How To Make A New Habit Stick

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could start any new positive habit and reach any goal that we wanted to reach?

Well, it’s not that easy. Is it?

So why does it seem so hard to start new positive habits that are good for us and seemingly easy to fall back into our bad habits that are negative for us?

Well, today I’m gonna discuss:

How To Make A New Positive Habit Stick.

Now we are creatures of habit for better or for worse, …good habits and bad habits.

And whether we we’d like to admit it, we progress forward and are successful in life, Or we fail depending on the ratio of positive habits or negative habits respectively. 

To start a new positive habit and to make it stick, we can look at a few things now in an article written by Dr. Susan Weinschenk in Psychology Today, she talked about habits and she said, “Whether we realize it or not, most of our daily behaviors are composed of habits.”

Now habits are actions that you do repeatedly until they become automatic behaviors, that you do without even thinking. And you usually do them the same way every day. And very often they’re in response to a stimulus and think about all the habits that you do. And you don’t even realize you’re doing every day.

They end up becoming a routine. Let’s say your morning routine.;…

When you get up out of bed, you get out of bed and you splash your face. And then you walk downstairs and you put water on for either tea or coffee, and then you let the dogs out so that they can go to the bathroom and then you take your vitamins and then you may make your lunch for, for work that day, and then shower and shave (or not). And then you put your keys in your phone and you put ’em in the same pocket, most likely every single day. And you walk outside to get in your car and go to work.

And you do this over and over every single day, usually on most weekdays. And it may differ when you have weekends or you go on vacation.

Now as Dr. WWeinschenk wrote, and I’m paraphrasing talk about habits can go back to the studies done by Dr.  Pavlo in 1904, when he was studying digestive systems. And he was working with dogs and had what he realized and ended up being known as “Classical conditioning.”

And what he noticed in his research studies was that he paired a stimulus of food with the response of salivating of the dog. And then they would add a second stimulus with the food of a ringing bell, with the response of the salivating dog. And with repetition over time, they could remove the first stimulus of the food, but just create the ringing of the bell, which would still stimulate the response of the dog salivating.

So many of us have routines like this, either good ones or bad ones that are set off by a stimulus. So let’s look at the stimulus of walking in your door at the end of work.

So here’s the habit. You walk in the door and you walk to the kitchen.  You grab either a diet soda, or an alcoholic drink like wine or a beer. And you sit down in your chair and you watch TV. And the TV watching also stimulates to have snacks as well. So for multiple hours, either one or two or three hours, the stimulus of walking in the door after work sets off the routine of grabbing a diet soda, or a drink sitting down and watching TV.

And you do this every day and this habitual routine, without us knowing it has been tied to the stimulus of us walking in the door. And because we’ve done this action repetitively, it becomes an habit that we do as an automatic behavior that we don’t even think about.

Now, once you understand this association between stimulus and response, now you can manipulate this to your benefit.

So let’s say you recognize this routine as a negative habitual routine, and you want to change it.

One of the best ways to change a negative habit is to start a new, positive habit in its place.

Now, Brian Tracy, the business coach and personal development leader, talks about

The Law of Excluded Alternatives. And this law states

…that any time you are choosing to do one thing at one time, you are excluding all other things that you could do at that moment in time.

Now this is both negative and positive. So if you’re choosing to sit down and drink diet soda, or alcoholic beverages and watch TV, you’re excluding to do all of the other healthy things that you could be doing at that time. Now in the reverse of that, if you decide to change that routine, to doing exercise or reading, when you get home from work, then you were excluding the negative activities that you could be doing at that time.

And that works in the positive progression of your goals. So how do you make the habit of, say exercising and reading, instead of the habit of coming home and grabbing a drink and sitting down and watching TV.

So first you want to go back to your habit and talk about “the why” of your habit; the new positive habit that you’re trying to create. Why are you trying to create it?

So if you want to exercise more, why do you want to exercise more?

• Are you not in a healthy state right now?
• Do you wanna lose weight?
• Do you want to add an extra 10 years to your life for you to be there for your children or for your grandchildren first determine your why?

What’s the, the motivation be behind starting this new habit.

Now with that, when you determine your “why” that makes it easier to do “the how” and how will you create this new habit.

The other thing with the habit is to say, “I just want to exercise when I get home”, is not specific enough. You need to set specific goals for your exercise and you’re reading.  So if you exercise, if you just say, oh, I want to exercise every day when I get home, that’s not specific enough. Let’s say I want to walk every day when I get home, that’s getting better, but it’s not specific enough. Now let’s say, okay, I walk 20 to 30 minutes, five times a week. Every week. Now you’re specific.  Or if I read 15 to 30 minutes every single day after I exercise when I get home from work.

So next is to take small, positive actions that will make it easier for you to accomplish your habit and to make it a routine.

So let’s say you’re exercising and you said you were gonna walk 20 to 30 minutes, five times a week, every day after work. So how do I do that? Well, one way to do that is to put your exercise clothes in the foyer, in the spot that you walk into, as you walk into your home, after you get home from work. So your clothes are staring you right there in the face. So you can put them on and go right back out and go to your walk, much easier to accomplish it. If it’s already set up for you to succeed and for you to accomplish the activity that you want to.

Now ,say, you want to read instead of watch TV, after you exercise.  Well, put your favorite book or the book that you’re currently reading on top of the chair that you would normally sit in to watch TV.

And the suggestion would be to remove yourself from that location. Pick the book up from that chair, walk into, let’s say your living room instead of your den and do your reading there. That way you get home from work, put on your exercise clothes. You go out to walk for 20 minutes. You come home, you pick up the book and you read for 15 or 20 minutes.

So this way you are training a new stimulus response cycle so that when you open a door and you get home from work, you are now seeing your clothes there. You’re putting your clothes on to exercise. You’re going out for 20 to 30 to walk every day. Then you’re coming home and you’re picking up your book and reading for 15 minutes.

And now you’re training this new cycle of actions that you’ll repeat daily, which will become automatic behavior over time and will start into a new positive habit.

But remember too, if you’re sitting there and trying to change a habit that you have now that you know is negative, and you’re trying to replace it with a new habit or you’re right at the cusp of starting this… Remember the old adage that…

“If you wanna see different results than what you’ve been getting, then you have to do things differently than how you’ve been doing.”

Said another way; One of my favorite quotes is…

“If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always be what you’ve always been.”

In review to make a new habit stick or to replace an old negative habit with a new positive habit. …

I want you to do these steps.

• 1.  Remember to find your “why”.  Why do you want to start this new positive habit?
• 2.  Set specific goals for what you want to accomplish.  You’re creating habits and taking new actions that are gonna help you accomplish a goal. So if you get specific about what your goal is, it becomes easier to develop a new positive habit that becomes an automatic behavior.
• 3.  I want you to take small actions that will make it easier for you to accomplish your goals. That’s putting the sneakers and the exercise clothes right in the foyer, as you walk in the door.  That’s putting your book on the chair that you would normally sit down to watch TV.

As you start to train this new positive stimulus response cycle, and you do it repetitively, then your actions start to become automatic and you will start to train a new positive habit and you will start to see results.

And as you see results with this new habit, then you can start to change other parts of your day, create new routines. Maybe it’s your morning routine that needs more training. Maybe it’s your evening routine. As we just discussed about maybe it’s your routine at work, and you can enhance all aspects of your day and start to see positive results moving forward.

Well I hope this information helped you in your day.

Have a wonderful Week!

Be Positive, Be Motivated, Be Focused and Be Well,

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