Are you building habits that support the future you truly want?
The small choices you make each day shape the life you’re building.
Key points
- Our repeated behaviours shape the quality of our lives.
- Lasting change starts with self-awareness, alignment, and connecting our habits to our values and identity.
- We’re far more likely to follow through with behaviours when our environment supports us.
Many of us have a tendency to move through our days on autopilot, guided by habits we’ve built over time, including some that support us, some that may be holding us back, and some we keep meaning to change. The small behaviours we repeat each day may seem insignificant, yet over time, they shape the quality of our lives.
There’s research that suggests that around half of what we do each day is done automatically (Neal et al., 2006). Behaviours we’ve repeated often enough become habits, actions we take with little or no conscious thought. Without them, our brains would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of decisions we’d have to make each day. In many ways, they’re the brain’s way of being efficient.
The challenge is that we often keep doing what we’ve always done simply because the patterns and routines are familiar, even when we know there is a better or different way.
Read More Here: Building Good Habits: 10 Simple Things To Start Today
The first step in changing any habit is self-awareness. In my previous post, we explored some key building blocks of behaviour change and the idea that there’s often one behaviour that, if we stopped or started doing it, could make a big difference for us. Here, we’ll look more closely at some of the strategies that can help bring those changes to life.
Before that, I want to share a reframe I find useful. When we think about our habits, it helps to take morality out of the equation and loosen the grip that guilt and shame can sometimes hold. Habits are behaviours we repeat because they’re familiar and often reinforced. Some are adaptive and move us closer to our goals, while others lead us further away.
Two questions I invite you to sit with:
- Are my habits moving me closer to my goals and the person I want to be, or are they pulling me further away?
- Am I a high performer because of my habits or despite my habits? (Just imagine what could become possible if more of our habits were actually working for us.)
Start With Your Why
Before changing what we do, it helps to understand why it matters. When our habits are disconnected from our values, they’re harder to sustain. So much of what we’ve tried in the past when it comes to behaviour change hasn’t worked because it’s been outward-focused and we’re following ideals, trying to replicate what works for others, or chasing something that isn’t really us.
The reality is that we need the right mindset, aligned intentions, and self-awareness to create the change we are looking for. We cannot hate ourselves healthy.
Ask yourself: Why am I making this change? How does this change align with my values?
Maybe walks are part of your daily routine because you value your health. You choose to prioritize sleep because showing up well-resourced and with energy and focus matters to you. You create an end-of-day ritual that helps you transition from work to home because you value presence and connection.
Sometimes we change for ourselves, but doing it for the people who depend on us can be powerful too. I often hear people say they would give their life for their family, but are you willing to truly live for them? To take care of your well-being and be present for them?
It can also help to take a longer view. As Peter Attia, author of Outlive, suggests, we can reverse-engineer our vision by picturing the life we want to live and work backward to the habits and practices that will get us there.
When we find our why, we’re more likely to find a way.
Shift From Goals to Identity
Research in behavioural science suggests that motivation and behaviour are based on our sense of who we are and how we see ourselves. What this means is that we are more likely to engage in behaviour that aligns with our identity and supports our values and goals (Oyserman et al., 2017).
To bring this into practice, we can shift from outcome-based goals to identity-based language:
- “I’m trying to move my body more” becomes: I am a person who walks each morning and takes the stairs when it’s two flights or fewer.
- “I want to stop checking my phone” becomes: I am a person who is present during meals and conversations.
Once we’ve established this, we don’t negotiate ourselves out of our commitments. It just becomes part of who we are and how we show up. Every time we set a small, achievable intention and follow through, we strengthen our personal self-efficacy and self-trust that we are someone who does what they say they’re going to do.
Building Habits: Set Your Environment Up for Success
In habit formation, we talk about making success as inevitable as possible. This means building systems that make it easier to follow through on our desired behaviours and harder to default to the ones we’re trying to leave behind. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear popularized four laws of behaviour change: to build a habit, make the behaviour obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying. Then, to break one, the opposite would be the approach—making it invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
When you think about why some habits seem so effortless, chances are the environment is set up in a way that supports them. When something is right in front of us, we are more likely to do it. If there is friction or more effort involved, we’re less likely.
If you want to reduce mindless scrolling, you might try leaving your phone in another room or allowing yourself to check social media only while standing. Want to read before bed instead? Leave a book on your nightstand. Or, if you notice yourself reaching for the sugary, processed snacks every night before bed, you might remove them from easy reach and replace them with something more nourishing that is just as accessible. Trying to build a yoga habit? Set your mat out in a visible spot so starting feels easy, not effortful.
Read More Here: 8 “Normal” Habits That Aren’t Normal For Your Body
Final Thoughts
Our daily habits are the building blocks of our well-being. The small choices we make each day shape how we feel, how we show up, and ultimately, the quality of our lives.
While past behaviour is often the best predictor of future behaviour, we can also choose again. We have the capacity to set our habits on a different trajectory and to build patterns that support how we want to feel now and in the future, and that keep us moving in the direction we want to go.
What’s one realistic habit you can commit to cultivating or reintroducing in your days?
References
Neal, D. T., Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2006). Habits—A repeat performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(4), 198-202. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00435.x
Oyserman, D., Lewis Jr, N. A., Yan, V. X., Fisher, O., O’Donnell, S. C., & Horowitz, E. (2017). An identity-based motivation framework for self-regulation. Psychological Inquiry, 28(2-3), 139-147. dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2017.1337406
To keep the conversation going, please download Dr. Robyne’s app!
This can be downloaded for free in the App Store or Google Play. Within the app, you will find free resources, the keynote slide deck as well access to live Q&A events that Dr. Robyne will host monthly! We invite you to share this with your community to keep the conversation going!
Written by Robyne Hanley-Dafoe Ed.D
Originally appeared on Psychology Today
Leave a Comment