Gretchen Rubin Quotes

Twenty-eight days is what is takes to break a habit and to implement a new set of habits.

It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

When we're trying to form and keep habits, we often search - even unconsciously - for loopholes. We look for justifications that will excuse us from keeping this particular habit in this particular situation.

When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important.

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower.

Staying consistent with positive habits can be a challenge.

I think about willpower almost never. I realize for myself, trying to be more disciplined is pretty nebulous and it's often a slippery target. For me, I've just thought about incentives.

The problem with resolutions is they're only as solid as the person making them.

Habits eat good intentions for breakfast.

The mind is the most important part of achieving any fitness goal. Mental change always comes before physical change.

The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.

The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.

You need someone who is going to help you make that better version of yourself.

You can't suddenly say, 'I want a brand new habit tomorrow,' and expect it to be easy and effortless.

Your desired behavior must become just as much a habit as your undesired behavior was before.

I'm not always as disciplined as I should be. I don't sit down and write every day, but I should.

I had tried to get focused on other things. But I always ended up back in the same place, and it wasn't making me happy. I needed to get the focus back.

Whether I'm running, working, relating, parenting, learning - whatever I'm doing, I want to surround myself with people who push me.

The specific steps for changing a specific habit differ from person to person and habit to habit, but the steps - the formula - is essentially the same, and once you learn it, you can do amazing things.

I still can't manage to keep a journal, and people have been telling me to since the fourth grade.

We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.

January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year's resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.

I would step into a place of being lined up with a sense of purpose and my inner compass, and everything was going in the same direction. Then I'd get lazy and get off the track. And then things would start to fall apart, and I'd back up and get it together again.

I'm a big fan of intention. That's because I have learned first-hand the power of setting my intention on my goal and making all decisions based off of that intention.

We want to design interventions to teach people how to harness their considerable willpower.