How to Build Healthy Habits (and Stick to Them)
Do you have a new habit or routine that you’re struggling to stick to?
Your brain likes familiarity because it’s safe and comfortable, and it provides consistency on a daily basis. This is great for any habits or routines that work for you, but unfortunately this keeps you stuck in familiar, unhelpful ones as well.
Maybe you’re hoping to introduce a new habit into your daily routine or you desperately want to stop engaging in habits that no longer work for you.
Here are some simple, actionable steps to create and maintain healthy habits that you can actually stick to.
Make your new habit specific
If you want to create and stick with a new habit, you need to start by getting as specific as possible. The less specific, the less likely you’ll follow through.
In order to zero in on your new habit(s), ask yourself a few key questions:
What is the most important habit you’d like to start doing?
If you look into the future and see yourself successfully implementing it, how would your behavior change?
When it comes to habits you’d like to stop doing, you’ll need to determine what you’ll do instead. For instance, if you’re cutting out caffeine, what are you drinking instead? If you want to stop saying up so late, what are you doing instead?
This habit now creates a larger goal. An example might be: spend more time with my family, lose 10lbs, or wake up at 7AM every morning. You’re unlikely to follow through on something that isn’t a specific behavioral goal, so make sure your habit isn’t something vague, like “eat healthy”.
Create a System Around Your New Habit
One of the reasons most people struggle to stick to a new habit is because they stop at the goal instead of putting a system in place around that goal.
The difference between a goal and a system is that a system provides details and specifics on when and how your behavior will change. A goal is the end result of implementing that system.
It’s not enough to say you want to spend more time with your family or wake up at 7AM. You need to focus on the every day actions that help you achieve this goal.
What does a system look like?
If you want to wake up at 7AM every day, it’s not as simple as just setting your alarm. It’s highly likely you’ll just ignore it and keep sleeping because you’re tired. A system might look like:
Every night I’ll turn off electronics by 10PM and read a physical book before bed
I’ll place my phone across the room so I can’t hit the snooze button
Every morning I’ll stretch and drink a glass of water to start waking up, and immediately start brushing my teeth
Since I like to sleep in on Sundays, I’ll make sure to do some kind of tiring physical activity to make sure I still fall asleep at my usual bedtime
See how this is completely different from your goal? It’s an actionable system you can implement and put into practice each day. So make sure to take your habit and break it down into a system of behaviors.
Related: How to Get More Done in Less Time
Tie your habit to a larger value
When you assign a larger reason to your habits, it’s much easier to keep them. Why? Because you’re giving yourself the option to choose between not doing something and something more important than not doing it.
That “more important” something is a larger, deeper value.
You already know from experience that no matter how much you actually want something, sometimes you just don’t feel like doing what it takes to get it.
If given the choice, we’d all prefer to living in a perpetually clean house, with no dirty dishes or dust. And yet, many of us let the dishes pile up or dust collect because we don’t feel like dealing with it every day.
This is completely normal and a good reminder that you may not always feel like doing something. So whatever habit you’re considering, ask yourself:
Why is this habit important to me?
What larger value does this habit represent?
An example could be drinking more water. Staying hydrated is a key component of healthy living and it’s important for brain functioning.
The next time you don’t feel like water and would rather drink soda, juice, or something else instead, you’d choose brain functioning over satisfying your sweet tooth. You may not feel like drinking water, but you’d feel good about taking care of your brain health.
Related: How to Stop Wasting Time
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Getting New habits to Stick
Now it’s time to get your new habit to stick. Start with setting reminders that actually work. If you tend to ignore certain type of reminders or alarms, do something totally different to hold yourself accountable.
If you set and swipe away phone alarms, try writing down notes
If you’re prone to ignoring or losing notes, set calendar reminders or alarms
If you keep ignoring your reminders, try setting it for a totally different time of day
The key is to experiment to see what helps. And if you need to, you could always bring in an accountability partner to be your reminder!
You can also create a mantra to help you remember. Take that underlying value you clarified earlier and create a simple mantra to help you recall your new habits.
For instance, when I was trying to cut back on caffeine, I came up with the simple mantra, “more sleep”. If I really wanted another cup of tea after 3pm, I’d say “more sleep” to myself.
In that moment, getting more sleep is more important to me than having tea (and anyone that knows me, knows I love tea)! Without that mantra, I’m more likely to give in to temptation and overdo it on caffeine.
Related: How to Stop Procrastinating
How Streaks Can Derail New Habits
Maintaining a streak can be incredibly satisfying and motivating. And unfortunately, breaking a streak has an equal and opposite reaction.
When you miss a day, or a few, there’s a tendency to feel completely defeated and hopeless. It feels like starting your habit up again is like starting from scratch.
Rationally you likely know this isn’t true because progress compounds. You don’t suddenly lose all your progress in a day or two. But losing momentum can feel disappointing, and most people avoid disappointment like the plague.
Avoiding your disappointment can look like giving up entirely to prevent feeling disappointed again the future.
So be willing to let go of the competitive urge to keep a streak going indefinitely. It’s just not realistic. There will be days where an emergency happens or you’re ill, or any number of things get in the way.
When you feel like giving up, talk to yourself like you would a close friend. Would you tell them to give up or would you say something encouraging and supportive? It’s likely you’d be supportive and realistic.
Try saying the exact same thing to yourself: “Missing a day (or a few) doesn’t erase all the progress. You’ve done it before, I know you can do it again. Next time you don’t feel like it, remind yourself of your goal.”
What To Do If You Fall Back Into Old Habits
When you’re building a new habit, think of it like carving out a new walking path. The old path is well worn, while this new path is overgrown and still developing. It’s totally normal to fall back into old habits because they’re so familiar.
Remind yourself that this is part of the process. Out of necessity to save energy, your brain will default to that old path at some point. This is especially true when you’re stressed out.
So try to reframe falling back into old habits as simply your brain trying to conserve energy. It’s not a moral failing and it’s rarely irreversible.
If you’ve missed a day or two, or a long stretch of time, see if you can make your habit as small as possible for the next few days. This is also a great tactic for when you anticipate life getting busy or chaotic and you don’t want to lose momentum.
Here are some examples of ways you can minimize a habit:
If you’ve committed to exercising for 1 hour per day, try 10 minutes
If you’re trying to cut back on caffeine, pour just a little less coffee in your cup
If you want to read a chapter each day, try reading a few pages
The reason this works is because any amount is more than zero, even when your mind tells you otherwise. You might immediately think it’s useless to read only a few pages or that a ¾ cup of coffee instead of 1 cup won’t make much of a difference.
Your mind probably tells you these sorts of things all the time. But thankfully they aren’t true! 5 pages of a book is more than zero. And if you’re having a particularly tough week, 5 pages each day could add up to a chapter.
So the next time your brain says it’s useless to do 10 minutes of exercise when you committed to an hour, ask yourself whether 10 is larger than zero? You might feel like it’s not worth it, but remember that feelings are purely information and not always good guidance.
I hope this gives you some useful tools to start building healthier habits you can actually stick to! Remember to make your goals reasonable, action-based, and meaningful to ensure you follow through.
If you’re hoping to start a new reading habit, check out my related post: 10 Life-Changing Books to Read This Year for some inspiration!
