The Art of Habit Hacking

How many times have you caught yourself saying “This is the year I get in shape” or “On Monday I’m going to start eating healthy once and for all!” to then return to your old ways a few days later?

Trust me, I get it. In todays day in age, with distractions and temptation all around, it’s quite easy to fall off the path that we so eagerly had set out on. So if you find yourself feeling someone attacked or called out, just know you are absolutely not alone, my friend. Consistency with healthy habits can be really hard and contrary to what society would have you fall for, it is not because you lack willpower, are ‘bad’ or ‘less than’…it’s because diet culture is built around the idea that restrictive behaviors are the recipe for success--a notion that is far beyond the truth and a lesson I had to learn the hard way.

As a nurse and a bit of an extremist, I found myself caught in this vicious cycle time and time again. I used stress as my crutch as to why I deserved another piece of chocolate or to rationalize why I didn’t need to exercise. But one day, I was fed up with my own excuses and took the time to dig deeper into the root of habit formation and how I could reverse engineer a plan of attack that would would last longer than a week.

So, sit back, take some mental notes, and let’s talk about habits! Sounds exciting, right?

If you’re thinking you’d rather gauge your eyes out, I hear you. It’s not the most enticing topic at first glance, but I can almost guarantee that with a few tweaks, some guidance, and a whole lot of patience, you too can find success with whatever bad habit(s) you’re trying to kick to the curb.

After many years of trial and error with my own personal goals, I came up with an 8 step process to follow for any habit that I wanted to improve. Grab a pen and paper and let me show you how you can do the same!

1. First and foremost, you need to identify what it is that you want to improve. Before you work on any habit, you need to address it. Simple enough, but you’d be amazed at how often this is missed. Many times people try to go from 0 to 100 and fall flat on their face before the race has even begun. To get the wheels going, are you wanting to be more mindful of what you eat? Are you wanting to workout more consistently? Maybe get to sleep at a decent time or consistently wake up earlier? In order to identify it entirely, we need to figure out how and when this habit originated. If you have a tendency to critique your body every time you look in the mirror, think back to when this first started. Was it because someone once said something unkind about your appearance? What did this cause? Try to dig to the root of when this originated and identify as many details that you can. Think of a habit you’d like to improve and start jotting down what you know about this particular behavior. Become BFF’s with your habit so you can work on facing it head on, learn when it first began, and work backward to improve it.

2. Next is pinpoint. How does this habit make you feel? It most likely doesn’t illicit positive feelings or you wouldn’t be seeking to change it. For example, if you find yourself not drinking enough water, maybe you end up feeling fatigued, dehydrated, or bloated. Write out all of these feelings that are associated and become very familiar with them. After pinpointing, you can take it just a step further by accepting where you are at this current state, even if you aren’t where you want to be. For example, if there is something you dislike about your body, ask yourself ‘why?’ Assess your answer. Is it negative? Try to accept where you are with it and find something positive right now. If you think your arms are too big, flip the script and adopt the mentality that your arms are strong! Focus on all the things your strong arms allow you to accomplish throughout the day. Instead of forcing yourself to automatically love them right away, first just focus on accepting them and with time, you will find that your mindset slowly begins to shift.

3. Find your why. This is the bread and butter—you will find yourself coming back to this on days that are especially difficult. If you don’t have a deep rooted reason as to why you you want to make this change, it’s simply not going to happen (at least for the long run). This is what will keep you rooted to stick to it. For example, maybe you want to eat foods that nourish the body so you can decrease the likelihood of developing a disease that runs in your family. Maybe you want to lose some weight so that you have the energy and ability to run around with your kiddos. Maybe you want to get a workout in before work so that you are in a better mental headspace during the day. Whatever it is, just make sure that it resonates deeply with you—it cannot be a surface level ‘why’ or it will quickly fade. Write out your why and keep it near you as you embark on your journey. Stay away from extrinsic motivators, such as “I want to workout so I can have a six pack.” Those are superficial and won’t keep your interest long term. Focus on intrinsic motivators, behavior driven by internal reward.

4. Recognize your triggers. What specific events, locations, or individuals instigate this behavior that you are trying to work on? Before we can even begin to go about reversing or improving our habit, we need to determine what triggers these negative actions in the first place. For example, maybe you always binge eat right when you get home from work. Or maybe there is a certain individual that enables you to drink too much whenever you’re around them. Maybe you’re a stress eater and whenever you feel overwhelmed, reach for the Oreos! Whatever it is, you need to be conscious of it in order to overcome. So often we are unaware of our own habits until they get too far out of hand simply because we neglected to pay attention and ignored the factors surrounding it. Improving our habits is multifaceted, but can be so much easier when we know the steps to address and reverse them.

5. Make a plan. Now it’s time to put our vision into action—time to habit hack! Now that we have identified the habit we want to work on, pinpointed the emotions it elicits, determined our ‘why’, and figured out our triggers, we can finally start to work on creating a plan to get us from point A to B. Now hang tight because this is usually where people tend to get overwhelmed and jump the gun. The key here is to take it slow! Most often what happens is, people try to quit what they’re doing cold turkey, find that they are consistent for 3 days, get overwhelmed and cave, thus the cycle repeats. So, the reason this does not work? IT. IS. NOT. SUSTAINABLE. If you want to create consistent, healthy habits, you need to accept that you will fall every once in awhile, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up. So if you absolutely love ice cream, and you decide you want to give up ice cream forever, all I have to say is good luck! That is not a realistic goal and will only cause you to feel bad about yourself each time you go to reach for some ice cream. Instead, we must start small. Minuscule! Trying to change too much at one time is a recipe for failure. Many people aim too high, setting unrealistic expectations (I’ll go to the gym 7 days a week) and unattainable goals (I’ll lose 20 pounds before the end of the month). But this approach seldom works and can quickly lead to feelings of hopelessness. For now, stick with short-term goals involving habits you’re trying to establish (I want to workout twice a week for a month) rather than outcomes you’re trying to achieve (I want to bench press 300 pounds). That way, each action becomes a victory. Here’s an example of how this could work: if you want to implement more veggies into your diet, but aren’t a fan of vegetables, you need to meet yourself where you are and make reasonable goals. Rather than attempting to immediately eat 6 servings of vegetables a day, start off by implementing one serving into one meal. Do this until it becomes easier and then jump to the next step, which might look like adding a serving to both lunch and dinner. Incrementally changing and waiting for your mind, body, and emotions to feel comfortable with it is the trick! Slow and steady always wins the race when it comes to creating and actually sticking to our habits. Pro tip: stack your habits! Incorporate your new habits into something you’re already doing: if you want to add movement to your day, walk around the block before you get the mail each day.

6. Accountability. Find someone who will keep you on track and write out your new goal for your habit everywhere—the more you see it the better. Now that you have a plan, you need to be conscious of that plan. You need to tell people about it so that they can help keep you accountable. If that means writing “EAT YOUR VEGGIES AT LUNCH” on a sticky note on the fridge so it acts as a reminder, then so be it! If that means telling your sister, your best friend, or husband the goal you are working on so that they can be a cheerleader or motivator, do that. This is where it can get frustrating, because health looks different on everyone— we are all different, meaning we also learn differently. So the way that you go about executing this plan will look different depending on the goal you have set, the habit you are looking to change, how intrinsically motivated you are, and how you best learn. Pro tip: find someone who is also wanting to work on the same goal or habit as you. You can have an accountability partner that will help keep you motivated and on track. Plus, it’s always more fun to work on your goals with like-minded people!

7. Give yourself grace! And lots of it. Anything new will come with trial and error, but don’t let the error allow you to feel defeated. This is where we dive deeper into mindset. This one is huge and can quite possibly determine whether or not you are successful with the changes you’ve set out to make. It might sound silly, but YOU HAVE TO BE NICE TO YOURSELF. Yes, I get that we are often our own worst critics, but we have to also learn to be our own best cheerleader. You are the only person you will have for the entirety of your life, so you might as well learn to be nice to yourself, right? So when I say give yourself grace, let me show you what that means. Let’s say you have set out to change the way you view yourself in the mirror. Maybe you made a goal that you would write out 3 things you love about yourself before you get up and start your day. Let’s say you were consistent in doing this for 5 days, but on that 6th day, you started to say negative things in your head upon looking in the mirror. Guess what? It’s going to happen. Temptation is going to set back in. But you have to think about how long you have potentially had this negative mindset about your body…chances are, it didn’t happen overnight. So just as the negative mindset didn’t develop over night, you must give yourself time to change. Change is hard. Really hard. If it wasn’t, there’d be no such thing as a bad habit and you wouldn’t even be reading this! So just know that doubt might creep in, old ways may try to attack, but you are doing this for a reason and you are stronger than you think. When you find yourself caught in this situation, go back to your ‘why’!

8. Reward yourself! Making changes can be really difficult and you deserve to be rewarded for your accomplishments! Rewards are an important part of habit formation. However, the rewards that we tend to gravitate towards usually involve food (which no, is not always bad). However, keep in mind that it has everything to do with the habit you are working to improve. If your goal is to decrease your sugar intake, it might not be the best idea to reward yourself with a Dairy Queen blizzard. Maybe a new outfit or getting a pedicure would be a better idea instead! Think about when you brush your teeth, the reward is immediate—a minty, clean mouth. However, some rewards such as weight loss or physical changes can take longer to show up, so implementing your own reward system can be incredibly helpful. So while rewarding yourself can be larger scale, such as a new outfit or pedicure, implementing the reward into the behavior itself can be longer lasting. For example, listening to an audiobook while you walk, watching your favorite show on Netflix while you run on the treadmill, or planning a workout date with a friend! All of these cost nothing, but have an incentive built in. This too can help increase your motivation and allow the habit forming process to become enjoyable rather than tedious. Get creative with your actions and think about how you can pair a reward with the habit you are working on improving. Rewards can be as big or small as you wish, just remember that it doesn’t always need to be something you purchase. The point of rewards is to have something that exhibits a slight pull, causing you to want to complete the behavior more than you want to ignore it. As you repeatedly perform the behavior, eventually the completion of the habit itself becomes the reward. Example: after you workout, you experience a rush of endorphins that put you in a better mood!
   

So there you have what I believe are 8 critical steps necessary to work through in order to make improvements to any habit or behavior. After you have taken the devoted time to pick a habit and walk through these steps, be sure to track your progress for 21 days, until it simply becomes second nature. Sure it’ll take some time, there will be some bumps along the way, but if it’s important to you, then it’s an adventure worth setting foot on.

Habit formation is a long race. It takes time, patience, and persistence to gain the desired results. Take heart knowing that every habit streak will end at some point because life happens and perfection is not possible. However, the important thing to remember is that you have the choice to begin again. The point is to create small, sustainable changes you can stick with for life.

Remember: a habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish life to be crossed.