20 | HH Forming Habits

Three tips of forming habits!

Habits are a three step process

If you have read or researched habits at all, you know the name Charles Duhigg. He wrote the fantastic and widely referenced book, "The Power of Habit" which I suggest you read (or listen to!). Click the picture of the book to head to amazon to check it out.

 

The most important point of this book is that habits aren't just made up of the action. There's a before piece and and a after piece that make habits just that: a habit.

Those three part are:
(1) The cue or reminder, (2) the routine or action, and (3) the reward.

By thinking habits this way, you can utilize cues and rewards to successfully create a new long-term habit or even break an old bad habit.

Break your goals into pieces

Dreaming big is super important, so when creating a goal, go for it; however, if you go big and forget to break down your goal into smaller pieces, you might run into moment where you feel like giving up. Obviously, the goal of the Burnt Out podcast is not to burn you out! So, go big, then break it down. That way, you can easily see progress as you make your way to your larger goal.

Here is a great resource to read through in order to set some great goals.

Make your choices simpler

Forming new habits can be exhausting because we are constantly having to make choices.

You are constantly choosing between another episode of The Office or going for a walk, an apple or Cheez-its, or biting your nails versus clipping them. These can be hard choices for us to make if we're in the thick of a habit.

SO, let's make sure we don't exhaust ourselves with other choices we don't actually care about.

For example, when I create my meal plan, I only give myself two choices for breakfast, two choices for lunch, and three choices for dinner. I don't value variety in my meals day to day, so why would I create MORE choices for myself in finding things to eat each day, rather than having them chosen for me.

Less brain power wasted on things I don't care about, more time spent choosing to go swim laps.