Start a New, Better Habit to Improve Your Life

So, you’re working on creating a better, happier lifestyle for yourself. You have your New Year’s resolutions on your mind, and after the previous post, you have identified a few bad habits that are holding you back.

A more effective way to successfully reach your goals than breaking your bad habits is to start better habits. These good habits can be added to your life or they can replace the not so good habits that you already have.

But first, what is a habit again?

Basically, we all have routines in our daily lives and within these routines, we encounter cues (also known as stimuli or triggers) that bring about a response from us. Over time, after these cues are repeated, our response to them becomes automated. Now, we have developed a habit.

Most of these habits you may not even be aware you have. For example, when you get into a car, you automatically reach to put a seatbelt on or after you use the toilet, you go to wash your hands. (At least, I hope you do these things).

Habits for these repeated cues we are used to experiencing are great for us mentally because we don’t have to use as much conscious effort to respond. This saves our brain energy to work on other things like what we have to do for our job or class.

Having good habits can help you reach a goal you have in mind or a lifestyle you think would make you happier. Think about it: a productive person has a different set of habits compared to an unproductive person; just as a fit person has different habits from an overweight person.

Creating a new habit

So, what happens when you want to create a new habit for yourself? You have a goal to be more productive during the day therefore you decide that you want to create a habit of going to bed earlier.

This is not going to feel natural to you at first because it is not yet a habit. Changing a habit is going to take conscious effort. You’ll need to incorporate it into your life and practice repeating it until it sticks.

“And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them.”

Charles Duhigg

In this post, I’ll discuss just how to do that and tips so you can get started.

How to establish a habit

There are three main steps to establishing a new habit in your life. This includes an ‘initiation phase’, ‘learning phase’, and ‘stability phase’¹.

1. Choose your habit (behavior) and in what context you will perform it

In the initiation phase, you’ll need to take your chosen habit and connect it with something you already do in your routine. Focus on your habit as a behavior meaning you may have a goal to become more fit but your habit should be a behavior to do 20 minutes of cardio five days a week for example.

The context is the situation in which you will perform your habit. So, taking the previous example, your habit of doing 20 minutes of cardio, your context might be to do this an hour after breakfast on weekdays.

You don’t need to do your habit every single time within the context that you’ve set. There are days that are not going to go routine. If you had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and were not able to get in your 20 minutes of cardio after breakfast, then you could still do your cardio after work that day.

However, for a habit to be best formed, try to keep your habit or behavior connected with your context as often as possible.

Eventually, the context will become your cue to trigger your behavior, and then you’ll have a new habit.

2. Repeat as often as you can

This is also known as the learning phase. Now, that you have picked a behavior and a context, you’ll need to practice it.

The best way to establish a new habit is to make the time and effort to do it repeatedly. Repeat however often it’s called for – daily, weekly, etc.

With repetition, your behavior can become a habit and change your life.

3. Finally, your habit is formed

This last step is not so much an active one that you will need to perform but a checkpoint that shows your habit is stable.

After some time, about two months,¹ you should find yourself consistently and almost automatically going to go do your cardio in the morning. It will feel like the right thing to do.

You won’t need to make as much of a conscious effort to perform your behavior. This doesn’t mean that you can’t lose this new, better habit if your routine changes or you let it go and allow a bad habit to take its place.

Now, you are one step closer to your better life or reaching your goal. You can repeat these steps with another good habit you want to incorporate into your life.

Small steps can lead to big changes

It’s best to start small. Trust me. I’m the type that wants to throw myself into something and see the results right away but that’s not the way you change or create habits¹.

In fact, small changes are best¹. Rather than choosing a broad habit like choosing to eat healthier, start with a more specific habit like replacing desserts with fruit.

These micro-changes over time will accumulate and have a big effect on your life. Just as minor bad habits over time will detriment your life.

Making your habits smaller and simpler does not take away from their effectiveness to get you to your goal. Although it may seem like it’s a slow way to make a life change, slow is usually better for making something stick.

Create a habit tracker

For a while, I was really into bullet journaling. An ex-coworker introduced it to me, and it seemed like a great way to be creative and track my schedule and life better. I got really into doing this and spent a year tracking my habits this way.

Bullet journaling is usually done by hand in a paper journal but this doesn’t mean you are limited to this method. You could track your habits digitally. As you can see in the picture below, I essentially created a grid with two axes and filled in what I accomplish throughout the month.

You could easily set something like this up in Microsoft Excel if you are a little tech savvy or you could just make a handwritten, plain-old list with no fancy grid or drawings. There’s not a right or wrong way to make a tracker. What works for you, works.

You may notice that I didn’t even get all the way through my month tracking my habits. Just know, it takes some work to sit down and remind yourself to do this.

Every month, though, I would make a new chart and add or delete habits depending on how I did in the previous month. I’m also a person who takes on too much at once so that’s possibly the reason why I didn’t get much done.

(Related post: Why Slowing Down and Doing Less Can Actually Bring You More In Life).

But also know that as a habit forms, you shouldn’t need to track it anymore. A tracker is better to use in the beginning while you’re still trying to add it into your life which is a conscious effort.

Of course, if you’re like me and you like tracking what you do, then continue to use the habit tracker!

Make this a positive experience

Making this process a positive one will help you to be successful in your endeavor. Rewarding your good behavior will keep you motivated and will make forming your new habit stronger².

There are many different types of rewards. Your reward can be simply you complimenting yourself mentally or you could give yourself some kind of a treat on occasion.

Creating a positive experience is not just about reward. Studies show that having a positive outlook may “decrease the power of self-undermining tendencies”³ meaning you’ll be less likely to sabotage yourself or create a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure for your new habit.

Being positive about this process will help you not get so down on yourself when you mess up.

Final Tips

Make sure your habit is personal¹. You’ll need a lot of motivation to create a new habit so it has to mean something to you.

You shouldn’t choose a habit just because of external validation or because your doctor warned you about your health. It has to be your decision – you need to be internally motivated.

No one else is going to form this new habit for you so you being your motivator and cheerleader is crucial for succeeding.

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you are inspired or not.”

Octavia Butler

One of the great things about making a new, good habit is that it is automatic; you will not need to constantly motivate yourself in the future to keep it up.

For example, if you made a habit of drinking a glass of water whenever you go into the kitchen to help support a goal to make yourself healthier, you will have made a lifestyle change, not just a temporary aspiration.

Forgive yourself if you mess up. You’ll still be successful at forming your new habit even if you mess up a day as long as you get back up and keep trying¹.

Persistence is key

Persistence will be key to adding new habits that will change your life for the better.

Your life will be filled with activities, routines, and habits regardless so you might as well fill it with ones that help you to have the kind of life you would like to have.

Bad habits and vices will always be out there but if your good habits are stronger than these, you will overcome them². If you make eating healthy, exercising, taking care of your mental health, getting sleep, etc. stronger habits in your life, eating junk food, binge watching T.V., etc. will not have as much of a hold over you.

All of this work takes time and you will probably be constantly adjusting and editing your habits throughout your life but now is the time to get started.

You know your goals for what kind of life you want. Now, choose one new habit that will help you get one-step closer and get started!

And remember, even happiness is a habit.

“Happiness is a habit – cultivate it.”

Elbert Hubbard

Live happier,

Nicole

Let me know what you thought of my post in the comments below! I try to respond to all. What new habit will you work on?

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References

1. Gardner, Benjamin, Lally, Phillippa, and Wardle, Jan. Making health habitual: the psychology go ‘habit-formation’ and general practice. British Journal of General Practice, Dec. 2012. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp12X659466.
2. Carden, Lucas and Wood, Wendy. Habit Formation and Change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Jan. 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.12.009.
3. Das, Enny. Rethinking the role of affect in health communication. The European Health Psychologist, Jun 2012; vol. 14:2.