LET’S FALL INTO NEW HABITS

“Change might not be fast and it isn’t always easy. But with time and effort, almost any habit can be reshaped.” – Charles Duhigg

What are habits?

Habits are actions we do without thinking, often because something in our environment reminds us to do them. Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg explains that habits follow a cycle: cue, routine, and reward. Here’s how it works:

First, something triggers the habit, like feeling stressed at work. Then, we follow our routine, such as grabbing a bag of potato chips to snack on. Afterward, we might notice that we feel less stressed and more satisfied.

Over time, you start to connect stress with potato chips. Whenever you feel stressed, you might crave chips or other salty snacks because your brain remembers the positive feeling you had before.

Before you know it, you’ve developed a habit of eating potato chips whenever work stresses you out. So, how can we change our habits?

How to develop new and healthy habits

Developing habits that benefit your long-term health and well-being can take time. Here’s how to get started.

Start small and build gradually

One important way to build sustainable habits is to start with a small goal. Even if you would like to work out for 3 hours per week in the long term, research has found that starting with an easy goal and then building gradually is what makes you most likely to achieve it and stick to it.

In other words, the first few steps should be ones that you know you can achieve. For example, if you’d like to exercise more regularly, this may mean starting by doing 10 jumping jacks or going for a 10-minute walk 3 days a week.

Make SMART goals. Check out one of our past blogs to get more details on SMART goals.

Be as consistent as possible

To make a goal turn into a habit, it’s also helpful to be as consistent as possible, such as going to the gym at the same time each day and leaving your workout clothes out the night before. Therefore, when you wake up, you’re slowly creating a cue that signals it’s time to go to the gym. This leads to the reward of starting your morning feeling accomplished and energized. Over time, this will turn into a habit.

Monitor your progress

Another tool for establishing new habits is tracking your progress. No matter what your goal is, there is likely an app to help you track like the number of pages you’ve read, the mileage you’ve walked, the hours you’ve slept, and so on.

Whatever habit you’re trying to form, tracking it can help hold you accountable and motivate you. When you know you’re improving, it can feel much easier to continue on.

Use your environment

Make sure that your environment assists you in achieving your goals instead of holding you back. Research suggests that to make a goal a habit, it can help to remove reminders of old habits from your environment and replace them with cues of the habit you are trying to form.

This might mean clearing out the pantry and throwing away the junk food, asking your spouse to join you in your routine changes, or creating an exercise space in your home. Whatever your goal, creating an environment that feels supportive is essential to developing new habits.

Takeaway

Developing new habits can take time, so it’s important you are patient with yourself and practice self-compassion. You don’t need to be perfect all the time to develop healthy and sustainable habits, such as exercising, eating nutritious foods, or replacing screen time with more enriching activities.

The best thing you can do to establish a habit is to start small and then build up, get as specific as you can in goal-setting, track your progress, create an environment that supports your goals, and stay consistent, even when there are setbacks. Confidence in yourself is a major part of habit formation, so trust that you can do this!

“Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of.” – Unknown

At ANI we believe in building good habits from the moment you become on of our franchisees. This is why we take the time during your initial training to make sure we build goals and create a business plan together. If you would like more information on how to become a part of our growing team, please go to www.anifranchise.com. We look forward to working with you!

Credit to healthline.com