Establishing a new habit

Old (bad) habits are hard to break, and new ones are hard to get established.  If it was easy, nobody would have bad habits, and everybody would have good ones.  Change, it turns out, is pretty darn hard for almost everybody!

But the good news is that there is a whole body of research in behavioral psychology to guide us in how to start new habits successfully.  According research, it takes some time to get a new habit firmly established -- at least a month and more likely a couple months, as spelled out in the link below from the Huffington Post.  How long it takes will vary from person to person and depending on the type of habit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/forming-new-habits_b_5104807.html

You can access this research by Googling “establishing a new habit,” but some of it is highly technical and frankly not all that accessible for laypersons.  So I have summarized the gist of this research below, incorporating my personal experience.

• Choose something relatively easy or attainable to start, like walking 20 minutes rather than an hour
• Perform the behavior daily; less often than that makes it harder to establish the habit
• Commit to 30 days; research shows that takes 4 to 8 weeks of daily performance to effectively establish a new habit
• Set a reminder

• Identify likely obstacles to performing your new behavior and figure out how you're going to get rid of those barriers; for example, waiting until the end of the day to exercise but feeling too tired.  Plan to work out in the morning instead.  Research has shown that morning exercisers are more likely to work out regularly than people who wait until later in the day

• Be prepared to experience the “oh-screw-its” if you miss a day.  This is likely to happen.  Rather than saying to yourself, “this is just too much effort, it’s not worth it,” write down the benefits of establishing this new behavior and read them.  Be easy on yourself.  It’s not the end of the world if you missed a day or two.  You’re human.  No one is perfect and it’s unrealistic to think you are going to perform this new behavior perfectly. But don't waste any time in getting back into your new routine.  Think about my previous bullet point:  maybe you need to tweak your routine after figuring out why you failed to perform the new behavior.

• Reward yourself for performing the new behavior with positive self-talk, e.g.,  “good job,” “you made progress today,” “you didn’t feeling like working out today but you did anyhow – good for you,” etc.