Habits – we all have them, we all need them. Habits are critically important to our ability to function efficiently throughout the day. It is estimated that we make about 35,000 decisions every day, but only about 5% of those are conscious. Can you imagine what your life would be like if you had to think about everything little thing? How long would your morning routine take if you had to decide to:
- Put toothpaste on your toothbrush
- Put the toothbrush into your mouth
- Figure out which teeth to brush first
- Determine how you were going to brush them – up/down, back & forth, circular
- Decide when you were actually done brushing
And we haven’t even gotten to your morning commute yet!
From this example it’s pretty easy to see why we have habits. But, how do we create new ones? And better yet, how do we break the ones we don’t really like? In short, it’s tricky. Made trickier by the fact that many actions that are GOOD for you (exercise, eating your veggies, getting up early) don’t give you an immediate dopamine rush (your body’s pleasure juice) the way actions which are PLEASUREABLE (eating sugar & fat, sleeping in, sitting on the couch & binge-watching TV) do.
So what’s a person to do? Let’s dive into habit forming & breaking a bit more.
Step 1 – Learn the pattern
All habits are made up of a predictable pattern of events – a trigger, a ritual & a reward.
- The trigger is the event that starts your habit. (Your alarm clock going off tells you to get out of bed.)
- The ritual is the actual behavior you want to do along with the procedure for how you will do it. (You want to get up & do a swim workout first thing. So you have your swim suit laid out next to the bed & your bag packed with the workout in it.)
- The reward is the feeling you get when you’ve completed your ritual. If the behavior isn’t intrinsically pleasurable, you can pair it with a separate reward that is highly pleasurable (this gives you that dopamine hit). (Going swimming in the morning may not feel great to start…so you reward yourself with a stop at Starbuck’s for latte.)
Step 2 – Make your ritual unbreakable
Habits are by nature ritualistic & need to follow the same steps EVERY time. So it’s worth your time & energy to think through the exact sequence for your new ritual. Keep it simple, straight-forward, easy to follow. I recently did this in order to start my day by drinking water. My ritual is:
- I get out of bed
- Put my clothes on
- Head to the kitchen
- Before I do anything else I drink a full glass of water
- Then I make coffee, unload the dishwasher, etc.
Step 3 – Identify rewards that do & don’t work for you
Rewards are the main incentive for doing things – every action has a reward associated with it either instant or delayed. Maybe you can relate to these examples? I go to work to earn money. I save money so I have enough in retirement. I treat my friends & family members with love & care in order to increase the trust & intimacy in our relationship. I have a glass of wine to signify that the weekend has started.
Since many of the actions we want to do are not inherently enjoyable (especially when we start) we can increase success by linking that action to a reward that gives us something to look forward to. Just make sure that the reward you choose doesn’t sabotage your new habit!
Step 4 – Figure out your trigger!
Creating the trigger for your new habit (or identifying the trigger for a current bad habit you’d like to ditch) is the lynchpin to your success. Triggers are what remind us to start the action & they can be physical (alarm clock, cell phone, running gear), circumstances (a time of day) or feelings (boredom, anxiety, hunger, tired). Additionally, great triggers are specific & immediate. In other words they are crystal-clear & able to be acted upon at that exact time.
A great strategy for linking trigger to action is habit stacking. Habit stacking is simply adding a new habit on top of an existing one. This is what I’ve done with my water drinking. I already get out of bed & come to the kitchen to make coffee (existing habit). So…I just inserted the action of “drink a glass of water” (new habit) BEFORE I start prepping my coffee maker. Viola! Habit stacking!
Step 5 – Develop your plan
This is the final step. When you’ve identified your ritual, experimented with rewards & figured out your trigger…all that’s left is to write out your new habit loop in a step-by-step process from start to finish. Then practice it & fine-tune it further into a well-oiled habit pattern! Congrats! You’ve now created your new habit plan!
If you’d like more info about habits & habit-formation, I highly recommend two books:
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business – Charles Duhigg
The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion – Lesley Paterson & Simon Marshall