How To Create Habits
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Our days are a sequence of habits we perform day in and day out. Some of those habits are productive like exercising for 30 minutes five times per week. Others are necessary like brushing our teeth several times per day. And some are unproductive like binge watching every show on Netflix every weekend.
What we do day in and day out clearly reflects what is important to us. Unfortunately, many times there is a disconnect between the things we say we want and the ones we actually do.
It is through habits how we achieve (or not) what we want in life. If we want financial stability, we make saving or investing a habit.
Any goal we want to accomplish requires having one or multiple habits built into it. Even ‘achievement’ type of goals like running the marathon, writing a book, or getting a new job require building routines to bring us closer to the finish line.
Creating habits or routines linked to our goals make achieving them much easier. Once we break the inertia from non-habit the sequence of events becomes almost automatic.
“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” John C. Maxwell
How come creating habits, especially the productive or necessary ones, is so hard? Our brain’s main goal is to conserve energy. For our ancestors, the activities for survival – getting food, protecting and raising the offspring, and mating – required a lot of physical energy and endurance.
We still do those activities today, but they do not require as much energy as they did for our ancestors. How tiresome could it be to drive to the supermarket vs. hunting for game?
Unfortunately, our brains have not evolved as fast as our way of living. Our brain’s main goal continues to be to preserve energy to have it available for survival. For this reason, we want to make it quite easy for our brains by introducing habits that can be automated. This way, everybody wins: our brain gets to conserve energy and we get to achieve our goals.
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not.” Octavia Butler
It is much easier to replace habits than eliminate them altogether especially if we have been performing said habits for a long time.
The key is to break the inertia and incorporate the new routine into our everyday process. Otherwise, it will become yet another thing we need to do or decide.
For example, if your goal is to write a book, you may need to create a routine for daily writing. If you currently do not have one and decide to not make it into a habit, the daily writing will become a task instead, which may be that much harder to execute consistently.
“And once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them.” Unknown
Here are some considerations as you build or replace habits.
1) Choose timing
When in the day, week, month will you execute the new routine? Mondays? In the morning?
This is important because depending on what you are looking to achieve, you want to keep in mind your high productive times in the day and available time considering existing obligations. In addition, doing the routine frequently at the same time will make it easier for the brain to get activated.
For example, most of us brush our teeth first thing in the morning. It is automatic, we do not make any decisions. We do not even have to be fully awake for that routine to happen.
2) Anchor it to something else
As important as it is to choose the right timing, it is to have an event that will trigger the new routine or habit. This cues our brain that a specific activity will take place. And this is what allows this new sequence of events to create pathways in our brain so with time it becomes automatic.
In the teeth brushing example, the trigger is waking up. Once we wake up, we walk (or crawl) into the bathroom and brush our teeth. Simple.
3) Gamify it
Depending on the specific habit you may have an opportunity to make a game out of it. That is why applications like Fitbit and others will tell you every now and then that you have walked the length of the Nile, or that you have climbed the height of Mont Blanc.
If your goal is to write a book, maybe you will track the number of words you write daily. Or the amount of time you spend writing.
You may become part of a community or get an accountability partner and have a friendly competition.
4) Find the internal motivation
Creating habits, especially the ‘good kind’ is hard. You want to have a clear internal purpose as to why you want to achieve something specific.
For example, if the goal is to lose 20 lbs., the first question that comes to mind is ‘why do you want to lose 20 lbs.? Usually, people respond something related to health or physical appearance. And I still ask why. If you dig deeper your true reason for losing weight may be that you want to play with your kids or grandkids without becoming short of breath. Or that you want to have more physical energy to build houses in a rural community.
There is always something deeper. And when things get tough during your habit creation, and they will, think of the real purpose to get that jolt of energy to continue executing your new routine even when the results are not happening as fast as you would like.
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Jim Rohn
Will power, self-control, and self-management draw energy from the same source and it is depleting to have to make decisions multiple times per day. For this reason, we want to ‘automate’ our activities through habits as much as possible.
This will remove the need to decide or to exert self-control. It is easier not having ice cream at home than saying to yourself ‘I won’t open the freezer door, so I won’t eat ice cream’.
The time and energy it takes to create productive habits for the first time will pay off with high dividends as you find yourself taking consistent action towards your goal without using additional energy.
How do you go about creating or replacing habits? Please, let us know in the comments.
As a leadership coach, I enable talent to achieve bold goals with high standards. My mission is to help women transition from mid to senior level leadership positions by creating awareness, increasing emotional intelligence, and unveiling the tools and choices available to them, so they can confidently realize and fulfill their potential.