How to build a new habit (and stay consistent)

Do you know how powerful you would feel if you knew how to build a good habit every day?

How much would your life change if you could be consistent with your good habits?

You could be…

more productive,

healthier,

Or more successful.

Whatever life you want to live, it all starts when you know how to build a good habit.

If you are consistent with your habits, you can make important changes in your life.

Thus, you try all the advice you see on the internet.

Hoping that one day you will learn how to build a good habit and stick to it.

The problem is that none of those tips seem to work. So, you return to your usual routine, where old habits become your only way of life.

After several tries and failures, you find yourself feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

But let me tell you that even if you don’t believe it…

You do have the power to create a good habit every day.

You can create a good habit the same way you created the ones you already have.

What happens is that you still haven’t learned the basics of that process.

In this post, you will learn exactly that! You’ll learn how that process works, so you can build a good habit every day.

What is a habit?

A habit is an action that you repeat every day until it becomes automatic.

Automatic means that it is something you do, without thinking about it.

One study found that people pay less attention if they have done something many times before.

When you were learning to drive, you were more aware of your movements. Now, you can drive to different places without thinking much about it.

Another fascinating fact is that habits occupy up to 45% of your daily time.

So, most of the time, you are not aware of what you are doing. In reality, you are on autopilot most of the day.

Think about your routine for a moment.

• How many things do you do the same way every day?

• What’s that thing you do every morning after you wake up?

• Do you drink a cup of coffee? Or do you check your email?

A habit is any action that you repeat every day and often in the same place.

Sometimes they become so natural to you that changing them can be very difficult.

Think of the people who wake up every morning, and before they eat anything else, they drink a cup of coffee.

They have done the exact same thing for years.

What if one day the doctor tells them to stop drinking coffee because it causes health problems?

Do you think they would stop drinking their coffee every morning?

No, they will not.

Would you change one of your daily habits because someone else told you to?

No, you will not.

These automatic responses (habits) are so easy to do, that you don’t think you are responsible for them.

This also makes it more difficult to change them, but not impossible!

By the time you finish reading this article, you will know the steps of how to build a good new habit.

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.” ― F. M. Alexander

Why is it important to build a good habit?

Habits shape a large part of your life.

Once you build a good habit, your brain becomes free from decision-making.

That allows you to direct your energy towards the things that need more attention.

Bad or good habits follow the same process, and that is why it is so essential to know them.

If someone drinks soda every day at lunch, it is the result of small decisions that he made in the past.

Those decisions have become a habit.

Drinking soda isn’t good for them, but they’ll keep doing it. That’s because it’s something their body has learned to do.

How do you build a good habit?

One of the oldest approaches:

In the past, psychologist B.F. Skinner shared the basics of habit development.

He determined that to learn behaviors we need a stimulus and reinforcement.

• A stimulus can be a sound, object, or anything that produces a response in someone.
  For example, if his coffee cup is too hot, you put it down because it burns your hand. Heat is the stimulus.

• Reinforcement is the consequence of that action. It can be positive or negative, depending on the situation. 

In the example, your hand stopped hurting when you dropped your coffee cup. So, you learned what to do when you touch something too hot.

These are the basic concepts and the theory of it is still used today in different settings.

• Teachers use stickers or points to reward students for good behavior. In this way, children learn what to do if they want more points.

• Employers create bonuses to give to their top-performing employees.

• Parents high-five their children when they finish their homework or assignments.

Many theories have come after this one.

In the end, they all share the same basic concepts.

One of the newer approaches:

I like how Charles Duhigg updated the framework and made it so easy to understand.

He talks about the cycle of habit: trigger, response, and reward.

In this article, you will see each of these in detail so that you can build a good habit.

1. Trigger:

Every day, your body scans situations and creates responses for each one.

A trigger is something or someone around you that makes you act in a certain way.

They produce actions and when you repeat actions, you create habits.

In other words, every habit begins as an action triggered by a cue.

Psychologists Wendy Wood and David T. Neal suggest that these cues come from our context.

It can be a sound, a person, a time of day, a place, or a past event.

Many people feel the need to eat sweets in the afternoon. In this case, the time of day is your trigger.

Another example is when you are driving at night and turn on your car lights to see better. The night is the trigger.

Wood and Neal also concluded that there are two different types of cues to build a good habit.

Different types of cues to build a good habit.

• Direct: This happens when you create an association between an action and the context.

For example, every time you pick up your phone (signal) you check your email (action).

If you repeat the same action, you create automaticity. That’s why you check your email first thing in the morning without even thinking about it.

• Motivated: when you associate a good or bad experience with the context.

For example, you feel good every time you go to the gym.

You link the positive effect of exercising with the place (gym), so you may repeat this action in the future.

The trigger is what makes you remember to start the action.

That must be easy to identify in the environment so that you can create the associations.

Something to keep in mind is that when the context changes, the habit can also change.

So when you start a new job or move to another house, your habits change, and it takes some time to get back to your old habits.

I used to eat 4-8 Oreo cookies every night after dinner with a glass of milk.

Once I moved to the US, a lot of my routine changed, including that.

The trigger for my behavior (eating the cookie) was not only the time of day (night) but also the location (my bedroom).

Since I no longer had those two triggers, my behavior changed and I reduced my cravings for sugar.

That is, in fact, one of the ways to break bad habits.

2. Response

The second element in the habit cycle refers to what you do, think, or feel when the signal appears.

It’s the action itself, like brushing your teeth, that becomes a habit when you do it over and over again.

One study found that the average time it takes people to repeat a behavior until it becomes a habit is 66 days.

This number varies depending on the habits you want to create or change.

It doesn’t take the same amount of time to start drinking water every day as it does to quit smoking.

It would also help you to know that it gets easier over time because it becomes automatic.

Participants in one study reported this when they started a weight loss program:

It took them more effort (mental and physical) to start their new healthy habits.

After the second week, all their new actions became easier to perform.

When you were a child, brushing your teeth was a difficult task. But after years of doing the same thing, now you can do it without thinking.

Now, many times you forget when or how you did it.

3. Reward

This concept includes the benefits you get from your actions, the problem you solve, or the change you get.

When you check your phone every morning, you feel relieved that you can see your emails.

That feeling of relief is your reward.

Once an action becomes automatic, there is a chance that you no longer need the reward, but it is necessary at first.

If there were no rewards, the habit would never form, because you would have no reason to repeat any action.

For example, you wouldn’t spend hours on social media if it didn’t entertain you (reward).

Rewards are different for every person. 

What makes some people go to the gym every day will not be the same thing that makes you go to the gym.

There are two types of rewards:

• Long-term: refers to those benefits that you get after years of doing something.
  For example, you can lower your risk of cancer or diabetes by eating whole foods. 

• Immediate: it is the set of benefits you get while doing the activity.

For example, people walk because they feel more relaxed and connected to nature.

Research has shown that immediate rewards help you stick with your habits.

That’s why it’s easier to eat food because you like its taste and not because it helps you be healthier.

To use immediate rewards to your advantage, you have to be aware of them.

The easiest way to do this is to pay attention to how you feel during an action.

There are also two sources of rewards:

Intrinsic and extrinsic.

For example, you study because you like it (intrinsic) or because you get good grades (extrinsic).

Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach found that people tend to value intrinsic rewards more than extrinsic rewards.

When starting a diet, for example, people should focus on having enjoyable meals while still eating healthy.

The positive food experience will help them be more consistent with their new diet.

The fourth element added to the loop:

What happens when you eat something you like? You want to eat it again, right?

The same happens with other activities of your daily life.

When you do something that makes you feel good, you think about it all the time. And what you want is to satisfy your craving for those feelings.

This concept called cravings is now part of the loop recently to build a good habit.

4. Cravings

According to James Clear, cravings are the desire for a reward.

That means you start to crave the results you get from acting in a certain way.

Clear concluded that you don’t crave the habit itself, but the benefits you get from it.

This process happens throughout the cycle.

That means that most of the day, your body acts according to your craving for rewards.

If you don’t crave the feeling that coffee gives you in the morning, then you won’t drink it again.

You can find rewards everywhere.

This also means that cravings can be everywhere.

For example, employees crave the feeling of finishing a project before the deadline.

Or, athletes may yearn for the feeling of success when they finish a competition in first place.

Control your behavior and learn to recognize what you are wanting.

Learn why you do what you do.

Over to you

Anyone can create a good habit every day, including you!

Start by understanding their behavior using the concepts you’ve learned.

This is what you can do to build a good habit:

1. Make a list of five habits you have. What do you do every day in the same way?
2. Start with small habits, for now, later you can work on bigger ones.
3. Determine the triggers. What makes you act that way? A person? A noise? A smell?
4. Pay attention to your surroundings. Think about the things that remain present while you perform.
5. Identify the rewards. What makes you repeat the action? Think of the immediate rewards you get from that.

Use your current routine to start adding new actions.

Here are some examples of what you can do:

• If you want to drink more water: after each coffee you drink, drink a cup of water.
• If you want to start exercising: after you wake up, do 5 jumping jacks.
• If you want to start meditating: every time you go to bed, set aside 5 minutes to relax.
• If you want to be more productive: Set an alarm to remind you to take a break or stretch during your work hours.

Your new behaviors will depend on your routine and goals.

Use triggers, responses, rewards, and cravings to build a good habit every day.

Conclusion

You can build a good habit every day.

Know that you build most of your habits without realizing them, but you can create them with intention.

You can use them in your favor to achieve your goals and be consistent with them.

In this article, you found the basics of habit formation and how you can take part in this process.

I have used these concepts to create habits that I now do every day:

• Read
• Drinking water
• Exercise every day
• Meditate
• Walk
• Stretch every day
• Eat healthy food

What is that good habit you want to build?

Share it with me in the comments section below and I’ll give you ideas on how to start going with your new good habit.