The Power of Habits Part 3: Establishing a Good Habit

Establishing a new habit might be your goal if you are trying to make positive changes in your life. In the last two articles, we covered the benefits of harnessing the power of habits for good and how to quit bad habits. This article will discuss how to form a good habit.

Refresher: 3 Things We Have Learned Already

#1 Habits Can Be Good

Not all habits are bad. We may assume something negative when we hear the word “habit.” This might include nail-biting, overspending, or lack of exercise. The truth is, habits can be good. Establishing a good habit can help us lead healthier and well-balanced mental, physical, and emotional lives.

#2 Bad Habits Are Hard to Break

Bad habits are hard to break because our brains are hard-wired to depend on them. Repetitive actions have trained our minds that those actions are important and necessary. This challenge makes it difficult to let go of bad habits and train our brain not to depend on them.

#3 How to Break Bad Habits

In the last article, we discussed how to quit bad habits. This included methods like talking to a therapist. Talking to a therapist can help us rewire our brains and form good habits, rather than defaulting to habits that aren’t serving us. In the last article, we also discussed other methods like replacing bad habits with something else, changing your routine, and talking with those around you.

Let’s Dispell Some Myths

Timeframes

How long does it take to form a habit? There are a lot of different numbers floating around out there . A popular timeframe is 21 days, but this isn’t rooted in science. In fact, the science demonstrates a wide range that varies per person: 18–254 days. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones, writes about the seminal 2009 study by Dr. Phillippa Lally that showed this range. The average of all study participants’ days to habit mastery came to 66. 

It’s helpful to remember Lally’s study on habits when you’re working on a new habit. With unrealistic expectations, it’d be easy to get discouraged if you were looking at day 30 in your habit formation journey and didn’t feel it taking root. With this study in mind, you can rest assured that there’s nothing wrong with you—habits just take a while. 

Progress, Not Perfection

Clear goes on to note that the study proves habit formation doesn’t require a perfect practice record. A couple of missed opportunities to reinforce the habit don’t have a long-term effect on your habit adoption if you stick with it over time. 

Creating a New Habit

To establish a good habit, a few things need to happen:

#1 Identify the Good Habits You Want to Adopt

What are the good habits you want to implement in your life? They might include an exercise regimen, a healthy diet, maintaining good relationships, establishing a consistent schedule, or anything else that could benefit the quality of your life. Start by listing the good habits you wish to implement in your life.

#2 Start Small 

When we want to make change happen in our lives, our initial instinct is to think big. We imagine our ideal life and, instead of planning out baby steps to get there, we may try to jump straight into that ideal life. We may set specific time frames and restrictions around when these new habits need to be established. This tendency can be dangerous. 

Thinking on too grand a scale can cause us to experience burnout very quickly. Think of it as muscle development. If your goal is to bench 200 lbs and you can currently bench 110 lbs, your best option is not to stroll into the gym and try 200 lbs tomorrow. You have to build up your strength incrementally over time in order to reach your goal or you might really hurt yourself. Similarly, we cannot take on too much too quickly when it comes to creating habits. The life you want requires “muscles” like strong new neural pathways and emotional and mental determination—muscles that can only develop with practice. For this reason, it is important to start small. Start with one good habit at a time and build from there. By limiting our focus to developing one habit at a time, we’re better able to do the necessary practice. 

#3 Practice Persistence 

The most common reason people do not start a good habit is that they were not successful on their first attempt. If you start a new habit and fail (whether on day 3 or day 39), do not give up. Keep working hard, keep trying—practice is the key to starting a good habit. To make the new habit’s neural pathway your brain’s preferred option, you have to reinforce it through lots of practice in every situation where you want it to be your default. Say you want to establish a habit of doing all the dishes after dinner each day. You’ll need to be very intentional about doing dishes every night. Time after time, the cue, or trigger, of finishing dinner needs to be followed by the choice and action of doing the dishes. 

If you are eager to start a good habit and do not know where to start, a therapist can be an excellent resource. Click through to learn more about behavioral health therapists in your area who can help you establish good habits and build the life you want.

For more in this series, see 

The Power of Habits, Part 2: Leaving Habits Behind

The Power of Habits, Part 3: How to Form a Good Habit

References

Clear, J. (2020, February 04). How long does it take to form a Habit? Backed by science. Retrieved March 16, 2021, from https://jamesclear.com/new-habit

The Power of Habits Part 1: How Habits Can Be Helpful

Ah, January. It’s the time of year when we’re more likely to think about habits. We all have habits, good or bad. Some of us might find ourselves biting our nails, smoking, doomscrolling, or drinking too much coffee. We might also have habits of sleeping well, engaging in a relaxing hobby, and exercising regularly.

When we hear the word habit, we may imagine something bad or negative that is a problem in our daily lives. Actually, though, the term “habit” is neutral, the act of forming habits in the brain is a natural process. and we can harness the power of habits to help us create the lives we want and shape the selves we want to grow into.

Gretchen Rubin, author of best-selling self-help books like The Happiness Project and Better Than Before, told Goop, “Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday existence.” So what exactly are we talking about when we talk about habits? 

What Is a Habit?

In simple terms, a habit is something that we do often and without much thought. It has become a part of our routine that we do without working very hard or thinking about it much – a habit basically skips the decision-making part of our brains. 

According to British educator Charlotte Mason, whose philosophy of education is known for its focus on habit-formation, “We are all mere creatures of habit. We think our accustomed thoughts, make our usual small talk, go through the trivial round, the common task, without any self-determining effort of will at all. If it were not so — if we had to think, to deliberate, about each operation of the bath or the table — life would not be worth having; the perpetually repeated effort of decision would wear us out.” This is what we call decision-fatigue, and Mason is right – habits help us cut down on the number of decisions we’re making each day. The question, then, becomes whether the habits we have, that are bypassing that decision-making process, are the habits we really want.

Some habits are considered harmful because they do not contribute to our physical, emotional, or behavioral well-being. These are things that might be regarded as bad, like being late, not getting enough sleep, emotional drinking, or swearing in front of your 2-year-old nephew.

Good habits help us live healthier, happier, and more productive lives. Think of behaviors like brushing your teeth, connecting with your partner every day, and practicing mindfulness. These are considered good because they help us live healthy, peaceful lives both now and in the future.

Benefits of Good Habits

Self-Identity

Our habits help define who we are as individuals. Through them, we can establish ourselves in the world. One of the most encouraging things bout habits is that each one started with an individual choice. So, if you decide you want to be the kind of person who reads for pleasure 30 minutes each day, you can start to become such a person by choosing to do crack open a book and set a timer today. Engaging in healthy repetitive actions can help us learn to love ourselves and promote personal growth.

Reach Your Goals

Utilizing and implementing good habits can help us reach our goals. Sometimes, our goals are harder to reach because our poor habits prevent us from achieving them. By establishing good actions in place of bad ones, we can finally achieve our goals. (This is a key part of habit formation that we’ll explore later in this series.) 

Establish Consistency

Consistency is a critical component of good mental health. Establishing healthy repetitive actions throughout our life can help us establish a good and consistent routine. This consistency keeps us on a healthy track. By choosing which behaviors we want to turn into habits, we can essentially lay down the tracks we want the train of our lives to run on. (That’s a Charlotte Mason metaphor, actually.) 

Improve Quality of Life

With increased motivation and will to lean on what is good for us rather than what is bad for us, we get more out of life. Establishing good behaviors enables us to stray away from the things that hold us back and run towards what is good. 

Sew Life-Long Change

Life-long change can be hard to achieve. When we have destructive behaviors in our lives, changing them can feel impossible. But that’s not true. Establishing good habits is hard work, but it sews life-long change in our lives. By working hard to establish good routines, consistency, and repetitive actions, we improve the quality of our life for years to come.

Are you eager to replace bad habits with good habits? Click here to connect to a mental health provider in your area.

For more in this series, see 

The Power of Habits, Part 2: Leaving Habits Behind

The Power of Habits, Part 3: How to Form a Good Habit

Citations

Mason, C. (n.d.). Home Education. Part III. “Habit Is Ten Natures.” V. The Laying Down of Lines of Habit. Retrieved January 13, 2021, from https://www.amblesideschools.com/manual/Charlotte-Mason/part-iii-habit-ten-natures

Rubin, G. (2018, July 06). Better Than Before: Making & Keeping Resolutions. Retrieved January 13, 2021, from https://goop.com/wellness/mindfulness/better-than-before-making-keeping-resolutions/