THE FIVE STEPS
The best way to get through the three stages of the habit-formation framework and make your goals stick is using these five steps for creating new habits...
1 SET A GOAL
Setting achievable goals can be an art. When you’re deciding on a habit you want to achieve, make sure it’s realistic and intrinsically motivated (i.e. you’re doing it for yourself).
2 CHOOSE A SIMPLE ACTION
You may need to do several things to achieve your goal. For example, if my aim was to get a better night’s sleep, my actions to achieve that goal might include going to bed and waking up at similar times of the day, avoiding screens an hour before bed, and limiting my caffeine and alcohol intake, among other things. The actions you choose should be simple and achievable. You may wish to focus on doing one action at a time.
3 PLAN YOUR CUE-RESPONSE ASSOCIATION
This step is about planning when and where you will perform your chosen action(s) in order to create a cueresponse association. You want to be consistent, so choose a time or place you encounter every day. This cue will become the first part of a twopart sequence: “When I [encounter cue X], I will [perform action Y (which will later become a habit)].”
Your “When I” becomes an anchor because it’s a stable routine in your life.
You will use anchors like this to trigger your new desired habits. For example, if I want to avoid screens an hour before bed, I would decide on my bedtime, say 9pm, and work backwards to turn off all screens at 8pm. To help me get into this habit, I could set an alarm to go off at 8pm or set my screens to turn off automatically at that time.
4 TAKE ACTION
It’s one thing to plan a great cue-response association and intend on forming your new habit, but it’s another thing altogether to actually take action towards that plan. This step is simply about performing the habit.
The human mind is conditioned to look for explanations and it creates reasons for why the things we want are not possible – such as a lack of time or energy. This happens because our brain assumes that accomplishing what we want will require dealing with unfamiliar situations. Since unfamiliar environments require the brain to do a lot of work, it prefers us to stay in familiar environments and routines instead.
You can start disrupting your brain’s efforts to keep you in the familiar by creating some distance between yourself and your thoughts. When you notice your mind starting to give reasons for why something’s impossible, try thinking, “Aha! You’re coming up with excuses again. Thanks, brain, but I don’t need that. I’m okay with doing something different.”
5 TRACK YOUR PROGRESS
Research shows that selfmonitoring allows our minds to transition from a state of mindlessness to a state of mindfulness.
Self-monitoring helps us to remember to perform the new habit and gives us a sense of reward. You know how we give children a gold star when they’ve done something good? The funny thing is we don’t seem to grow out of that reward response as adults. Giving ourselves a tick for achieving a habit makes us feel good and motivates us to perform that habit again.
It has numerous benefits, such as increasing motivation, bringing to mind goal-relevant information and triggering self-reflective responses – which ensures the desired behaviour occurs more often. Some research even shows that creating a new habit is only possible if you’re self-monitoring. In one study, as soon as the participants stopped selfmonitoring, they stopped performing the habit.
Habit trackers come in all shapes and sizes. There are paper-based or app-based trackers. You could also use a notebook, create a simple table with dates and habits you want to track, then tick off each day you successfully complete a habit. The most important thing is that they’re handy to use and they create a sense of mindfulness regarding the habits in question.
When you give yourself a tick, take a moment to be proud of yourself – just a small mindful moment to acknowledge that you achieved your chosen habit for the day. This reinforces the reward centre in your brain and helps you feel motivated to do it again. It doesn’t have to be an elaborate or audible “Well done” – it can just be an internal acknowledgement that you achieved what you set out to do, because that’s worth celebrating.