How To Build Good Habits

How to build good habits – Tips and ideas

Do your habits make your life easier or harder? Do they help you or hinder you? How easily can your bad ones be broken to make way for new, healthier ones? It is said that your lifestyle is the sum of all your habits – good, bad, and ugly. In this article, we will share actionable advice you can use to change your life through better habits.

Building Good Habits – Overview

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear makes an indisputable case for focusing on systems instead of goals. Depending on what generation you’re from, the title could create a mental picture of habits as huge, life-changing bombs. On the contrary, Clear postulates that incremental actions – as on the atomic level – can compound. As the saying goes: a slow drip of water can bore a hole in any type of rock.

Think about that drip. The first water drop seems so insignificant, as does the fifth. But after thousands of them, you may begin to notice a dent (geologists please don’t take this literally). At some point, one drop of water finally breaks through the other side of the rock, creating the aforementioned hole.

Does that one drop deserve all the credit? Certainly not! Similarly, one execution of a new behavior cannot create lasting change by itself. Rather, it is your commitment to forming and sticking with a new, good habit that brings positive change. Conversely, it is your consistent practice of a bad habit that can bring about your demise.

A collection of those good habits will go a long way in reshaping your world. It can change the way others perceive you or impact your outcomes for the better. It can also help you better utilize your time and attract new people into your sphere of influence.

Habits – The Rhythm of Our Lives

Indeed, forming and building good habits is important for normalizing the best practices in various areas of your life. On top of that, habits also put structure into your days. The routines you institute, good or bad, all contribute to the rhythm of your life.

Consider healthy morning routine habits. Perhaps you pick out and prepare your clothes the night before for the next day. You habitually wake up early, and you read 10-20 pages of a personal development book. In this case, three habits connect to form a structured routine that gives you a sense of control over your life. In fact, they make a positive impact on ensuing moments in your day.

Picking out clothes the night before can allow for time to accommodate an unforeseen incident. Waking up early gives you a chance to accomplish more. Reading prepares you for great conversations with potential business associates.

Speaking of unforeseen incidents, there is another side of the good habit coin. Although such structural habits are generally good, they mustn’t be too rigid, according to an article on HoustonMethodist.org.

In this article, psychologist Dr. William Orne writes that you need “the capacity to effectively adapt your behaviors to what life is currently bringing to you”. His example involved occasionally breaking a habit of eating healthy in lieu of socializing with friends, another rather healthy behavior.

The balance between structure and flexibility is key in maintaining good mental health. Without the flexibility, you can more readily succumb to overwhelm. In fact, some habits – even positive ones – can become your master if you are too inflexible.

All that said, you are probably wondering how you can start forming some healthier habits. Here below are those actionable tips on how to build good habits.

How To Build Good Habits – Tips

My 8-year-old son recently formed the habit of picking his nose and then putting his finger in his mouth. He did this whether he had found anything or not. Apologies for choosing a rather graphic example here.

On closer examination, I learned that his intention was simply to clean his fingertip after the dig. Nevertheless, to the outside observer, my boy eats boogers. well, it is often said that all that is required to form a habit is repetition. 21 is usually the magic number. Based on that, he had to do twenty-one picks and licks to form his habit. 

Another theory is that people – particularly children – pick up habits through observation. Although that is plausible indeed, I must assert that my son certainly didn’t pick this one up from me (no pun intended)! I never lick. I flick.

These theories are great for explaining unintentional habit forming. Unfortunately, they’re not so helpful in helping a person create new, better habits. The repetition method probably works, but it’s not the first or the 21st occurrence that presents a challenge.

It is the third or fifth repetition that can make or break your good intentions. If the new habit is too difficult or unpleasant, you may never get to the triumphant twenty-first time.

Clear’s breakdown of habits into four laws offers the chance at systemizing habit forming. The steps go from cue to craving to response to reward. A new, good habit can be like a nice meal: Someone can fix you a plate, but no one can force you to eat.

To create and build a good habit here’s a way to break the four stages down so you can find ways to make them more appetizing.

The cue must be obvious and compelling. Something must enter your consciousness through your senses. Seeing, hearing, or feeling something can cue you. Perhaps it’s an aroma; sometimes it’s a flavor. A strong enough cue will bring you to the next stage. 

It takes a rather attractive craving to propel a person. A problem crying out for an urgent solution or an irresistible urge can do the trick. The response needs to be as easy as possible. Finally, the reward must give great satisfaction. 

Let’s look at my son:

Cue – He feels something in his nostrils that he cannot ignore.

Craving – He is overwhelmed by an urge to get the thing out of his nostrils. 

Response – He goes in and gets it out.

Reward – He can now closer examine (and taste) what he found.

If you can engineer your new habit this way, then you can get enough repetitions to lock it in. You’ll breeze past the proverbial 21 times and your new habit falls into the rhythm.

Reading tip: The are many ways to build good habits. Explore our guides to stop subvocalization, fix bad reading habits or build a memory palace. Alternatively, browse our ists of the best speed reading courses or language learning apps.

Breaking Bad Habits – Tips

A similar, opposite engineering process can help you break bad habits. Perhaps you want to break the habit of checking your phone every minute or every time it signals you. Let’s break that down. 

Cue – Notifications, vibrations and sounds give smartphone cues their power. Simply silencing the phone robs them of a chance to create the craving. 

Craving – Without the cue, the craving loses its power because there’s nothing prompting you to pick the phone up. 

Response – But what if you just keep checking the phone even without the cue? Perhaps there’s a less obvious but just as compelling cue that works even without the bells and whistles. To make the response more difficult, you could put a complicated password or pattern screen lock on.

Also, take your notifications off your lock screen so you have to go through the security barrier to see what’s going on. You could even turn some notifications off so you must actually enter an app to see if there are messages. These are all ways to rob the response of its ease.

Reward – Clear’s framework calls for making the reward less satisfying. Nevertheless, there can be a new satisfaction of having regained control over your life. In this case, you have subjected your device to your will.

Minimizing or eliminating the cue altogether can take care of the rest of the process. Nevertheless, be thorough. Indeed there are some habits for which the cue cannot be completely eliminated.

In such cases, if you can disempower the craving, response and reward, you can break the habit. Further, I don’t think you need twenty-one occasions for your habit to break once you’ve taken all the fun out of it! 

Making Habits Stick – Tips

There are those that say it actually takes much longer than twenty-one days for a new habit to stick. In fact, how long it takes depends on the habit you want to form, your personality and other factors around you.

For example, if you want to get into a gym habit, but your work schedule is different every week, the response stage will be challenging.

An article on Psychology Today suggests having an accountability partner. You’re more likely to continue a good habit when someone else is checking in on you. They also suggest celebrating micro-goals along the way to keep yourself motivated. Be patient with yourself and don’t rush, they advise. There is no perfect way to change.

Additional Tips for Building Good Habits

• Forget about twenty-one, make a one month, daily commitment to get the momentum going.
• Identify your Why. Often, it helps to have a strong outside source of motivation – a loved one who needs the version of you the good habit will create. If it’s just for you, then make sure your why is important enough to you to make it through the early stages.
• Visualize yourself either doing the new habit or living with the benefits of it. 
• Set up reminders and triggers.
• Replace anything you may be giving up in your old habit with something better to make your new habit’s reward stage a bigger score.

How To Build Good Habits – Conclusion

Wrapping up our guide on how to build good habits. Creating good habits takes time, motivation, and commitment. It is a deliberate act that can pay off big time as new, more positive habits reshape your life. Having no shortcuts, you will need systems that work.

Help in the form of support groups, mentors, and accountability partners can make a profound difference. Outside sources of motivation can also be strong catalysts for change. All that said, it’s ultimately up to you to set yourself up for success.

Reading and researching to learn how to get rid of bad habits and form new ones is a good way to prepare your mind for positive change. As you form your new habits, keep your mind open to adjusting to different environments.

It’s ok to break a healthy habit on occasion to help someone in need or otherwise take a nice departure from daily routine. Forgive your failures, celebrate your gains, and play the long game.

What are your tips to build good habits and make them stick? Please send us an email and we will add them to this guide.

Sources: Clear, James (no date available), The 3 Rs of Habit Change: How to Start New Habits That Actually Stick – 1

Words: Rashida Veronique S.