How to Change Habits and Make Them Stick

Our desire to build good habits is about making improvements, and can touch on any area of our lives. No matter what area of our life we’re trying to improve, there are some universal challenges in adopting a new habit and in keeping with it.

A new habit, whether it’s stopping something you’re doing now or starting something you’re not doing yet, begins with two conflicting goals. Part of you wants to do something different, something that’s good for the long term because it’s healthier or better for you. Part of you wants to keep the status quo, even when it seems clear that the status quo isn’t a good thing.

This dynamic of conflicting goals means that implementing a new habit and sticking with it is going to require self-control, willpower, and stick-to-it-tiveness (also known as persistence). Fortunately, knowing that these qualities are what’s required can guide us, and give us lots of information on how to be successful.

I’m going to touch on 4 strategies that can help you with self-control, willpower, and persistence – Effective Self-Talk, Journaling, Meditation, and Understanding and Building Willpower. Before I go into each of these strategies, let’s first set expectations that will help you be successful.

First, when you are working on a new habit and staying with it, don’t expect perfection. Because you have two conflicting goals competing within you, there will be back and forth between which impulse is in the lead in each moment. Rather than expecting to always be in control, try setting your measure of success as you’re creating a strong trend in the direction of your new habit.

Second, there is a common belief that it takes 21 days to adopt a new habit. In truth, it may take less or more time than that. There are a lot of things in play for each of us individually as we try to break a long-standing habit or implement a new one. Rather than expecting to “be done” in 3 weeks, try setting the expectation that within 21 days, if you’ve been consistent, you’ll have your new habit in place most of the time. Habits aren’t absolute and may require on-going conscious choices and effort.

Ok, let’s talk about some tools for success that you can try. Changing our words can change our habits and change our brains so they’re more likely to stick. The first 2 strategies tap into using our words.

Effective Self-Talk

As you make your habit changes and strive to stick with them, use positive coaching talk, minimize negative self-talk, and talk to yourself by name.

When learning a new skill or solving a problem, we have better success if we talk ourselves through it. How we talk to ourselves matters. We perform better when we talk to ourselves in a positive, coaching voice. Negative, self-deprecating talk increases our stress levels, anxiety, depression, and shame, all of which is self-defeating.

We also perform better when we talk to ourselves in the third person, in other words when we call ourselves by name. This approach seems to help us access wisdom that we have when talking to a friend but that we don’t have as easily when talking to ourselves.

Journaling

Use journaling to stay on track, and cement changes. Use your journal to coach yourself, track successes and lessons learned, provide support for obstacles and challenges, and to process self-defeating reactions and feelings.

Journaling to stay positive is very helpful. Write about your habit change successes, appreciations, and gratitudes. This helps you stay connected with the progress you’re making and the positive trend you’re stiving for. Use your journal to coach yourself following the same guidelines as outlined above for self-talk.

You will have ups and downs on this journey. Journaling is very effective in helping you stay positive and keep your eye on the prize. Use your journal to write about any set-backs or things that didn’t go well. For each set-back or problem write down the lesson(s) learned. Write about challenges and obstacles. For each of these, write down an action plan, something concrete that you can do to support you with whatever the challenge or obstacle is.

Trying to change habits will trigger many defeating reactions and feelings (remember the two conflicting goals?). Expect to have reactions that aren’t aligned with your new habit goal. Expect to feel at times discouraged, angry, overwhelmed, tired, anxious, like you deserve to give-in or deserve a treat, and others. Giving these reactions and feelings a voice through journaling (remember not to be self-deprecating!) allows them to resolve so you can return to being positive. Write in a way that honors and witnesses rather than negates or judges. If after writing you still struggle with reactions and feelings, journal about steps you can take to support you in staying on track inspite of them.

Meditation

Meditate to build self-awareness, self-control, and persistence.

Adopting a new habit requires self-awareness to notice when we’re doing something other than what we want to be doing. It requires that we have the self-control needed to choose something other than what we do impulsively. It requires that we be persistent and return to choosing the new habit rather than what we did before.

Meditation is a practice that builds our ability to notice our reactions, exercise self-contol, and make a different choice, and so is excellent for helping us with making habit changes. A meditation practice doesn’t have to be difficult or require a large investment in time. It does require consistency just like any other exercise program. Simply spending 5 to 10 minutes most days can help build these abilities.

Try taking 5 minutes most days just noticing your breath. Your mind will wander, and that’s perfect. Each time you notice your mind wandering, bring your awareness back to your breath. This noticing and bringing your awareness back to your focus is exactly the exercise. It allows you to practice noticing, practice staying focused, practice making a different choice from what you do impulsively.

Understanding and Building Willpower

Having willpower is incredibly important in making habit changes. It’s required to get us past our good intentions that will only carry us so far. Willpower enables us to navigate the two conflicting goals, and keep the scales tipped in the direction of our long-term goal. Kelly McGonigal has written an incredibly helpful book called The Willpower Instinct, that not only outlines the science of willpower, but also provides a workbook approach to building your “willpower muscle.”

Some helpful highlights from her book include that willpower is like a muscle that we can strengthen. It isn’t something we either have or don’t. You can get strong enough to make lasting habit changes!

Willpower encompasses our ability to know and remember what it is we want, notice impulses, control them, and make a different choice. All of this work requires physical energy. As you pursue your habit change, make sure you have the physical energy it requires. There are certain states to avoid since they will make it harder for you to make changes, such as being hungry, sleep-deprived, intoxicated, distracted, or overly stressed. As you adopt or change a habit, make sure you eat well to keep your blood sugar balanced, get plenty of sleep, manage distractions, and manage stress.

Stress relieving strategies that really work (that help us have more willpower) include exercising, playing sports, praying, meditating, reading, listening to music, social time with family or friends, massage, walking (especially in nature), yoga, and time on creative work. Many of the things we do when we’re stressed, such as shopping, internet time, gambling, smoking, and drinking, don’t actually relieve stress. This is because they don’t switch the body out of stress response and into relaxation, even though they do trigger a dopamine response.

In addition to physical challenges to willpower, there are psychological challenges. In her book, McGonigal covers that science behind how progress can undermine our motivation to stay the course, how feeling optimistic or good about our progress can undermine making good choices. Pay attention to your thinking and self-talk when you want to give yourself a treat or a break, and make a choice towards your new habit instead.

The last word goes to Knowing and Remembering What You Want. We try to change habits because we want something better for ourselves. However, it can be difficult to remember what we want when the scales tip towards maintaining the status quo, instant gratification, and giving up because it takes so much effort to make changes. Begin your journey with defining your vision and continue on your journey staying connected to your vision. Spend time defining what your habit change will be and what will be different for you and in your life once you’ve made the change. Keep this vision in front of you until it feels like your new habit is in place. Keep your eye on the prize!

Heather Leavesley, MA, MA is a Psychotherapist and Personal and Professional Development Coach at Inner Light Coaching and Psychotherapy in Denver, CO. She is a Certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner and a Certified Journal Trainer. She sees clients at her office and offers Skype sessions. You can learn more about her at www.hlcounseling.com or reach her at 720-363-5538.