How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 4

In recent months, we’ve been chatting about how habits are formed, how they affect your daily life and how to start making changes.  If you didn’t catch the previous articles, you can read them here: How Habits Affect Your Life + How to Make them Work for You, How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 1, How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 2 and How to Change Your Habits and Make it Stick - Part 3. 

No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, habits are at the heart of everything you do.  Making them work for you is where the magic happens.  

Motivation is often the driving force behind the beginning of change when trying to change a habit.  It can also vanish pretty quickly when the habit gets hard or something gets in the way.  Remembering your why (what made you want to do this in the first place) is a pretty powerful tool to help you stick to changing your habits.  Regardless of the reason, remind yourself that you’re worth the effort!

Make it Satisfying or Make it Unsatisfying

This is the fourth law of changing a Habit from Atomic Habits by James Clear.  If you make what you want to do satisfying, you’re more likely to do it.  If you make it unsatisfying, you’re more likely to avoid it.

Make it Satisfying

By making a habit satisfying you’re creating a reason to continue to do it because you reap very obvious benefits from actually doing whatever it is that you want to do until it becomes second nature (aka a habit).  

This can be accomplished in a couple of ways based on what motivates you!

This might be by using a rewards system that gives you an immediate reward when you complete the new behaviour you’re trying to turn into a habit.  This might be by finding something else to do that you enjoy more than the habit you’re trying to avoid.  If you’re motivated by seeing your successes, use a habit tracker where you can see all the checkmarks, stars or something else each time you complete the behaviour and you can see the streak you don’t want to break.  

No matter the motivation, the most important part of this is ‘never miss twice’!

This means that if you miss doing or not doing something once, get back on track immediately; don’t let it slip two days in a row.

Once you’ve missed two days in a row, it makes it easier to skip three and then four and so on.  The faster you get back to it, the easier it will be to reinforce the habit.

Make it Unsatisfying

Making something unsatisfying is useful when you’re trying to stop something you no longer want to do or start something that you’re finding you have a lot of resistance to actually starting.

This might be going to the gym regularly or it might be something else that you’ve convinced yourself will be hard to make it a habit.

The key here is to do two things:

1. Get an accountability partner.

When you tell someone else that you either stop doing something or start doing something, it becomes a little more real because someone else knows.  Ask them to check in with you periodically or to call you on the thing you’re trying to stop (ie: quitting smoking) if they see you doing it.

2. Create a habit contract (actually write it out and have a witness sign it)

By creating a binding contract with someone, you’re making it even more real.  Part of the contract needs to include rewards and punishments for not following through on what you’ve said you want to start/stop doing.

By making the habits you want to stop cost you in public and painful ways, it can be motivation enough to stop.  This also works to reinforce behaviours that you want to start.  In that case, you’d make it painful and public when you don’t accomplish what you’ve said you’re going to do in the contract.

Next Steps

Choose the habit you want to change.  It’s best to choose a small thing so you can get an easy win and build some momentum.  Next, pick the method you think might work best to help you change that habit - are you going to Make it Obvious, Make it Invisible, Make it Attractive, Make it Unattractive, Make it Easy, Make it Difficult, Make it Satisfying or Make it Unsatisfying?

If you’re finding that change in certain circumstances is hard, first, take a moment to remember everything you’ve accomplished so far.  Second, reconnect with who you want to become and what originally motivated you to make this change.  Third, try a different method if the one you’re trying isn’t working.  The options to make something obvious/invisible, attractive/unattractive, easy/difficult or satisfying/unsatisfying are just that - options.  One might work best in a certain situation, while another might work better for something else.  One might work for a while and then may need to be changed.  Just know that who you want to be is worth the time and effort.

 If you’re looking for a little extra accountability, add a comment below and let me know what you’re working on changing.

Andrea