效

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If you’ve ever tried to keep up with some new exercise plan or stick to that new diet everyone’s talking about, there’s a good chance that you started out strong but eventually drifted away from it. Don’t worry; it happens to most of us. And the reason why is that most of these self-improvement concepts are riddled with more rules and guidelines than any reasonable person can put up with for more than a couple of weeks.

What’s really harmful is all the stress and guilt that comes with trying to measure your food, count your calories or, god forbid, miss out on a scheduled workout.

Generating happiness through good life habits can instigate an upward spiral in your life.

When you think about the factors that contribute to happiness, do things like money, youth or a slim figure come to mind? Well, according to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, these factors only contribute to around 10 percent of a person’s overall happiness. Your daily choices account for 40 percent, while the remaining 50 percent comes down to your genetic makeup.

The 40 percent that makes up your daily choices is a pretty significant factor to have control over, nonetheless, making the right choices requires a great deal of willpower. But the good news is that you can make it easier on yourself by developing good habits.

If you repeat a healthy behavior often enough, you can turn that behavior into a habit that becomes second nature. In other words, you’ll reach a point where you won’t even have to think about it – it’ll just come naturally to you.

For example, let’s say you want to be less frivolous with your time at home after work. Maybe your routine now is to absentmindedly waste time checking your Instagram feed or anxiously scamper around the house looking for something to do.

Well, this time could be made more productive if you develop the habit of coming home, changing your clothes and doing 30 minutes of yoga. This would be a win-win scenario as far as your happiness is concerned. It’s not only a healthy practice; it would also help quieten down your mind after a busy day at work, and it would allow you to enjoy your evening more consciously.

The positive effect that good habits can have on your life is something the author calls spiraling upward.

Let’s say you want to increase your creative output. For instance, you could start spending 30 minutes doing some creative writing after breakfast. This will both spark your imagination and let you start the day with the positive feeling of being productive.

Now, that positive feeling often carries over into another good decision, such as a willingness to do some exercise or a feeling of being energized enough to tackle some household chores. This is how a good habit can get you spiraling upward.

Thus, the more positive habits you have in place, the better you’ll feel. This, in turn, will increase the chances that you’ll continue making good choices on how to spend your time throughout the day – and that will lead to even more good feelings!