5 Tips for Creating New Habits

5 Tips for Creating New Habits

The results of your life don’t lie.

Your habits will determine the results of your well-being, health, success, relationships, and all other facets of your life.

A habit is defined as what you repeatedly do and think about. A reported 40% of our daily routine is comprised of ingrained habits.

If there’s an area of your life you want to change your results in, rest assured, you can look to your habits for a solution.

To improve your life, you must improve your habits.

Let’s talk five tips for creating new habits.

5 Tips for Creating New Habits

Make the current bad habit undesirable.

The struggle with breaking bad habits is you have to combat the pleasurable feelings or instant gratification the habit gives you in order to overcome it.

Here are some bad habits and the immediate gratification they bring:

Oversleeping and hitting snooze allows you to enjoy the comfort of staying in bed longer.
Netflix and a bag of [insert your favorite snack] provides a hit of dopamine, allowing you to temporarily escape the challenges of life.
Skipping your workout means you don’t have to experience the discomfort and pain of exerting yourself physically.

One way you can overcome bad habits is to make them seem undesirable.

Think of the consequences of continuing on with this bad habit 1 year, 5 years, or 10 years from now.

I actually did this recently while experiencing a dry spell where I didn’t work out for over a month. It occurred during a particularly busy time in my life, and I let the habit temporarily slip away.

Thinking ahead 10 or more years down the road, I thought of people I know who are older than me that have body aches or disabilities due to an inactive lifestyle. I knew I didn’t want that for me, so despite the fact my schedule had gotten busier, I made the intentional effort to schedule workouts. Even if it meant getting up earlier.

Using this same example-my dry spell from working out-I also considered how not working out made me feel, versus how I feel when I do. When I wasn’t working out, I experienced low energy and fatigue, and didn’t have the sharpness and clarity of thinking exercise has always provided my brain.

These are just some of the reasons I find skipping workouts undesirable, making it easier for me to maintain the good habit of working out and getting exercise regularly.

Take whatever bad habit you’re struggling with, and change your thinking to make it undesirable.

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Form a new habit by making it easier.

Creating new habits doesn’t have to be hard. For each good habit you are creating, there are ways you can make it easier on yourself.

Take for example making exercise a habit. You could lay out your workout clothes and gym shoes the night before so they’re ready for you.

Trying to cut out junk food? Then don’t buy it at the grocery store. If it’s not within your reach, giving in isn’t even an option.

Want to reduce your time on social media? Delete the apps off your phone.

Struggling to get up earlier? Place your alarm and phone out of your reach from your bed so you can’t hit snooze without having to get out of bed first.

There are ways you can make developing new habits easier on yourself. Take advantage of them.

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Change your identity to match the habit.

The secret to creating new habits many people don’t realize is you must change your identity to match the result you want.

If you look at ending a bad habit or starting a new habit as torture or impossible, then that’s exactly what it’s going to be for you.

Think about the new habit you want to develop and who you have to become in order to line up with it.

For example, I used to struggle with waking up early. Nothing I tried seemed to work. I always ended up oversleeping and rushing to get ready for work.

The truth was, my identity was someone who was not a morning person.

Once I tapped into my identity and decided I was going to be a morning person, that’s where I saw the results change.

I became someone excited to get up in the morning and start my morning routine.

You may be struggling with trying to make exercise a habit, for example, and past history may lead you to believe you’re just not someone who likes working out, given failed attempts in the past. Or, you may believe you’re someone who just doesn’t have time to work out, and that’s just the way it is.

Taking care of your identity problem is just as important (if not more so) than practicing the new habit itself. You can take all the action you want, but until you align your identity with the new habit you want to create, you’re eventually going to quit.

Related:

Grow You (life-changing personal development coaching)
How to Break the Cycle of Bad Habits

Focus on the tiny, daily wins.

Take it one day at a time and celebrate little wins.

If you’re working on making exercise a habit and logged 30 minutes on the treadmill, that’s a win. Even if you barely squeezed out the time to do it.

The daily wins you’ll experience in your day-to-day living will build your momentum to keep going and solidify your new habit.

Creating new habits is a journey and is not a process that takes you from point A to point B overnight. But when you see those daily wins and appreciate them, it gives you the momentum to move forward.

Over time, those baby steps you take every day build up and transform your life.

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Forgive mistakes.

There are going to be days where you make a mistake-that’s okay. Don’t get discouraged.

One skipped workout, junk food and Netflix session, oversleeping (or insert your bad habit here) isn’t going to derail your progress.

Avoid beating yourself up or telling yourself you can’t do it-you can! The key is to take it one day at a time and celebrate those little daily victories. If you look at the big picture, it can get overwhelming, so just focus on the day at hand.

Don’t think that just because you messed up once, or because you’ve gone days without following through on your habit, that you’re doomed. Just get back on the horse and keep going.

When I went through that dry spell where I didn’t work out for over a month, I knew I’d get back into it and that I wasn’t doomed to a life of inactivity. I just made the decision to start again.

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