7 Tips to Help Make Your Habits Stick
7 Tips to Help Make Your Habits Stick by Cassandra McD. for Swell Made Co. Photo by Augustine Wong.
It’s that time of year again when so many of us set and then fail to keep our New Year's resolutions. We start off strong, with the best of intentions yet within weeks, sometimes days, we fall off.
Some of us have completely given up on setting resolutions. I can't say that I blame them. Instead of making it about checking off a list of items for short-term gain, why not take a different approach? Think about developing better habits for long-term success. By approaching it this way, we might be better able to focus our efforts on the specific habit we want to build over time. We might also be more thoughtful about finding ways to best incorporate the new behaviour or activity into our overall healthy lifestyle. Perhaps, we might even be more motivated to stick to it.
What is a habit?
A habit is a self-reinforcing behaviour that, when done repeatedly in a certain context, becomes automatic whenever you are in that context. It is a mental association that we form when we repeat an action over and over again in a given context and get rewarded for it.
Basically, your behaviour becomes a habit when you don't really notice it anymore; it becomes automatic. When I think of this concept, I find myself thinking about all the times there has been an update to the software for my computer. Every time, without fail, I resisted it until the very end – they would have to pry the old software out of my hands (or it stopped working) as I screamed, "Nooooooo!" Yes, I'm that person. Habits are hard to break but, it doesn't mean that new and improved ones can't be formed. You just have to be an open and willing participant.
How long does it take to form a habit?
The rules that it takes 21-days or 8 weeks to form a habit are not necessarily accurate. Professor Wendy Wood, a professor of business and psychology at the University of Southern California and author, noted that the time it takes to develop a habit will depend on the complexity of the behaviour and the person.
This would explain why even after 8 weeks of me going to the gym regularly, I often stop for months at a time. It doesn't stick for me. Yet, keeping a glass of water on my nightstand so that I had access to it as soon as I woke up was a habit that formed quickly and that I've been able to stick to without issue.
How do you make habits stick?
The two things about habits are clear. First, you are less likely to stick to a habit if it's something you don't enjoy doing. I don't enjoy going to the gym; this is a habit I've failed to cultivate. And second, if the habit is easy and you can make it easy to accomplish (you remove the friction), you are more likely to stick with it.
7 Tips to Help Make Your Habits Stick
Here are some additional tips to help make our habits stick or to help you break the bad habit:
1 | Stack the habits:
Try to attach the habit to an existing behaviour (habit stacking or temptation bundling). For example, if you want to read more but don’t really enjoy reading or have time, think about listening to an audiobook while you go for a run.
Drinking more water was a habit I wanted to cultivate and so was journaling daily (hydrate + write). I stacked the two habits by keeping a glass of water on my nightstand beside my journal. The first thing in the morning that I do is have that glass of water and then open the journal and begin to write.
2 | Start small and work your way up:
If you want to get into the habit of running daily, you might want to pace yourself and start small. If you're not a runner – as I was not when I decided to join a 5K running group, you want to start walking with a few minutes of running and work your way up to that 5K, slowly.
3 | Make it automatic:
To build a habit, you will have to make the behaviour or activity as unconscious and as automatic as possible. For example, think writers who get up at 5:00 am every morning to write or marathon runners who do the same to train. To make this work, they have figured out ways to make it easier for them to do the activity despite it being challenging.
4 | Make it hard for yourself:
If you are trying to break a less healthy habit, you will want to do the opposite. Instead, you will want to find ways to make it harder for yourself (create friction) to engage in the undesirable behaviour. You will want to create situations where it forces you to become more aware/mindful of the habit as you're performing it.
For example, if you want to break the habit of constantly checking your phone, place your phone in another room so that; (1) it will be a hassle for you to reach your device (friction); and (2) you'll begin to notice the urge to scroll each time to reach for the phone and it's not there beside you.
5 | Make it something you enjoy doing:
Pick a habit that you will enjoy and you will be more likely to stick to it.
I don't like going to the gym and, one way that helped me start going more regularly was that I joined a boxing class. It was a 10-week class and, it was an easy commute to and from home (convenience was important - less friction). It turns out that punching heavy bags is a great way to unleash the day's stress while getting fit (and not getting arrested). The workouts were super hard but, it was also so much fun. I wanted to go to every class and the endorphins after such a sweat-inducing, heart-pumping workout sess, well, talk about the instant reward!
6 | Give yourself an instant reward:
Figure out ways that you can link healthy behaviour (for example, using the rowing machine daily) with short-term rewards (e.g., allowing yourself to only watch your guilty pleasure reality tv show while on the machine).
7 | Cut yourself some slack:
Accept that failure is part of the process. It’s ok if you miss a day or two or even a couple of months. Life happens. It doesn’t mean that you give up on the habit.
I suffer from migraines and, this inevitably will disrupt my daily life. Sometimes, I cannot function for a day, and at other times, I feel terrible for an entire week. I've accepted this disruption as part of my life. I get frustrated and feel bad about it for a minute and then simply begin again.
Final Thoughts
Sometimes, it's incredibly difficult to start and to stick with a positive habit. In those moments, remind yourself why you are doing the activity or behaviour change, in the first place, then make the effort to do damn the thing! Let's face it, these things are never easy. But, if it will improve your overall health and wellbeing, then it's worth doing.
Cassandra (she/her) is a 9-to-5er and when she’s not at her full-time gig, she’s tapping into her creative superpower as a lifestyle content creator and photographer. Her experience with career burnout has turned her into a wellness warrior who knows the power of healing through slowing down and finding calm in everyday with mindfulness, self-compassion, humour and realistic optimism.
Follow her for some inspiration on Instagram: @swaggerandgreys