6 Steps to Changing Habits
Old habits can be hard to break and new habits hard to make but with these six basic steps you can develop new, healthy behaviors.
Identify Cues.
Something has to trigger a habit and a cue can be anything. Identifying cues helps you understand what puts your habits into motion.Disrupt.
Once you know the cues, you can throw bad habits off track.Replace.
Research shows that replacing a bad behavior with a good one is more effective than stopping the bad behavior alone. The new behavior “interferes” with the old habit and prevents your brain from going into autopilot.Keep It Simple.
It is usually hard to change a habit because the behavior has become easy and automatic. The opposite is true, too. New behaviors can be hard because your brain’s “autopilot” hasn’t taken over this behavior yet. Simplifying new behaviors helps you integrate them into your autopilot routines.Think Long-Term.
Habits often form because they satisfy short-term impulses but short-term desires often have long-term consequences. Focusing long term while trying to change some habits will help you remember why you are investing the effort.Persist.
What you have done before is a strong indicator of what you will do next, established habits are hard to break. If you keep at it, your new behaviors will turn into habits. Persistence works and soon it will be second nature.
Here are today’s Wellness Wednesday Program book suggestions:
