Lock In your Good Habits

Habits are the secret to long term success, without long term struggle.  A habit is something you do every day (or every time in a specific situation), without really thinking about it.

For example, most of us have a habit of checking our phone when we’re bored.  We don’t really think about it, it just happens.

Many of us also have a habit of the route we drive home.  That’s why we sometimes have that feeling of getting home but not being able to remember the drive.

Habits = Brain Autopilot

A habit is incredibly useful because it can help us regularly make good choices (or bad ones) without the stress and extra brain energy of having to decide.  It’s a pre-decision that we have trained our brain to make (sort of like a very reliable assistant, you tell it what you want and it does the thing).

Good habits can help us routinely make healthy food choices, go to the gym, drink water, etc.  So how do we set up good ones, and avoid the bad ones?

1) Get Specific and Actionable

Before we can set a habit, we need to know what we want that habit to be.  What is the choice we want our brain to make for us.  Think of our brain like a computer: If this, then that.

So, for example, if we want to set a habit to avoid sweet treats, just saying “When I see sweet treats, I will avoid them,” probably isn’t enough.  We need a plan, preferably a positive action one.  Something like, “When I see sweat treats, I will take a deep breath and walk away.”

This is very specific, we know exactly what we’re going to do.

And it’s actionable, in that we have positive action we will take.  This is much more effective that simply thinking about something that we won’t do.  That’s because the brain still has to focus on that thing you won’t do (like gorge yourself on sweets), which means it will be easy for it to get confused between do and do not.  We need to fill that void of do not with something positive to do.

2) Break it into Small Steps

Many times, we want to set a new habit, but we are making a leap from 0 to 60.  Sometimes this can work, but many times, the new habit is simply too far from our usual, that we either lose motivation or don’t do it at all.

For example, if we want to set a new habit of getting up early to go to the gym, that’s super! But it can be a big shift.  There are a lot of little pieces that go into waking up early to go to the gym: setting the alarm clock, packing our workout clothes, having breakfast or a power snack before, then actually going to the gym itself….

Now, luckily, we can set multiple habits at the same time, but it’s important to realize that what might seem like a simple habit, might have a lot of steps.

Make a specific and actionable plan for each of these steps to start setting the habit.

3) Define Your Motivation and Break Down any Stumbling Blocks

When we first start a new habit, it takes effort.  That’s because we are overcoming old routines and figuring out new ones.

If we go back to our gym example, in order to get up early and go to the gym, we have to overcome our old habit of sleeping in.

The key to doing this, and doing it multiple days in a row (so that we really confirm for our brain, yes, this is the thing we want you to do all the time), is motivation.  Why do we want to do it?  And that’s a question that’s not why should we, but why, in our heart of hearts, is it important to us?

Many people know going to the gym is good for their health, but simply saying, “I should go to the gym because it’s good for my health,” is usually not enough.  We need to know our personal motivation for any habit: “I want to go to the gym so I can improve my health so I can be more energetic with my family.”

Or whatever works for you… years ago, my primary motivation for going to the gym was the cute guy that worked there. *shrug*  Motivations are personal, don’t worry about what might be a good motivation or bad motivation.

Along the same lines, check your blocks.  Are there fear-based reasons why you’re not doing it?  Maybe you don’t want to go to the gym because you feel self conscious or you don’t know how to use the equipment.  How can we overcome that fear, or release it?

4) Plan It into Your Day

Set up cues for habits which will make them automatic.  For example, whenever I brush my teeth, I have a drink of water and then splash some on my face.  (TMI, I know.)  This habit is so automatic, I don’t even know when I started doing it.

It’s a linked pattern with several steps: I wake up (or head to the bedroom for bed), go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, swish, spit, have a drink of water from the tap, and then splash water over my face.  It all starts with one simple thing which is part of my day anyhow (waking up or bedtime), and from that follows six different habits.  All without thinking.

When we want to set up a new habit, it’s easiest to link it to part of our day that we are doing anyhow.  That makes it much easier mentally.

For example, if we want to start a new gym habit, it’s going to be easiest to link it to part of our day.  In our previous example, we linked it to first thing in the morning: wake up, go to gym.  But we could also link it to driving home after work, or to our lunch break.

In any case, for any habit, we want to make it as easy as possible.  It’s much easier to add something to an already established routine, than to try to start a brand new one.

5) Celebrate Success and Be Kind with your Non-Success

Many of us achieve more than we will ever let ourselves feel proud of.  (Don’t know why, just is….)  And we beat ourselves up for never being good enough.  (We have a little focus problem.)

When we are starting something new, it is normal to have set backs, to have times when we didn’t successfully complete the habit — maybe we took that chocolate brownie instead of walking away, maybe we slept in instead of going to the gym.  Totally normal.  Totally human.  And perfectly okay.

But for many of us, we will focus on this one failure instead of the dozen other times we were successful.

The solution is to celebrate your successes.  Whenever you successfully complete the new habit (whether you walk away from the brownie or you get up early and go to the gym), give yourself a mental pat on the back, and let yourself feel proud.  Really let yourself feel it and integrate it.  Celebrate being on track for your goal and following through on your motivation.

And when we have a non-success (or as I like to call them, being human), be kind.  Don’t beat yourself up, simply make a plan for how you will show up the next day.  Or make a plan to show up today, just differently than usual (maybe you can go to the gym on your way home instead of first thing, maybe you’ll enjoy that one brownie but walk away from other sweets).

6) Repeat

Research shows that habits take an average of 21 days to set.  Yep, 3 weeks.

Which means, for any new habit, you are going to have to keep making the effort to nudge ourselves to follow the new pattern instead of falling back onto the old.

Good news though, after 3 weeks, that habit should be on auto pilot, meaning your brain will automatically follow the new pattern, without you having to think about it at all.

And when that happens, we set ourselves up for long term success.  So, do yourself a favour, and decide on some positive habits.  Pick some little things that if you do them every day, in a month or a year, will notably improve your life.  And start doing them.

It only takes 3 weeks for a lifetime of success!

2-3 Love, My friends.

(PS, writing these blogs is a habit now, I don’t even think about it, it just happens *grin*)

Cover Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels