Habit Forming: Why Building Better Habits Can Change Your World

When you think of habits, I wouldn't be surprised if you thought of smoking, drinking… all the negative things. I know I do.

It’s what has been in front of my 20-something eyes all my life. 

What if there was a way to introduce positive habit forming into your life? 

Creating better habits is about consciously adding positive things into your life and taking time to notice how it affects you. Once you start consciously welcoming habit forming into your life or noticing when habits do enter into your life, something really switches up…

In this post, you'll learn what habit formation is and how you can experiment with adding more positive habits in your life!

So let’s get stuck in…

What Habit-Forming Is and the Books You Need to Read

It’s time to get technical!

Sit tight, it's worth it

Habit formation is the unconscious sequence of actions that we do to make a habit... a habit.

How we establish habits has been a continuous debate between psychologists, philosophers and scientists that first struck interest in the early 20th century.

The mind really does work in mysterious ways. But back then, a bunch of guys and gals were trying to pin it down.

Since then, studies have continued — some might be a little bit lost on non-sciencey people like me — to work out the who, what, where and when of establishing habits. And if we actually can control the habits we make. 

If you are interested in psychology and understand the terminology, Google is a blackhole of information on studies and theories. However, if you want to get to grips on habits and how they affect business and normal life, there are two pieces of content GOLD that have been sweeping across the entrepreneurial world...

The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits. 

The first is more of a business-focused. Including some amazing studies that go into business culture and how inserting changes can alter the perceptions of a team. Proper mind-game stuff. 

The Power of Habit changed my world, I’ve since stopped smoking and altered habits in my daily routine that were having a negative effect on me because of its teachings. Obviously, these changes didn’t happen overnight.

Atomic Habits is more of a self-help kind of approach. It breaks down James Clears theory of how habits are formed, and how you can change your habits by paying attention to specific stages in the process.

2 Months to Rock the System... At Least

One of the most popular takeaways that you can get from The Power of Habit is that it takes around 21 days to form a habit.

But… I’m sure you've done something for around 3 weeks and fallen out of the habit as easily as you fell into it.

We’ve just been in and out of lockdowns like yo-yo’s (or at least, I have) for the last two years. Do you still maintain the habits you started then?

Probably not.

Circumstances change and your habits drop, even after this "sacred" 21 days.  

To add to the resources on healthy habits, I have to include this great article from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits) that goes into "how many days does it take to form a habit".

As you would imagine, each individual is different but the guesstimate is 2-8 months with an average of 66 days.

How Can We Play With This?

The super cool thing about reading into habit formation is that you can experiment with it. 

Can you get yourself into the habit of waking up earlier? Or change your morning coffee to green tea? 

In habit formation, this is done through paying attention to the trigger and the reward. 

What we do subconsciously has a profound impact on how we manage our lives which is why these books are so groundbreaking. Because they get you to pay attention to things, you'd previously ignored.

When do you need a coffee? When do you want to smoke? How can you replace this with something else?

Before you know it, your lifestyle choices have radically changed and you’ve pretty much just tricked yourself into doing it.

Super cool mind-game stuff — like I said.

Consciously Habit Forming: A Personal Example

I want to come back to my new habit of leaving my phone outside my room that I mention in Habits For a Healthy Morning because I think it best frames what I’m getting at here.

Without having to explain theories covered in a whole book… no one has time for that! 

So, let’s get into it. 

What I Did

I had read that by leaving your phone outside your room, you can really improve your concentration and break the toxic habit of being super attached to your phone.

This can also do awesome powerful things like improve your sleep, reduce anxiety… things that you wouldn’t typically associate with looking at your phone before you go to bed.

So I tried it. 

I left my phone in the kitchen of my small apartment, close enough that I could still hear my alarm.

On the first night, my body was so confused. It was so used to browsing Instagram, my eyes didn’t know what to do with themselves. So I started thinking about all the things that I’m grateful for instead.

I’d keep listing things, like counting sheep until my body felt ready to sleep (I still do this, it's my fave). 

I haven’t looked at my phone before I sleep since. Okay, maybe I’ve done it once or twice… but the habit of doing it mindlessly for hours is well and truly out the window and the affects have been amazing.

I sleep SO well. I feel less anxious, I’m less concerned about social media than I have ever been (or care to admit to), and WAY more dedicated to completing tasks without distraction.

To break this down so that you can see what I did, let’s look at it like this…

The problem: I scroll mindlessly before bed, filling my head with information that is not beneficial or healthy for me.

The trigger: having my phone next to my bed is a temptation.

The reward: feeling included, pretty things… whatever Instagram’s game plan is.

The replacement: gratitudes.

Action: leaving my phone outside my room and listing things I’m grateful for in my mind.

Small Changes, Big Improvements

It’s action time!

I love doing stuff. 

And I want you to join me! 

I want you to change something super tiny about your day consciously and see how it can radically change the way you do things. Take on the challenge and see how long it takes you to form a habit!

Try it. You've got nothing to lose.

What are some habits that you’d like to change? Let me know in the comments.