How many times have you bought a new self-help book, super excited to form new, better habits, only to find that about 10-14 days in, you start to lapse, take a break or get distracted, and then find it again on the coffee table and think, “Oh yeah,” with barely the same enthusiasm you had at the start?
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We love, love, love the promise of starting to form good habits. Gyms are full of hopefuls after New Year’s. People drop chocolate or alcohol for Lent. There is an entire business of helping people to quit cigarettes, based on expensive patches and lozenges filled with the exact same drug you’re trying to distance from.
The trick isn’t in starting a new habit; it’s in finding the resolve to continue. Here are some strategies to choose and continue building new habits:
Keep it small.
You won’t want to keep your habits small. You’ll probably want to go BIG. While big dreams are great end goals, it’s best to get there with smaller steps. After two weeks, you’ll be happy you only committed to a 15-minute workout and not a one-hour one.
It’s like the saying that your “eyes are bigger than your stomach,” only in this case, your enthusiasm is bigger than your bandwidth. If your goal is a fitness one, you might hurt or even injure yourself by doing too much too quickly. Maybe it’s something else, like working on your passion project. If you set a goal that becomes unmanageable, you’ll end up either resentful for sticking to it, or feeling like a failure for needing to drop it.
Keep it small. Keep it simple. That means you can go over and above your goal if you wish, but you’ll likely have less time, energy or enthusiasm at some point and you’ll be grateful you scaled back.
You’ll also feel accomplished, which cements the new habit even more.
Form habits one at a time.
Don’t tackle more than one or, at the most, two habits at a time. If you decide you’re going to be an entirely new person after January 1, and you’ll start working out five times a week, give up meat and dairy and sugar, and you’ll practice gratitude and visualization every day, and take up guitar, and start meditating…
This is the same problem as tackling a habit that’s too large. It’s too much. You will eventually drop something, then something else, and it will be harder to tackle it next time. Save those goals.
There is an exception to this, and that’s with habits that resemble each other. Quitting smoking and drinking at the same time, for instance, can work for some people because they are interlinked. I would only recommend linking habits like this if you plan to get rid of the bad habit entirely. If you plan to quit smoking forever (as you should), and are quitting drinking just for 30 days, you run the risk of never being able to do these habits separately. What will happen is that once you allow yourself a glass of wine, you’ll likely get a craving for a cigarette. So, I would suggest concentrate on smoking only if drinking alcohol is something you plan to include in your lifestyle long-term.
Speaking of which, busting addiction is a little more complicated than ridding yourself of any old habit. If you are considering quitting alcohol, read my post here on some myths that might be making life harder for you. And if you’re afraid of life post-alcohol, read my post on 40 ways my life is infinitely better since giving booze the boot.
Give in a little.
How you give in varies from goal to goal. For instance, if you have a goal to do something every day, maybe allow yourself one day off a week. Or set the goal to instances per week, rather than per day. If it’s a healthy eating goal, if your health isn’t in question, give yourself a cheat meal.
If you’re your own drill sergeant, chances are that you’ll rebel against yourself. Be reasonable.
If you are dealing with a habit that’s dangerous, something like smoking or drinking or drugs, where you really cannot slip up, then give in to yourself in other areas. This could mean just being kind to yourself. It could mean that you won’t beat up on yourself for eating a pint of ice cream or skipping a workout. Build in some grace in some way that’s appropriate.
Take notes and keep track.
Authority from within is thousands times more powerful than authority from outside sources. When we are starting to form new habits it might be because our doctor says so, or science says so, or our partner says so, but we aren’t always fully on board that it’s the best and most worthwhile thing for us—at least not all the time, and especially not at moments of weakness. If we were, it wouldn’t be something to work towards. We convince ourselves that yes, smoking causes cancer, but we are still convinced we need it to reduce stress. Or we think that that being social is more important than eating healthy, or that it doesn’t matter if we write new pages every day or not.
Chronicle your progress.
As we form newer and better habits, we also need to build new beliefs that these habits are good for us. The best way to do that is to build your own evidence. Keep a journal (digital or analog) of your positive outcomes from your new habit. This will give you evidence of your own progress, which can really help boost your ability to stick with it.
I used to keep a mood journal to track my emotions and drinking patterns. I found that my mood was always higher on days after I had not drank alcohol, and this helped me understand for myself that not drinking was a good thing for me to do. It’s still one of my best motivators for working out; I noticed for myself that exercise kept me happier, and it kept depression and anxiety at bay.
Again, keep it simple.
This can seem daunting because it’s yet another habit, but it doesn’t have to be long, and you don’t have to be so diligent with it. I use Google Docs or Notes on my iPhone for these kinds of journals. It can be one sentence, and it can be sporadic. Just note when something good happens because of your new habit. It doesn’t have to be tangible, either. It could be, “I felt really accomplished after I wrote that email,” or “I was really excited to eat healthy today,” or “I realized I didn’t feel embarrassed of possibly smelling like cigarettes when I met my mom.” Whatever. Anything positive.
This kind of evidence helps form new beliefs for you, upon which you’ll find building new habits so much more easier. And yes, fear is a strong motivator, but it can turn on you mighty fast. If you fail to live up to a fear-based habit, you can easily swing into depression and non-action. So build new beliefs by proving to yourself, through your own daily life, how and why this new habit is building a better you.
Keeping track of positive outcomes also helps you to…
Enjoy yourself.
You need to love your new habit. This is twofold: 1. You need to love the overarching purpose of your new habit, and, 2. You need to love the actual in-the-moment habit. The latter is ideal, but it won’t happen all the time.
They will inform each other. If you have a strong sense of #1, then you’ll learn to enjoy the nitty-gritty of #2. If it’s a fitness goal, and you love the idea of a stronger you, then you’ll learn to love the struggle of your workout. At the very least, you might learn to enjoy the feeling immediately after you do your new habit, and this in time will get you to enjoy the actual habit itself.
If you don’t enjoy it, you need to find a way to. We are naturally inclined to move towards pleasure and away from pain. The fact that you’re taking up this new habit means that you enjoy some aspect of it. It is imperative you find it for yourself, though. If the new habit only brings you pain in some form, you’ll eventually drop it.
This feeds back to all the other strategies, as well. Keeping it simple and small will mean you’ll be better able to focus and enjoy. It also means you’ll be better able to keep track of your successes and have a healthier outlook when you are met with challenges.
And the last strategy can help you enjoy this as well.
Have a support network.
This is an easy one to dismiss, but it really makes a world of difference. We are social creatures. Yes, independence is wonderful and all, but being held accountable by others is an extremely strong motivator.
Your “network” could be one friend. Or your kid. Or your partner. It could be a group online, or a support group in person. They don’t even need to be following along with you, but you do need to share your new habit with this person or group. Doing so will solidify it for yourself, as well as hold you at least a little accountable.
And if it’s a new group of people, you might find yourself making some wonderful connections based on this new habit.
The bottom line.
The good news is that the longer we reinforce good habits, the easier they are to form. There’s no magic number for everyone, but it looks like forming good habits takes about 66 days on average.
My personal experience is that it’s a huge gradation rather than a line between one way of life and the new. So, while it’s possible to form a habit in just a few weeks, it would become more natural at 60 days, even more so at 6 months, and by a year, it’s second nature.
There’s no magic bullet that will make your new habits stick. What you can do is get committed, don’t beat yourself up, and above all, enjoy yourself. Remember that change doesn’t always feel like change, or relief, or revolution in the moment. It’s not until you look back retrospectively from your new place that you can really see and feel the difference.