How to Actually Build Healthy Habits

The holy grail in hacking your habits is the habit loop. If you haven’t heard of the habit loop yet, it consists of three components: cue, routine, and reward. First, the cue is the trigger to do something. Next, the routine is what we are triggered to do physically, mentally, or emotionally. Lastly, the reward is the reinforcer that ensures the routine will follow the cue.

Routine

Here is a list of healthy habits you might want to implement into your day:

• Going to the gym
• Drinking more water
• Read more
• Eat vegetables
• Save money
• Going to bed early
• Waking up earlier
• Daily walks
• Spending more time with friends or family
• Calling more often

Reward

Once you have a few new healthy habits you want to program into your day, let’s look at how they fit into the habit loop. I want you to ask yourself why you want to start these healthy habits? Your answer to that question is your “reward” or the third component of the habit loop.

• Waking up earlier — having more time for yourself before work or being able to make breakfast in the morning
• Daily walks — exercise or get outside everyday
• Calling friends or family more — feeling connected/happy or strengthening bonds

These rewards are what is going to help you continue to do the routine once the cue is presented.

Cue

Now, I want you to pick a cue for each of you routines. When could this fit into your day? This could be a time of day or connected to an event/action you do.

• Every morning when my alarm goes off at 7 am I am going to wake up
• After I get home from work I’m going to immediately change into work out clothes and go on a walk
• Once I get in the car to drive home from work, I will call my mom/ best friend/ boyfriend

Once you have these habit loops created and personalized to you, you have to stick with it. Habits aren’t built in a day. Imagine you’re in a forest and you want to create a new path. It would take a long time of crawling through branches as they snap along the path and footsteps to kill the grass beneath. After a while, a path will emerge and it will get more distinct each time you go on the path. That is similar to creating a new or alternative habit. Stay committed and be patient with yourself as you build the new habits. Remember, you want to build these habits for a reason so give it some time!

Click here to learn how to break bad habits.