Everyone’s been talking about New Year’s Resolutions lately. We all know, love, or loathe these January Jumpstarts. While trying not to fume at how crowded my Kickboxing class is becoming, I do try to take stock at the beginning of the year and focus on healthy habits.
Forming a new habit is tough. Our old habits are like grooves worn into our brains from repeated use. It’s easy to fall into them and roll merrily along. But it’s possible to create new habits and stick with them. Here’s some tips for making your new habit stick:
1. Cue yourself
A habit is simply an automatic behavior. It’s easier to make new behaviors automatic if we have a cue. You could use many things to cue yourself, like the alarm on your phone or a strategically placed post-it. You could also make a different behavior a cue, like walking in your door after work could cue you to take the dog for a walk.
2. Create a parallel behavior
Old habits never quite go away, but they grow weaker over time. Research shows that to create a new habit, you should piggy-back on an existing habit. Take a habit you want to break, like smoking, and replace it with a healthy habit, such as getting more exercise. The smoking habit is already lodged in your brain and there are many cues to smoke. Use this to your advantage by engaging in your new behavior (taking a walk) whenever you would reach for the cigarettes.
3. Give it 30 days (or more)
I’ve heard many times that it takes 30 days to make a habit. Maria over at Brain Pickings reminds us that magic numbers always require a grain of empirical salt. Simple habits like drinking a glass of water in the morning may be formed in 30 days, but more involved habits like exercising take a longer time. So give yourself some time, and stick with it. It will become automatic eventually.