The Habit Change Cheatsheet: 29 Ways to Successfully Ingrain a Behavior
Keep it simple
Habit change is not that complicated. While the tips below will
seem overwhelming, there’s really only a few things you need to
know. Everything else is just helping these to become reality.
The simple steps of habit change
1. Write down your plan.
2. Identify your triggers and replacement habits.
3. Focus on doing the replacement habits every single time the
triggers happen, for about 30 days.
That’s it. We’ll talk more about each of these steps, and much
more, in the cheatsheet below.
The Habit Change Cheatsheet
The following is a compilation of tips to help you change a habit.
Don’t be overwhelmed — always remember the simple steps above. The
rest are different ways to help you become more successful in your
habit change.
1. Do just one habit at a time. Extremely important. Habit change
is difficult, even with just one habit. If you do more than one
habit at a time, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Keep it
simple, allow yourself to focus, and give yourself the best chance
for success. Btw, this is why New Year’s resolutions often fail —
people try to tackle more than one change at a time.
2. Start small. The smaller the better, because habit change is
difficult, and trying to take on too much is a recipe for disaster.
Want to exercise? Start with just 5-10 minutes. Want to wake up
earlier? Try just 10 minutes earlier for now. Or consider half
habits.
3. Do a 30-day Challenge. In my experience, it takes about 30 days
to change a habit, if you’re focused and consistent. This is a
round number and will vary from person to person and habit to
habit. Often you’ll read a magical “21 days” to change a habit, but
this is a myth with no evidence. Seriously — try to find the
evidence from a scientific study for this. A more recent study
shows that 66 days is a better number (read more). But 30 days is a
good number to get you started. Your challenge: stick with a habit
every day for 30 days, and post your daily progress updates to a
forum.
4. Write it down. Just saying you’re going to change the habit is
not enough of a commitment. You need to actually write it down, on
paper. Write what habit you’re going to change.
5. Make a plan. While you’re writing, also write down a plan. This
will ensure you’re really prepared. The plan should include your
reasons (motivations) for changing, obstacles, triggers, support
buddies, and other ways you’re going to make this a success. More
on each of these below.
6. Know your motivations, and be sure they’re strong. Write them
down in your plan. You have to be very clear why you’re doing this,
and the benefits of doing it need to be clear in your head. If
you’re just doing it for vanity, while that can be a good
motivator, it’s not usually enough. We need something stronger. For
me, I quit smoking for my wife and kids. I made a promise to them.
I knew if I didn’t smoke, not only would they be without a husband
and father, but they’d be more likely to smoke themselves (my wife
was a smoker and quit with me).
7. Don’t start right away. In your plan, write down a start date.
Maybe a week or two from the date you start writing out the plan.
When you start right away (like today), you are not giving the plan
the seriousness it deserves. When you have a “Quit Date” or “Start
Date”, it gives that date an air of significance. Tell everyone
about your quit date (or start date). Put it up on your wall or
computer desktop. Make this a Big Day. It builds up anticipation
and excitement, and helps you to prepare.
8. Write down all your obstacles. If you’ve tried this habit change
before (odds are you have), you’ve likely failed. Reflect on those
failures, and figure out what stopped you from succeeding. Write
down every obstacle that’s happened to you, and others that are
likely to happen. Then write down how you plan to overcome them.
That’s the key: write down your solution before the obstacles
arrive, so you’re prepared.
9. Identify your triggers. What situations trigger your current
habit? For the smoking habit, for example, triggers might include
waking in the morning, having coffee, drinking alcohol, stressful
meetings, going out with friends, driving, etc. Most habits have
multiple triggers. Identify all of them and write them in your plan.
10. For every single trigger, identify a positive habit you’re
going to do instead. When you first wake in the morning, instead of
smoking, what will you do? What about when you get stressed? When
you go out with friends? Some positive habits could include:
exercise, meditation, deep breathing, organizing, decluttering, and
more.
“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man,
but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.” - Mark Twain
11. Plan a support system. Who will you turn to when you have a
strong urge? Write these people into your plan. Support forums
online are a great tool as well — I used a smoking cessation forum
on about.com when I quit smoking, and it really helped. Don’t
underestimate the power of support — it’s really important.
12. Ask for help. Get your family and friends and co-workers to
support you. Ask them for their help, and let them know how
important this is. Find an AA group in your area. Join online
forums where people are trying to quit. When you have really strong
urges or a really difficult time, call on your support network for
help. Don’t smoke a cigarette, for example, without posting to your
online quit forum. Don’t have a drop of alcohol before calling your
AA buddy.
13. Become aware of self-talk. You talk to yourself, in your head,
all the time — but often we’re not aware of these thoughts. Start
listening. These thoughts can derail any habit change, any goal.
Often they’re negative: “I can’t do this. This is too difficult.
Why am I putting myself through this? How bad is this for me
anyway? I’m not strong enough. I don’t have enough discipline. I
suck.” It’s important to know you’re doing this.
14. Stay positive. You will have negative thoughts — the important
thing is to realize when you’re having them, and push them out of
your head. Squash them like a bug! Then replace them with a
positive thought. “I can do this! If Leo can do it, so can I!” :)
15. Have strategies to defeat the urge. Urges are going to come —
they’re inevitable, and they’re strong. But they’re also temporary,
and beatable. Urges usually last about a minute or two, and they
come in waves of varying strength. You just need to ride out the
wave, and the urge will go away. Some strategies for making it
through the urge: deep breathing, self-massage, eat some frozen
grapes, take a walk, exercise, drink a glass of water, call a
support buddy, post on a support forum.
16. Prepare for the sabotagers. There will always be people who are
negative, who try to get you to do your old habit. Be ready for
them. Confront them, and be direct: you don’t need them to try to
sabotage you, you need their support, and if they can’t support you
then you don’t want to be around them.
17. Talk to yourself. Be your own cheerleader, give yourself pep
talks, repeat your mantra (below), and don’t be afraid to seem
crazy to others. We’ll see who’s crazy when you’ve changed your
habit and they’re still lazy, unhealthy slobs!
18. Have a mantra. For quitting smoking, mine was “Not One Puff
Ever” (I didn’t make this up, but it worked — more on this below).
When I wanted to quit my day job, it was “Liberate Yourself”. This
is just a way to remind yourself of what you’re trying to do.
19. Use visualization. This is powerful. Vividly picture, in your
head, successfully changing your habit. Visualize doing your new
habit after each trigger, overcoming urges, and what it will look
like when you’re done. This seems new-agey, but it really works.
20. Have rewards. Regular ones. You might see these as bribes, but
actually they’re just positive feedback. Put these into your plan,
along with the milestones at which you’ll receive them.
21. Take it one urge at a time. Often we’re told to take it one day
at a time — which is good advice — but really it’s one urge at a
time. Just make it through this urge.
22. Not One Puff Ever (in other words, no exceptions). This seems
harsh, but it’s a necessity: when you’re trying to break the bonds
between an old habit and a trigger, and form a new bond between the
trigger and a new habit, you need to be really consistent. You
can’t do it sometimes, or there will be no new bond, or at least it
will take a really really long time to form. So, at least for the
first 30 days (and preferably 60), you need to have no exceptions.
Each time a trigger happens, you need to do the new habit and not
the old one. No exceptions, or you’ll have a backslide. If you do
mess up, regroup, learn from your mistake, plan for your success,
and try again (see the last item on this list).
23. Get rest. Being tired leaves us vulnerable to relapse. Get a
lot of rest so you can have the energy to overcome urges.
24. Drink lots of water. Similar to the item above, being
dehydrated leaves us open to failure. Stay hydrated!
25. Renew your commitment often. Remind yourself of your commitment
hourly, and at the beginning and end of each day. Read your plan.
Celebrate your success. Prepare yourself for obstacles and urges.
26. Set up public accountability. Blog about it, post on a forum,
email your commitment and daily progress to friend and family, post
a chart up at your office, write a column for your local newspaper
(I did this when I ran my first marathon). When we make it public —
not just the commitment but the progress updates — we don’t want to
fail.
27. Engineer it so it’s hard to fail. Create a groove that’s harder
to get out of than to stay in: increase positive feedback for
sticking with the habit, and increase negative feedback for not
doing the habit. Read more on this method.
28. Avoid some situations where you normally do your old habit, at
least for awhile, to make it a bit easier on yourself. If you
normally drink when you go out with friends, consider not going out
for a little while. If you normally go outside your office with
co-workers to smoke, avoid going out with them. This applies to any
bad habit — whether it be eating junk food or doing drugs, there
are some situations you can avoid that are especially difficult for
someone trying to change a bad habit. Realize, though, that when
you go back to those situations, you will still get the old urges,
and when that happens you should be prepared.
29. If you fail, figure out what went wrong, plan for it, and try
again. Don’t let failure and guilt stop you. They’re just
obstacles, but they can be overcome. In fact, if you learn from
each failure, they become stepping stones to your success. Regroup.
Let go of guilt. Learn. Plan. And get back on that horse.
- Evan Carmichael
