Building healthy habits and making them stick!
Habits are decisions you make each day that make up the basis of your entire life.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Will Durant.
This is one of my favorite quotes because it perfectly sums up how habits form the basis of whatever lifestyle we lead.
Now of course, most of this course has been about building better habits around health, which is great. However, we need to stick to these habits long term to truly make them effective!
In fact, habits make up about 40% of the behaviors we carry out in a given day. Learning how to build new habits and understanding which of your habits may be sabotaging you is an essential part of becoming healthier, happier, and more successful in whatever it is you wish to do.
What you regularly think about, believe, and the actions you take, these are all habits that follow a similar pattern, often unconsciously.
Every habit follows the same routine. There is first a trigger that initiates your behavior, then the behavior or action you take based on that trigger, followed by the reward or benefit you get from the behavior. This is the framework for every habit you have, whether helpful or not.
Understanding this can help you build habits that support your healthy lifestyle goals.
Habit change is an in-depth topic that could be an entire series on its own. But for now, we will stick to some straightforward ways that you can begin to build better habits.
Step 1: Start small
Many people fall into the trap of trying to overhaul their entire routine overnight. “My diet starts tomorrow, and I will eat perfectly and exercise every day.” This is a recipe for total disaster. We want to start very, very small at first and keep adding small changes to our habits as we go along.
Pick a new habit so small and easy that you don’t require any willpower or motivation to get it done. For example, instead of trying to work out for an hour a day, try 5 minutes to start. Make it so easy that it almost seems silly for you not to get it done.
Step 2: Slowly increase that small habit
Sticking with the workout example, once you have stuck to that 5 minutes, add another 5 to make it 10. Do this until 10 minutes becomes consistent, and then add again. Minor improvements increase over time (and faster than you know it). It is more important to be consistent than it is to be impressive.
Step 3: If you fall off track, get back on
You will miss a day. You will eat an off meal. No one is perfect; even the most disciplined and consistent people sometimes get off track. But the people that are successful at maintaining their good habits get BACK on track very quickly. If you have an unhealthy meal, ensure the next one is healthy. It’s as simple as that, but this mindset will ensure that most of your actions are oriented towards those positive habits you are building.
Step 4: Make it sustainable.
This may seem obvious, but we often choose things that are not realistic to our life and expect ourselves to be different people overnight. Keeping these changes small, adding to them over time, getting back on track quickly, AND making sure your habit is sustainable will make all the difference in your success. Patience is key. Don’t try to speed yourself through becoming a different person. Change takes time. Nothing will happen if you can’t keep the habit going because you’ve given up out of frustration over not seeing results fast enough. Try not to focus on results. Focus instead on sustaining your positive actions. The results will naturally come from this.
