» How to Form Good Habits

I was reading the memoirs of a recovering alcoholic a few weeks ago, in which she said that the professionals she met during her rehab told her that it only took 10 days for the body to fully rid itself of the chemically addictive elements of alcohol or drug addiction. As anyone trying to quit alcohol, drugs or smoking knows, it’s not really that easy, because they also need to change the lifestyle, behavior and attitudes that worked to maintain the addiction as well. There’s no point in going through even 10 days of struggle if your personal infrastructure won’t fully support your ongoing success.

But it does make you think: if 10 days can put someone well on the road to recovering from these life threatening addictions, how difficult can it be to change other habits? Is it really impossible to teach an old dog new tricks?

The key to successful change, whether you’re looking at giving up a bad habit or adopting a new one,

is that you’ve got to really want to do it, you need a reason for your changed behavior that makes it worth the effort it’s going to take you. If you’re half-hearted about it, chances are it just won’t work out. It will be too easy to slip back into your pre-change behavior, and if you do this once, you may find it more difficult to find the resolve to try again.

Most of the people who make a resolution to join a gym each January 1st have broken it before the end of February. This doesn’t mean they don’t see the benefits of exercise. Maybe it was the way they chose to get those benefits that was wrong. Maybe they didn’t really think through what going to the gym involved, whether it was a way they would enjoy getting exercise, whether they could fit it into their schedule in such a way that it didn’t become a hassle.

It can be similar with smoking. You know it’s bad for your health, you know it’s expensive and anti-social. All good reasons, but they can’t have been good enough to stop you before now, or you wouldn’t still have the habit. You haven’t yet found the key that makes it really matter to you. This might be the changed message, from a general vague ‘bad for your health’ to ‘you will die if you don’t stop smoking’, or learning that your grandchildren don’t want you to hug them because ‘granny smells bad’.

If your reasons for change aren’t strong enough, you’re likely to struggle as soon as those inner voices start trying to tempt you away from your new behavior. Or you may find yourself struggling to justify your choices against the persuasive arguments of other people who still follow the habit you’re trying to break.

Convert that strong reason into a force for action:

You want to make an expensive purchase but don’t have the money to do so. You’ve decided you need to develop the habit of saving regularly to make the purchase, rather than spending all your spare money as usual. How can you make sure you don’t get tempted into unnecessary spending that fritters away so much cash without you realizing? Even if you put aside money in an account each month, how can you make sure you don’t backslide and blow it all on a frivolous purchase because you’re struggling to go the distance?

You need to make your goal big enough, and strong enough, to be worth the sacrifices you’ll be making. And you need to think about it regularly, so it’s always hovering in your consciousness, ready to fight its corner against that skinny latte.

You can make it visual – create a picture of you with your new, treasured possession, ideally a real  picture that you can stick somewhere like your fridge or mirror, so you see it regularly. You can also keep the picture in your mind. Imagine yourself enjoying your new possession, picture yourself using it and enjoying it.

You can also use visual warnings. Put a note in your purse or wallet that makes you stop and think before you make an unnecessary purchase:

DO YOU REALLY NEED THIS? YOU COULD USE THE MONEY TO GET YOUR NEW (WHATEVER YOU’RE SAVING FOR) MORE QUICKLY. WOULDN’T THAT BE A BETTER WAY TO SPEND IT?

Think twice before you flash that credit card

Use something similar as an ‘obstacle’ you have to cross before you can use your credit card.

My current habit change is to get up earlier in the mornings. As I’m working for myself I don’t have to work set hours any more, so I don’t have to be up, or get to bed, by any particular time. And I love my bed, especially on cold dark mornings.

But I use the internet a lot and we don’t have mains telephone with broadband, so we use a wireless signal. The signal is far more reliable early in the day, especially around breakfast time. Come late afternoon it can be very erratic, and I’m sick of spending more time trying to work out if I’ve still got a signal, than getting anything useful done. I’ve seen enough of that spinning ‘page loading’ image to last me a lifetime.

Getting up early would make me work more effectively, which would also mean I could stop work earlier and have the late afternoons and evenings free. And as the weather gets hotter, it means I would be up when it’s still comfortable to work in the early mornings. Add to this I could get to see some English language news programs on regular TV, and it’s now a good habit I’m definitely keen to get into. If I can do it now, the habit will be well embedded by next winter, when it starts getting darker and colder in the mornings.

It’s really very simple: all it takes is to start setting my alarm for the time I want to get up, then getting up when the alarm goes.

But tell that to my inner voices, the ones which point out how nice and warm the bed is, how dark it still is outside, how cold the tiles will be on my bare feet. Just in case these arguments don’t convince me, they’re ready to jump in with how it doesn’t really matter if I’m up early, and how it’s no really big deal if I have to put up with poor internet access later in the day. What’s the problem with a bit of frustration??

So I’m giving myself good things to look forward to. Things I can do in the afternoon when I’ve achieved my morning tasks. Maybe a trip out, or a special meal, or a DVD I want to watch. Things that I can’t do if I have to spend extra time fighting the technology to complete my day’s tasks. Post-it notes remind me of what I’ve got planned as a reward for getting up early, and I make sure I think about the following day’s treat before I go to sleep.