What is a habit and what makes them positive? Habits are the small decisions you make and the actions you perform every day. According to researchers at Duke University, habits account for about 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day.
Life is really just the sum of all your habits.
How in shape or out of shape are you? That’s a result of your habits.
How happy or unhappy are you? That’s a result of your habits.
How successful or unsuccessful are you? Also a result of your habits.
My favorite author James Clear wrote the book Atomic Habits. This book is a game changer when it comes to healthy habits. Here are a few key points he makes in his book and on his website.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.
Everything I write about – from procrastination and productivity to strength and nutrition – starts with better habits. When you learn to transform your habits, you can transform your life.
There can be a lot of information out there and most of it isn’t very simple to digest. To solve this problem and break things down in a very simple manner, Clear outlines in his book a strategy guide for how to build new habits that actually stick.
Good Habits vs Bad Habits
Bad habits work in exactly the same way as good habits. Those factors that help you create and stick to good habits? Yep, that’s right they can help you address the bad habits too.
For example, Let’s talk about unhealthy eating. Why do we eat badly? Boredom. Anxiety. Stress. Doing what everyone else is doing.
The chips and salsa at the mexican restaurant (they just call out to me). Part of the way to change a habit is to get rid of the temptation when you can.
By removing all the unhealthy snacks from your kitchen at home, your desk at work or the office snack room you are helping to remove the cues to your bad habit.
Perhaps you need to stop “Donut Fridays” and instead bring in breakfast tacos, fruit or veggies trays.
I’m a snacker. So for me, a positive habit is to pre package those unhealthy snacks and limit oneself to one pre portioned bag per day. (one sleeve of oreos becomes 5 oreos kept in a ziploc bag, It’s portion control for your bad eating habits.
Now let’s talk about what are your unhealthy eating cues? When the server puts down those chips and salsa at a mexican restaurant it is a temptation, a “cue” that makes our mouths water, our fingers ache and our minds to prepare for the act of eating.
Before our dinner even arrives. How many of you actually refuse the chips? Or just sit there and let everyone else eat while you watch? It’s a very, very tempting cue for a LOT of us.
Did you know that some positive habits have one benefit but others have many side benefits you may not even realize are there.
Let’s use this example. You have decided that you want to come to work 30 minutes early every day to avoid the bad traffic which always puts you in a negative mood and sets the harsh tone for the day.
Your new positive habit is coming to work early so you are in a better mood.
But what are the other benefits you didn’t know about?
- You have more “me time” before everyone else gets there to work on things you really need some peace and quiet to complete.
- You get things done faster and more efficiently without the distractions around you.
- Before others even get into the office you have knocked several things off your list and you feel less pressure and more productivity.
- You tend to make less mistakes when you have the ability to focus and have less interruptions.
There are some studies out there that say that people who wake up at 4-5am achieve greater productivity – some say it messes with your circadian cycles and not to try this concept. I figure that as long as I get my 7 hours of sleep, if I want to get up at 4 I can and will. Who knows maybe I would be more productive?
Goals Versus Habits
Another way to get your positive habits going is to understand that your goals are simply the place we want to be in the future. But your goals are useless unless you have a map of how to get there. Your map is like a step by step GPS app. Telling you turn by turn how to get to your destination.
Let’s say your goal is to upsell desserts at your coffee house. You tell your staff to sell more desserts! Great goal but you are not giving them the road map for HOW to upsell the desserts.
Attractive displays that staff are asked to walk around with every 15 minutes helps to promote those delicious sugar coated confections. Having a script or some bullet points next to the register or on tucked into their notebook to remind them to talk about the desserts. We also use “cues” for our customers.
Attractive pictures of desserts. The display at the front of the store as customers walk in, large pictures in the menus and more. All these cues work to create a better habit for our sales team and for our customers. How many parents can silence a 5 year old who saw the dessert tray and insists on getting the chocolate cake? Their screams are music to my habit forming ears. Lol JK JK JK
Creating Those Positive Habits
Now that you have a little background here is how you can get started.
Start with ONE small, SUPER EASY, habit that you don’t even need to think about. When you have something to do that requires little to no motivation it is super easy to get it accomplished. Like making your bed! Or making coffee in the morning. Perhaps you need to remember to take a new medication.
- Make the task so easy you can’t fail.
- Your willpower needs to be “worked out” like going to the gym.
- Willpower will get tired as the day goes along. It has ups and downs like everything else.
Let’s say you want to meditate for 15 minutes a day. But your mind is all over and place and there is no way to get this accomplished. Start with ONE minute each day.
Do that for a day or two and then add one more minute so that after a few weeks you have “worked out” your motivation and trained your brain to be able to do this for 15 minutes.
One minute is EASY. It’s a No brainer (see what I did there?)
Make sure when creating a positive habit you start small and go slow. It’s a marathon not a sprint.
Make sure you identify not only WHAT you are going to do, but HOW and WHEN you will do it.
Set up all the dominoes so that you can knock them over all at once.
If you bring your gym bag to work with you, you have less reasons to not go to the gym. You are setting yourself up for success!
Don’t be hard on yourself if you miss a day. Give yourself a “pass” and get back on track the next day. Try your best NOT to miss two days in a row. You are trying to create a habit, it takes about three weeks of consistent work to do this successfully and three months to have that habit become a lifestyle change.
Positive Habits are helpful and can really change your life. Try one habit at a time and be kind to yourself as you get there. I promise the effort is worth the work! I went from walking for an hour and a half during the pandemic, to running from one stop sign to another, to walking for 5 minutes and then running for 5 minutes and then walking again to running for almost 2 miles a DAY! It was slow and I gave myself breaks when I needed to but I got it done and you can too!