Written By michelle obrien

I once accidentally drove myself to an apartment where I used to live. But when I first moved there, I struggled to get there, even when I tried. To find my way home, I relied on GPS for weeks. My point is, habits are automatic. But these same behaviors take loads of attention, focus, and energy to become something we do on auto pilot.

Habits are behaviors that require little or no conscious thought; they’re automatic. They’re easy. We don’t have to psyche ourselves up to chew our nails or twirl our hair. We form habits by repeating actions over and over again until we can do them on auto-pilot. Like driving to your home or brushing your teeth. When something is a habit, it requires very little energy.

So, if you’re making resolutions for the upcoming year, factor in the process of creating the habit. It’s not easy to create a habit. And there is a science behind it, so before you announce the habits that you want your 2023 Self to have, give yourself a fighting chance at success by following a few guiding principles.

1. Action-Outcome Associations

You want to walk more? Consider walking to the coffee shop in the morning to pick up your favorite morning coffee or tea. You’ll be thinking about that caramel, double shot, oat milk latte on the way there and each time you walk home, your brain will have experienced the action of walking associated with positive feelings. Multiply that by thirty lattes or so, and you’ve got yourself a new, enjoyable habit. If you’re thinking, “But won’t the calories in the latte cancel out the benefit of the walk?”, the short answer is NO! The long answer is more complicated and I promise we’ll address that perfectly valid question in an upcoming post.

2. The Habit Loop

We just established an Action-Outcome (reward) scenario. Let’s make it a little more real-life and add a couple more factors. We’ll start with a Cue. A Cue is an external, physical prompt or reminder. For example, when I started having hot flashes, I learned that, for me, drinking wine in the evening resulted in hot, miserable, sleepless nights. But I can’t tell you how many times I remembered that right after finishing a lovely glass of pinot. When I was sweating in the middle of the night and dreading how soon the sun would rise, it seemed like a key piece of information that would be impossible to forget. But forget I did, many times, until I created a reminder in red print on a big piece of paper (aka a Cue) and stuck it on the cabinet door.

Putting your shoes out the night before could function as a Cue in our walk-to-the-coffee-shop scenario. Now here’s something really cool: before long, just seeing the Cue kicks starts feelings of reward in the brain…before you’ve even started walking and long before the first sip of that latte. As far as your brain is concerned, the Cue, the Action, and the Reward become one and the same. Now we have four factors: Cue (shoes) - Craving (wanting coffee; with time, also craving a walk) - Action (walking) - Outcome/Reward (coffee).

3. The Two Minute Rule

Remember, things get easier with repetition. Something that feels difficult starting out, can become automatic with time. So lacing up for a three mile jog on January 1st is a lot (Let’s be real. If you celebrated enthusiastically on New Year’s Eve, that jog is not happening until January 2nd). But what about starting to create your new habit with something that can be done in two minutes or less? Lacing up your shoes, stretching for a minute, and then taking them off and heading to work. Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t run at all. If you don’t jog now, why expect yourself to magically become a runner on January 2nd? The next time, you lace up, stretch, and walk once around the block. Continue making incremental changes at a realistic pace, instead of a wishful one, and your odds of success are very good. Actions that are associated with positive feelings tend to be repeated and actions that are immediately punished tend to be avoided. If you aren’t currently a runner, forcing yourself to try to jog three miles on January 2nd is nothing short of punishment.

If you must make resolutions, consider also making an investment in yourself by being patient and putting in the time it takes to build a new habit. If you want to learn more about the science of behavior change, here are some good sources below.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/power-of-habit-excerpt/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120612144811.htm

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/the-2-minute-rule-how-to-stop-procrastinating-and-start-new-habits.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/automatic-you/202206/the-key-behavior-change-is-identity-change

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