The payoff of all that frenzied flurry of preparations for the Holiday Season can be time for reflection and looking back over the past year. As we look ahead, resolutions to change some of our habits are often a good way to kick off the New Year.

But planning isn’t doing. Forming new habits is easy to talk about but often much tougher to do. Tomorrow’s December issue of The Leader Letter features a couple of last month’s blog posts about the powerful force of habit and habit forming tips and techniques.

A reader left this astute observation about habit formation on my blog post at crm.hr.com.

“Bad habits are easy to make, but extremely hard to end. Good habits, on the other hand, tend to take more time to make. Luckily, scientists agree that the average person needs at least 3 weeks to form a good habit.

Know what you want. If you can perfectly visualize the habit in your head, the work will be easier. Commit to the habit. If you want to change, you have to work at it. Do not quit if you have one failure. Set your own goals, and reward yourself.”

Visualization is a very powerful force for changing habits and many other elements of developing ourselves and leading others. The Holiday Season is my favored time of year for reflecting on the past year and visualizing where I’d like to be heading in the years ahead. My wife, Heather, and I have also found the seasonal reviewing and renewing of our personal and business vision an excellent foundation to building or rebuilding new habit.