How to create healthy habits and routines. Habits have been proven to be a critical ingredient of success. By implementing good habits into your daily routine, you can accomplish big goals faster and easier.
One of the most powerful things in my life has been creating new habits. The more I do them, the more natural they become, which means they’re easier to do and then I get more done. It’s an upward spiral!
Habits are behaviours we perform on a daily or otherwise regular basis. They’re not just any behaviours, though. Psychology defines habits as actions that are triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that have been associated with their performance.
For example, automatically washing hands (action) after using the toilet (contextual cue), or putting on the seatbelt (action) after getting into the car (contextual cue). In his book The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg adds the third component, reward (or the removal of an unpleasant stimulus). In the above examples, the reward would be having clean hands and being safe in the car.
Decades of psychological research consistently show that mere repetition of a simple action in a consistent context, through associative learning, creates a habit. And once habits have been formed they are likely to persist even after conscious motivation or interest breaks off.
Habit researchers have found that to create new habits ( or break old ones), we should not focus on the behaviour or action but rather focus on the cue. Instead of spending time and effort on creating or eliminating the behaviour itself, focus on developing and/or reorganizing the cues in your environment that trigger those habits.
So, for example, if you want to start exercising regularly. Instead of just focusing on developing the habit of exercising, focus on developing a routine around initiating the exercise. This may seem trivial but it’s a huge help.
An easy way to do this is to choose a cue that already exists in your daily life, such as getting home from work. Then, during the early stages of developing your exercise habits focus your effort on going straight to your room after you get home and change into your workout clothes. Then head straight to the gym or start your workout at home. So in essence, you want to create the ideal setting before you want your action – in this case, the exercise – to take place. This will make it easier for you to create a new contextual cue for your exercise.
After a while, you may start noticing that when you get home from work (your environmental cue/trigger), it takes little to no effort to go to your room, change your clothes and start your exercise. You may even start looking forward to it and maybe even feel like something in your life is off when you don’t exercise. And that’s the power of habit.
A habit or routine can become an anchor (e.g. your morning routine)
A habit or routine can become an anchor. And anchors are things that trigger behaviour. For example, if you have a morning routine, it might be getting out of bed at 7:30 am, brushing your teeth and washing your face, making coffee on the stovetop, and eating breakfast while reading the news in bed before going to work.
A morning routine is a good example of an anchor because there’s no reason it needs to happen at 7:30 am every day. You could choose any other time to wake up and still get the same results (such as getting ready for work). However, by doing all those things at 7:30 am consistently over time they begin to feel like part of who you are and what makes sense for you as opposed to being something external imposed onto yourself. This means that when someone asks “what do I need to do today?” or “how long should my workout take?” or even just “what do I want for lunch?” answering those questions becomes easier because everything else falls into place around them automatically thanks solely due their status as anchors within your system!
Anchors don’t always have such clear beginnings though; sometimes they’re just ‘there’ already – like how music makes us feel happy because we’ve associated listening with that emotion over many months beforehand! Other examples include the time of day (elevating our mood when waking up), place (feeling energetic when walking outside vs inside), emotion (being inspired by nature instead) and action types/styles like visualizing goals ahead before doing anything else rather than thinking about them afterwards.”
Creating habits that you can stick to
What ultimately works for most people is not to follow a strict plan or make lots of changes at once. But to build a series of healthy habits, one at a time, and slowly build up to them over a long period. Research shows that people who set multiple goals at the same time end up accomplishing none of them. They burn themselves out before they have time to turn each one into a habit.
People who are already stressed should be especially careful when embarking on a journey of changes, but not so much that they keep spinning on the same track forever.
Many people start with good intentions and a strong desire to change only to slip back into their old ways. Studies have identified several factors that contribute to forming and keeping a lifestyle with healthy habits.
One of those is knowing the basics of how habits are formed and how they work. Education is empowering and knowing what to expect will help you to catch yourself if you feel like you are slipping into your old ways.
Another big factor is how you perceive the habit you want to build. If the new habit seems impossible, then it will feel harder. For a person who feels stressed most of the time, the idea of never being stressed can seem like an impossible goal. Because it feels like an impossible task, you’re far more likely to give up. Whereas if you decide to work on one area of your life at a time, then it feels effortless to accomplish, and therefore it is.
The best part is that once you’ve adopted the “easy mode” version of your desired habit, you can always amp it up afterwards and start working on your next goal. The key is to start small, set the bar low and then build up slowly.
Habits and routines are powerful and can transform your life by helping you keep on top of the things that matter to you.
Habits and routines are powerful. They can transform your life by helping you keep on top of the things that matter to you. They are a way of life – as important for success and happiness as eating, sleeping, and exercising – but without the same emphasis on them. If you want more control over your life then it’s time to take action! Start by taking a look at your current habits, routines and triggers and make sure they’re working for you before making any changes.
