Building new Habits – make it easy!

We have already talked about the first two stages of creating and sticking to a new habit: make it obvious and make it attractive. Now let’s look at the third stage: make it easy! Simple, right?! Or perhaps not so much…

How the hell do you make something easy that you have never done before but want to make sure you now do every day? Our first thought might be to simply tell yourself its good for you and push through, but did that ever work when you were a kid and your mom wanted you to eat the veggies by telling you to do it because it was good for you?! Exactly, it didn’t work, so we need something more. 

Let’s look at habits, they are something that you do without thinking right? You can switch your brain off and just do because you have done them so many times before and you do them either every day or very frequently. They are habitual. So what if we took that element of easy and applied it to your new habit – setting yourself up for it to be a no-brainer – you just do the thing – make it simple, make it easy!

Let’s use what has worked for me in fitness as an example again. I wanted to make it easy, or at least easier, for me to get to the pre-work class at the gym but it felt hard to get up that early and get out the door in time for the start of a 6am class. So I set myself up for it to be a no-brainer, there was then no time for me to think or talk myself out of it. I set out the workout clothes the night before, right by the bed and I made them the nice ones, ones I liked wearing (the attractive piece of habit building right there), and I set my alarm with a note that snooze was not an option and to get up and get going. I knew that it was easier to just get up and do it than to miss it and beat myself up about that or miss it and have to go after work instead, which would be even harder. The first few times it was still hard but it got easier and easier until it became almost a reflex – alarm, workout clothes, out the door, done. And I will tell you that the power of habit even had me trekking in the snow on dark mornings in the NYC winters without even thinking about how hard, or perhaps insane, that was.

I challenge you to find a way to make this easy – what will set you up for success in this new habit? Putting what you need for the new habit (workout clothes, journal etc) somewhere that you see it first thing when you wake up? Having yourself set up and ready to go in the morning so you can jump right in before you are fully awake and before the rest of the house wakes up? Figure out what works best for YOU – I can give you all the ideas in the world and hammer on about consistency but unless your habit is aligned with YOUR life and works with what you need you will not stick to it.

And that will also lead to the last part of the making a habit stick: make it satisfying, which we will cover later.

Now go do great things!!

Be Well, Real Well,
Tracey