Coaches Corner – 4 Tips to Build Better Habits!

Do you struggle with changing your habits, or creating positive habits? There is a phenomenal book called "Atomic Habits", written by James Clear. Clear is an expert on the psychology and application of creating positive habits, and eliminating negative habits. The book focuses on the power of small changes, repeated over time, to make a big impact over time.

The entire book is worth a read, but here are four snippets that you can apply to changing the habits that revolve around your health and fitness. There are four primary "laws" of behavior change that can be applied to learn positive habits, which can be reverse engineered to unlearn poor habits.

Law #1: Make It Obvious

The First Law focuses in on how environment can be structured to support positive habits. The change that needs to take place must be made obvious, which lessens the chances of you missing it. Clear illuminates the overrated nature of motivation, due to how fleeting and circumstantial it can be. Environment often matters more than motivation. You can set your environment up for your success. Such as setting your gym clothes out every night before you go to bed, if your goal is to workout every morning.

The two most common cues of habit change are time and location. It helps to create what's called an Implementation Intention, which pairs a specific habit with a specific time and location. If your goal is to get to the gym every day, you need to create a specific statement that you will strive to achieve. Such as, "I will go to the gym, at 7am, at Hidden Gym." You can also habit stack, which is to pair a new habit with a current habit. For example, "After I brush my teeth in the morning, I will change into my gym clothes and head out the door."

Law #2: Make It Attractive

The Second Law focuses on how to make your habits more appealing. The more attractive an opportunity is, the more likely it is to become habit forming. Habits are a dopamine-driven feedback loop, whether positive or negative. The anticipation of the reward on the other side of performing a positive habit is what gets us to take action. For instance, you can visualize the version of you that is healthier and happier as a result of going to the gym every day. Temptation bundling is a strategy you can use to pair a habit that you need to do, with a habit that you want to do. For instance, if you want to watch Netflix instead of going to the gym, you can make the habit that you want to do (Netflix), the reward for the habit you need to do. An Implementation Intention of this may sound like, "I will watch one episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine after I get home from the gym, but only if I go to the gym."

Law #3: Make It Easy

The most effective method of habit learning is practice, not planning. Focus on taking action, not being in motion. Habit formation is the process by which a behavior becomes progressively more automatic through consistent repetition. Focus on taking action, no matter how small that action may be. If you need to start getting to the gym every day, you don't need to require yourself to go for 90 minutes a day on day one. You can start small.

Clear tells the story of a friend of his that needed to lose weight. Her method was to go to the gym for just five minutes a day. She would walk in, set a timer for five minutes, and when the timer was up, she would leave. She focused on making the habit of walking into the gym every day as automatic and routine as possible. Eventually, she started staying longer than five minutes. She thought to herself, "Well I'm already here, I might as well stay a while and work out for longer." With this simple method of habit building, she lost the weight she wanted to.

Law #4: Make It Satisfying

The Fourth Law focuses on how to make the experience of repeating a habit more satisfying. The human brain is oriented to seek out immediate gratification. In general, most habits that bring immediate gratification are negative, and those that bring delayed gratification are positive. It's not immediately gratifying to not spend money and to put it into savings. But the delayed gratification of compounded interest is more satisfying than spending that money in the moment. It's not immediately gratifying to resist the cupcakes in the office break room, but when you have the gratification of achieving the body you've worked on for months, you won't even remember the cupcakes you wanted to eat.

Good habits rarely provide instant gratification. In the beginning, it's all sacrifice. The short term gratification for good habits can be created by taking account of your daily wins. Clear suggests using a Habit Tracker, which is a system that works for you of checking off your successes every day. Visual forms of measurement can make your habits more satisfying. Set a rule for yourself to never miss twice. If you miss one day, resume the next day.

Accountability partners can make a huge difference as well. An accountability partner can create an immediate cost of inaction. You can invert the Fourth Law of making a new habit satisfying, by making inaction unsatisfying. Clear uses many examples of this, some of which are humorous, such as the business man that had to pay his personal trainer $200 if he missed a workout. Or Thomas Frank, an entrepreneur from Colorado, who had a habit set of waking up early. He would tweet the night before, "If this tweet is still up at 6am, I will Venmo everyone who replies to this tweet $5." So, if he missed his alarm and failed to wake up in time to delete the tweet, there were consequences that made missing his good habit unsatisfying.

Conclusion:

The entire book is full of practical, powerful methods that you can implement to improve your habits. The main point is that creating positive habits comes down to small, measurable, consistent executions of daily actions.

by Hidden Gym Trainer Rob Hines