Ways to Create and Keep New Healthy Habits this Year

It’s that time of year again, it’s the fresh start that everyone is looking forward to that comes every January. And now it’s March: have you kept the good habits that you started at the new year? If not don’t be discouraged, you can pick that back up and make it stick this time with a few easy and helpful adjustments.

Change #1: Take advantage of reminders. Setting alarms to go off at the time you want to exercise, pray, practice gratitude, etc will help. This means you do not have to remember all on your own. Ask yourself what’s something you could see every day to remember what it is that you would like to do today. Setting post-it notes or something on your background screen on your phone. Affirmations are a great way to build self-image.

Change #2: Keep it realistic. If you haven’t ever been a runner, and you set a goal to run a mile every day, you are likely going to set yourself up for failure. Sure could someone be the 1% that flips that switch? Yes, but realistically if you set smaller more obtainable goals, you will have much more success. You might break it down into smaller goals like “take out the exercise shoes and put them by the door” or “put on exercise shoes today.” This will help.

Change #3: Positive reinforcement. Keeping a habit into a long-term engrained behavior we can turn to what casinos use, variable conditioning. Yes we are going to hack your brain into becoming “hooked” on a good habit. Now this will not be the same type or craving or create an addiction, let’s be clear there. But if you reward yourself for meeting those small goals, but do so randomly (as best possible), your brain will start to look forward to doing the good behaviors. Like I get to take a really relaxing bath after I’ve exercised, or listen to a favorite song.

These pieces can all help until a more internal feeling of pride for living the way you want starts to feel more natural. As always though, if you still need help, seek professional assistance with a counselor, life coach, or support groups of like-minded people.

If you liked this article, you might also like a previous post: How to Keep Your Goals.