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8/28/13 6 Ways To Become A Creature Of New Habits

www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/new-habit-change-behavior_n_3797351.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

6 Ways To Become A Creature Of New Habits

To quote Joan Didion, "With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved." Here's how to kick-start real change -- and start on yopath for good.

By Jena Pincott

Perfect Your Hospital CornersMaking the bed every morning doesn't seem like i t has much to do with our more ambitious goals, like meditating twice daily or learniMandarin. But it's an example of a "keystone habit" -- along with regular family dinners and daily exercise -- that sets in motion othgood habits, explains Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit. (Bed-making, he writes, is "correlated with better productivitygreater sense of well-being and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.") The point is that strategic "small wins" strengthen somethiyou really need when you want to change for the better: willpower. First, conquer the bed; next, the world.

Tell The Cloud You Want To Drink 9 Glasses DailyDownload Lift, a free habit-tracking app for iPhone, to start accumulating "small wins." Lift asks you to choose goals that you'd liketransform into habits (such as "Read," "Run," "Sleep 8 Hours," "Zero Body Fat" and "Make Spouse Feel Loved/Desired"), and thenblasts reminders to your phone. As you track your progress, friends (and yes, strangers) send props, share tips and hold yoaccountable. Best are the rewards: clicking a giant checkmark and gaining a sense of momentum on your frequency chart, which (better and for worse) is visible to the whole community. Other popular habit-forming apps are StickK (which lets you to put real money the line) and Habit Streak (which prompts you to report every day).

Seduce Yourself With The Right SyntaxTry this robotic but psychologically savvy strategy to hardwire your neural pathways: the "ifthen" plan. "IfX happens, thenI will do Y(In around 100 experiments, this intention-declaring formula proved strikingly effective.) Ifit's 10 p.m, then, wherever I am, I'll meditate 15 minutes." Or, "IfI get hungry watching TV, thenI will eat only fruit." Or, "Ifit's Monday, thenI will do 20 minutes of crunches at tgym." (In one study, 91 percent of those who made a concrete commitment like this actually exercised, versus only 39 percent of noplanners.) Cue, Action, Automate. Repeat. When the programming starts to work subconsciously -- as it will, really -- your habit is born.

Dangle A Low-Hanging CarrotPerhaps now you're thinking, "If I jog every morning this week, then I'll let myself have an ice cream on Friday." Maybe you'll get therBut the odds are higher if you reward yourself right aftereach workout. That's because dopamine, the feel-good chemical that reinforchabits, increases more with the prospect of an imminent reward than an abstract one. (Even X'ing out another square on a progress chacan satisfy the need for immediate gratification.) Have faith: Once the habit is established, you won't need to be so strategic. "Only whyour brain starts expecting the reward -- craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment -- will it become automatic to start laciyour jogging shoes each morning," Duhigg writes.

Bond Yourself For 9 1/2 WeeksIf we can just keep it up for 21 days, it'll become a habit, right? Not so fast. The three-week rule is something of an urban legend, foundstudy led by Phillippa Lally, PhD, a psychologist at University College London. It actually took people 66 days(9.5 weeks) for a behavto become automatic (or feel weird notto do it). But that's just an average. Some habits, such as drinking a bottle of water after luncturned out to be much stickier (it took 59 days on average) than doing 50 sit-ups each morning (91 days). Forging a new habit geeasier and easier as you gain momentum, Lally says. Eventually you'll stop counting the days and just do it.

Remember, You're NotA RobotNow, the nicest news. You're allowed to be human, Lally's study found. You can make an exception and sleep in. You can ditch yonew routine and grab a margarita with your former roommate who's in town for the night. In other words, you can lapse here and thereand still succeed in forming the habit (without going back to Day 1). Sel f-compassion is key here. (Forgiving yourself actually makemore likely you'll reach a goal, found a study at Carleton University, while sel f-punishment resulted in further setbacks.) Simply pick where you left off the day before -- and continue on your path to a habitual happily ever after.

August 28, 2013

Posted: 08/26/2013 10:39 am EDT