Leveraging the Power of Habit for Healthy Routines

It’s become something of a bad perennial joke that people start the year all gung-ho for their New Year’s resolutions to accomplish a goal or form a new habit, and then by the time six weeks have elapsed, a significant portion will have thrown up their hands in abject defeat. Perhaps next year, it’ll work out better . . .

When it comes to making changes in our lives, we often get in our own way by wanting to make significant and sweeping changes without much preamble. When you don’t have the infrastructure to scaffold bold ambitions, it’s almost inevitable that whatever attempt you make won’t end well. Supplanting one way of doing things with another takes time, and we learn this lesson harshly each New Year’s.

Instead of going the route of making large and sweeping changes that look good on paper but don’t work out so well, perhaps it’s more helpful to take a different route. By making small but incremental changes that make use of the power of habit, we can make meaningful changes in our lives and achieve our goals.

Our habits shape us profoundly

Our habits are powerful, and they can shape us profoundly. A habit is a regular or settled tendency or practice that you don’t have to think consciously about when you’re performing it, and it can relate to something as simple as brushing your teeth or knowing how to shuck an oyster without hurting yourself.

Our brains are wired in such a way that when our behaviors are turned into automatic behavior or routine, we don’t have to consciously think about it. This happens in the part of our brain called the basal ganglia, which is where our habit-making behaviors are rooted, and which also has a role to play in pattern recognition, as well as in the development of memories and emotions.

While our habit-forming behaviors are rooted in our basal ganglia, the decision-making part of our brain is located in the prefrontal cortex. However, when a behavior becomes rote, the part of our brain that makes decisions disengages, somewhat, which allows us to perform a routine activity while doing something else.

When you shuck your first oyster, you have to pay close attention, but by your 1,000^th, you can be listening to music or chatting as you do so.

When you have performed certain actions for a long time in the same environment, you can do that action the same way pretty much every single time. You don’t have to think about it because it simply becomes part of you. Your habits shape you profoundly, molding your behavior in ways you may never have thought possible.

Our habits shape us in such a way that they can mold our identity and give evidence of who we are. James Clear wrote:

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements – James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

The small things that we do, such as getting up at a consistent time and getting to work, taking care of our bodies, praying and reading Scripture, and reaching out to loved ones – all of these things are a part of who we are. Small shifts in what you do can have a bigger impact down the line, and that is the power of habit. Implementing small changes and making them habits can mean big and meaningful changes down the line.

Letting the power of habit do the hard work for you

Habits take time to form when given adequate space and practiced consistently. That means that what you need to do is provide yourself with enough room to generate habits that will lean into your healthy routines. If you set your clock to wake up at a certain time, and when your alarm goes off you make the small choice to get up then and there without snoozing it, you’re on the way to training yourself to get up at a consistent time.

Once you decide on what healthy routines you want to settle into, it takes a little planning and willpower to get the ball rolling. You need to do something with consistency for it to become a habit. So you’ll need to exercise conscious willpower in the beginning until the behavior settles into a habit that you can do without thinking too much about it. According to Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, our habits are comprised of three parts.

The first part of our “habit loop” is the cue that tells our brains to let a specific behavior unfold. The second part is the behavior, or the routine itself. The third and last step is the reward, which is something that your brain enjoys that helps it to recall the habit loop in the future. This could be the feel-good neurotransmitters that elevate your mood after a run, for instance, or the sense of satisfaction you get from doing a job well.

To build habits that lean into healthy routines like eating well, exercising, connecting with others in meaningful ways, or resting, you can start small and just remain consistent until the action becomes routine. Bad habits can be broken, and new, healthier habits, learned.

You can speak with someone like a life coach to help you set achievable goals and establish the habits that will get you there. If you would like us to match you with a life coach in Glendale so that you can build new habits, contact our office today at Glendale Christian Counseling.