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21 days to form a habit? Not quite 🙇‍♂️💲

🎵 Song of the week: Habit - Still Woozy

“It takes 21 days to form a new habit.”

How many times have you heard that one before? Want to become a marathon runner? Run 10km a day for 21 days. Need to save money for a vacation? Don’t buy a coffee for 21 days, and you’ll stop buying coffee altogether. Congrats, you’re a marathon-running millionaire.

...And then you run 7km on day 1 and are too sore to do day 2. Then, it’s day 3, and you’re sitting on your couch, feeling discouraged. You say “Ah, screw it. Days 3-21 are axed. I’m going to go get a latte.” You think to yourself, am I just really, really bad at forming habits?

We’re here to tell you the good news: you’re really, really not. The 21-day habit rule is a myth, not reality. Dr Maxwell Maltz’ work on self-image in the 1950s was misinterpreted and that misinterpretation disseminated for the years to come after. Oops.

Forming positive habits isn’t as simple or formulaic as repeating things for a certain amount of time. The key isn’t “10km a day for 21 days” — it’s scheduling a short jog around the park once every day or two until you get into the groove of it. Some days, you might do 5km! Some days, you might jog for a minute and get tired and go home. Some days, you don’t want to run at all. In fact, you want a latte. But that’s okay. Your habits, your rules.

If you’re looking for ways to form better spending habits, we’ll start you off here: In your calendar, write in a daily occurrence to take a couple minutes (1-2) of mindfulness for your money. Check your bank account, think about what you spent, and consider what you needed and didn’t need. Feeling extra motivated? Write your thoughts down! Feeling scared of your bank account? That’s okay, do a quick skim of your recent transactions. No need for the full two minutes. Don’t feel bad if you skip a day — just do it again tomorrow! There’s no such thing as losing when forming habits.

Why form good habits?

Researchers have found that habits account for over 40% of our behaviours each day. This means that key to getting out of debt, saving more money, or becoming a more sustainable consumer is developing healthy spending behaviours into habits that shape that 40% of your life.

We’ve designed the new Mogo card to help you conquer your debts and/or save your money.1Achieve the habit of sustainable spending with MogoSpend so you can achieve a zero debt and zero CO2 lifestyle.

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