How to Create New Longterm Habits
Why are new habits so hard to form?
And if we do try adopting something new, why is it so hard to maintain it long term?
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A habit is something we do instinctually, without much thought, repetitively over a prolonged period of time. Think brushing your teeth, or making a morning cup of coffee.
To form a habit, there ought to be a CUE, followed by the BEHAVIOUR and then a REWARD.
In the above examples, post-eating could be the cue for brushing your teeth. The reward is clean feeling teeth (acute) as well as cavity prevention (longer term). The cue for making coffee would be simply being awake in the morning and the reward is the delicious taste (acute) and the heightened sense of alertness (longer term).
So why is brushing your teeth or making coffee any different than say going outside first thing in the morning, or exercising for 30 minutes every other day?
Well the behavioural training you’ve had and the environment you’ve grown up in contribute greatly to your ability to adopt new habits. For example, if your parents taught you how and why to save money, then it will be easier for you to continue doing so in the future. Or if you were part of a sports team that encouraged you to push yourself outside your comfort zone, this habit will come more naturally to you later in life. In the above examples, brushing your teeth was engrained in you since you were a kid, and coffee drinking? That’s likely what your parents did, so it was something you witnessed as a young person as well.
On the flip side, if there were few boundaries placed on you around eating junk food, or if you watched too many commercials on TV about how having the newest toy made you cool, these things become engrained in us over time, consciously or not.
So how can we overcome a lack of behavioural training in areas we want to change?
Well, here are 3 things that will increase your chances of successful habit formation:
First of all, positive reinforcement is 20x more powerful than negative reinforcement. Meaning, a punishment for not doing said thing is a lot less effective than an encouraging reward for doing said thing. Not only does negative reinforcement not feel good, it doesn’t promote a longterm behaviour change and instead instills a fear of failure.
Secondly, we can set ourselves up for success with the “power in numbers” principle. The power of doing said behaviour with someone else or a number of other people is much greater versus doing it alone. Learning the guitar takes consistent practice that is a lot more motivating and fun when playing with other people or taking weekly lessons from a teacher. #teamworkmakesthedreamwork
Lastly, a low barrier to entry and a built-in reward are crucial. For example, linking listening to your favourite audiobook or podcast while on the stationary bike for 15 minutes. All of a sudden, by looking forward to one aspect of the new behaviour and having the duration commitment be short, it increases your likelihood of wanting to do it.
Now that we have integrated a new habit into our lives, how do we make it stick?
Of course having a deeper meaning behind the behaviour is always helpful. If you are recovering from a cancer diagnosis, you may have a deep sense of wanting to change certain habits to aid in healing and prevention. However, sometimes we don’t have a deep connection to a behaviour but we know it would be good for us to do. In this case we shouldn’t wait to act. Instead, we should use extrinsic rewards in the beginning of forming the new habit like a post-workout smoothie or watching your favorite show or hiking to see a particular view.
At first, extrinsic rewards are more effective than intrinsic rewards because usually the person needs to feel the effects of the habit before adopting the intrinsic reward system around it. For example, there is a dopaminergic high you feel post-exercise, but trying to convince a non-exerciser that they will feel great after exercising is a tough sell. They need to experience it first-hand. It would be better to choose an extrinsic reward to get someone to start exercising, and after they’ve experienced it consistently a number of times, then the reward system shifts to a more intrinsic one.
The human mind is also wired to notice and hang on to mistakes, meaning, if you are successful with your habit for 6 out of 7 days, but you miss the 7th day, we hyper-fixate on that and often link it to feelings of low self-worth or failure. Knowing this, we can retrain the mind to not dwell on or judge ourselves for the missed day, but instead move right along into a new day the following day focusing on the cue and reward for the behaviour in question.
In summary…
Pick a new habit (start with the smallest possible thing)
Identify the cue to get you to initiate the behaviour
Optimize the environment, build in positive reinforcement, do it with other people and create a reward
Rinse and repeat and if you miss a day, get right back on that horse
