My phone kept lighting up with messages from a friend. She was excitedly sending me quotes from a book she was reading called “Atomic Habits.”
The quotes she was sharing were insightful, intriguing, and felt vaguely familiar to me.
It wasn’t until I began reading the book that I realized the quotes felt familiar because they built upon behavioral strategies I had intuitively been teaching in my weight loss classes for the last eight years.
This book laid these strategies out in a logical and easy-to-understand guide, providing context through psychology and neuroscience.
I was fascinated and excited! I couldn’t wait to share the most valuable nuggets with my clients to further support them through the phase of healing or weight loss that can be the hardest…that period of time in the beginning when you’re making all those changes, investing a lot of effort, and it feels like nothing is happening. It’s enough to make anyone give up in frustration.
This is known as the valley of disappointment, and it’s a normal part of any undertaking. We expect progress to be linear and immediately evident, but there is usually a time when our efforts are delayed. And it’s the most critical phase to your success.
The power in understanding the process of behavior change
Change is a gradual evolution brought about by a series of small wins and tiny breakthroughs.
Breakthrough moments aren’t magic; they result from many previous actions that compound to reach the desired results. A breakthrough moment can also result from new information that leads to significant change. I see this in people who discover they are gluten sensitive, avoid gluten, and experience a breakthrough in their digestion or unexpectedly drop five pounds.
But even with new information, there is usually a period of implementation that feels difficult. In the example above, changing to a gluten-free diet requires a whole new eating way that can feel difficult and overwhelming at first.
The magic is understanding how to make the process of behavior change less challenging, so you can consistently experience the small wins that lead to breakthroughs.
Building better habits in 4 simple steps
Goals are useful because they provide direction toward what you want to achieve, but systems get you there.
“Results have little to do with the goals you set and nearly everything to do with the systems you follow.”
-James Clear
Habits like meal planning, cooking, meditation, and exercise feel reasonable for a day or even a week, but then they start to feel like a chore. If an action requires more physical or mental effort than you are willing to expend, you won’t do it.
So what is the solution?
There are four steps to apply when working toward a goal. These steps lay the foundation for the systems that will help you achieve it.
Step 1: Make it obvious. Write down what it is you want to accomplish. Commit to it by scheduling it on your calendar. Be specific about the day, time, and place you are going to take the desired action. Use the formula: I will ____ on [day] at [time] in [location].
Goal: I will partake in at least 20 minutes of exercise 3 times this week.
- I will swim for 20 minutes on Monday at 5 pm at the Y.
- I will walk for 30 minutes on Wednesday at 3 pm in the park.
- I will go to a 60-minute yoga class on Saturday at 9 am at the studio.
Step 2: Make it attractive. Temptation bundling works by linking an action you want to take with an activity you need to take, followed by an activity you enjoy. Your brain will begin to associate the desired habit with a habit you already do (cue) and a habit you enjoy (reward).
Habit stacking + temptation bundling formula:
- After I [current habit], I will [habit I need].
- After [habit I need], I will [habit I want].
Example:
- After I get my morning coffee, I will meditate.
- After I meditate, I will check social media.
Step 3: Make it easy! Start with small wins. Too often, we convince ourselves that hitting a goal requires massive action. We dismiss small changes because they don’t have immediate and tangible results. Small wins are everything! They will naturally build with time, and it’s the compounding of their benefits that results in reaching the goal.
Step 4: Make it satisfying and enjoyable. Pleasure teaches your brain that a behavior is valuable and worth repeating, which is the KEY to solidifying habits. Always pair a habit you want to create with pleasure in some way.
Examples:
- Take a walk with a friend rather than alone on a treadmill in your house.
- Discover new ways of cooking that bring health and pleasure together on your plate.
- Cultivate community around healthy habits. Nothing sustains motivation better than belonging to a tribe.
The strategies above will help you create a habit, but they won’t necessarily help you break a habit you don’t want to engage in. This is often where people become frustrated by “their lack of willpower”.
The fallacy of willpower
You’ve likely internalized the pervasive message in our culture that you could achieve your goals if you were just more “disciplined”. The truth is relying on willpower to change a behavior is the surest way to fail.
Research shows that people we perceive as “disciplined” structure their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower or self-control. Simply put, they spend less time in tempting situations.
The people with the best self-control use it the least by creating an environment that works for them.
Setting your environment up for success
The most effective way to eliminate a habit that is no longer serving you is to reduce exposure to the cue that triggers it.
For example, if you are trying to eat fewer packaged snack foods and more fresh fruit, you might consider putting the packaged snacks in a place that is out of sight and requires effort to get to, and put the fruit in a bowl on the counter where it is easy to see and grab.
If you are trying to drink water instead of soda, avoid keeping soda in your house. Then use step 1 of the habit-building formula to set cues that will remind you to drink water throughout the day. Make it attractive by adding freshly squeezed lime juice, muddled mint, and ice. Or keep a water bottle nearby, so it is easy to reach for and provides a visual cue.
An opportunity to invite pleasure into your life
The final advice I’ll leave you with is to avoid overwhelming yourself by taking on too much at once. Commit to one or two new habits and be consistent until you’ve mastered them before moving onto the next thing. Doing so will increase your confidence in your ability to reach the goals you set out to achieve.
The path you take to achieve your goals will be unique to you. In many ways, it is an invitation to get to know yourself better by bringing awareness to your current habits, identifying the environmental cues that lead you to engage in a behavior, and assessing how those behaviors serve you.
It’s also an opportunity to invite pleasure into your life through meals, exercise, and other habits that are often viewed as chores rather than enjoyable experiences. Pleasure is key because it teaches your brain that a behavior is valuable and worth repeating. You can use this understanding to revolutionize the way you go about habit change.