To consistently improve yourself, you will occasionally want to make behavioral changes. Sometimes, this is easy. You decide what you want to alter and then do so. Other times, you might feel challenged in your efforts to change, even if the change is for the better.
So, what can you do to make relatively permanent changes in your behavior, if you are having trouble sticking to new ways of doing things? How do you go about establishing a new habit, something you do automatically without considering alternatives?
Forming Habits: The Latest Research
We have all heard that we must repeat a behavior for a certain number of days to establish a habit. You might even have applied this information by marking off days on your calendar until you passed that last “magic” day, as you tried to form healthier practices in your life. However, recent research disputes what we once thought was necessary to form a habit.
Researcher Phillippa Lally and others at University College London determined that you must do an activity for 66 days in a row before it becomes a habit! They found that if you want to do a behavior automatically, you must repeat it daily 66 times, consecutively.
Lally also discovered that when first forming a habit, the behavior is cue-dependent. This means that to carry out a behavior you want to establish as a habit, you require exposure to a cue that serves to “remind” you to perform the action. Such cues can be either situational, (such as your environment or location) or contextual (based on something else that you do).
🔥 Situational example: When you rise in the morning and enter the bathroom, you probably see your toothbrush or your sink. Those objects serve as cues for you to brush your teeth.
🔥 Contextual example: Every morning before you eat breakfast, you want to remember to eat a piece of fruit. Your cue for this is getting out of bed in the morning or reaching the time of day when you are about to eat breakfast.
Second aspect relevant to forming a habit is consistency. Although you can skip a day, the research recommends you go right back to performing the desired action. Even though the researchers admit that they cannot say exactly how many times in 66 days you can skip and still form a habit, they do stress if you’re too inconsistent, the behavior won’t become automatic.
How to Establish a Habit: A Quick List
Based on the research:
✅ Clarify what habit you want to establish. For example, “I want to increase my vegetable servings to 5 a day” or “I will walk 30 minutes a day.”
✅ Commit to repeating the behavior every day for 66 days. If you already know you are taking a vacation in 3 or 4 weeks, now might not be the time to work on forming a habit.
✅ Consider what will be your cue. Will you see some object at home, or will there be a time of day when you do something already? Just trusting yourself to remember to do the new behavior during your busy day may not be effective. Cues are potent reminders to help you as you work on bettering yourself.
✅ Think about the location. The location at which you perform the behavior matters. Will you be at home when you do the new activity? At the office? If you can stick with the same location, at least until the habit forms, you are more likely to be successful.
✅ Be consistent. Refrain from skipping the behavior during the time of establishing the habit if you can.
✅ Notice when the activity becomes automatic. You will know a habit has been formed when you have reached the point where your day seems lacking if you don’t perform the behavior. Success, at last!
Now you have science to apply when you want to establish a habit. No more guesswork! Just 66 days of dedication and reminders, and you will be well on your way to a better you.
All you need to do is adopt an attitude for success. Start with throwing away any negative habits that hinder your journey to success. Contact me [email protected] today to schedule your Success Session.