At the beginning of each year, everyone is motivated to make a change in their life and set their goals for the year – to lose weight, start exercising, quit smoking, reduce their expenses and save more money, spend more time with loved ones, etc.

The problem, however, is that most people by the end of the year have not achieved many of their goals because somewhere along the way they failed and returned to their old habits. Then, at the beginning of the next year, they set the same goals again, the cycle repeats, and for years people spin in the same 'vicious' circle from which they don't know how to get out. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe it's you, a relative, or a close friend? If YES, don't stop reading!

1. Why shouldn't we rely on motivation?

Most of the time, people rely on motivation to start something. For example, to eat healthily and exercise regularly. The problem is that motivation is not always there when we need it, and in the long term, if we rely on it, we will fail.
"Motivation is what gets us started, but habit is what keeps us going." You've heard that, right? – Then let me explain how to build a habit.

2. What are habits?

Habits are automated actions or behaviors acquired through repeated performance of the same actions or behaviors.

Once created, a habit is hard to change. Therefore, we should strive to build healthy habits that will guide us on the path to achieving our goal. Building a habit is a slow and difficult process, which according to research takes on average about 66 days. Depending on the person and the difficulty of the habit, the time to build it can vary from 18 to 254 days. An important thing to remember before you start reading the lines below is to try to build only one habit at a time, not several habits simultaneously. This way, the chance of success is much greater.

3. How to build habits? (Habit structure)

3.1. Introduction

Every habit starts with a psychological model called the "habit loop."
This loop looks like this: Cue (Trigger) -> Action -> Reward

• Cue (Trigger) – the cue reminds us that we need to start the HABIT (Action). It can be a place, a specific time, a certain sound, or something else.
• Action – this is the habit we are trying to build or have already built (brushing teeth, smoking cigarettes, eating sweets, etc.)
• Reward – this is something with which we reward ourselves after completing the "Action." It varies for each person (delicious food, watching a movie, playing computer games, going out with friends, etc.)

Here are some examples of habits:

• You receive a notification from Facebook (Cue), you open the notification (Action), you see it (Reward).

You are stressed (Cue), you smoke a cigarette (Action), you become calmer (reward).

3.2. Cue (Trigger)

The cue should be something that happens absolutely every day. Here are some examples – eating, waking up, going to bed, driving to work, going to the bathroom, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, logging into your computer, and other things that occur every day in your daily life. You do these things absolutely every day, so they are a good choice for a "Cue." The cue you choose should allow you to start the Action (Habit) easily and quickly. For example, if you have chosen to build the Habit (Action) – to study Spanish for 20-30 minutes every day, it would not be a good idea to choose as a Cue – "Arriving at work" (because most likely you won't be able to study there). Here is a good example – Let's say you have chosen to develop a habit related to training. It would be a great idea to sign up for a gym that is on your way back from school or work. This way you will notice your "Cue" (namely – seeing the gym) and when you see it, you will be just a few minutes away from starting your workout. Another important thing is to choose only one "Cue" so that your brain associates this cue only and exclusively with the habit you are trying to build.

3.3. The Action

A big mistake that most people make is setting too high demands/expectations for the habit they want to build. For example, they set a goal to train for an hour and a half, 5-6 days a week, to read every day for 30-60 minutes, etc. If you expect to perform that well right at the beginning of building the habit, you will most likely face great difficulties and are very likely to fail. After a few days or maybe weeks, a day will come when you have low willpower (perhaps because you are sick, tired, etc.). Whatever the reason, these days are inevitable because each of us has bad days. Something very important to remember is that if your habit is still new, it will require much more willpower to stick to it, and less and less willpower as the days you perform it progress.

Let's take as an example that you are very tired (you have low willpower), you come home from school and see the gym, which is your "Signal," and it tells you that you need to train for an hour and a half. However, due to the low willpower in this case, your brain will do everything possible to convince you not to train. Therefore, you come home and watch a favorite movie while eating something sweet. After doing this and realizing it, you will start telling yourself that you are a failure and that you will never skip a workout again, but this happens a few more times and you return to the starting position.

So what can we do? – Usually, when we want to build a useful habit and decide to start it tomorrow, we are very motivated and set very high goals that doom us to failure over time. Therefore, a better idea is to set a “Work Range”, which includes the minimum and maximum amount of work we can do to build the habit – in our case, this could be from a minimum of 10 minutes of training to a maximum of 90 minutes of training. Someone who goes to train every single day for 10 minutes will build the habit of training regularly faster than someone who trains half of their days for 1-2 or even 3 hours a day.

THIS IS BECAUSE THE ONLY THING THAT WILL LEAD YOU TO BUILDING THE HABIT IS CONSISTENCY!

Here's another example – let's say the habit you're trying to build is reading every day, and instead of setting a goal to read for 30 minutes every day, set a goal to read from 5 to 30 minutes. This way, when your willpower is low, you'll read for a shorter time but still remain consistent and won't break the habit-building process. Of course, it's desirable to aim to perform your habit more often towards the upper "Work Range" you've set for yourself, so you can gain the benefits of the healthy habit you're trying to build, but in this case, it can happen gradually or based on self-regulation – when you feel good and more motivated, you stick to the upper "Work Range," and when you feel tired and don't have a strong desire to act, you simply perform the action for a shorter time but DO NOT skip it!

3.4. The Reward

There are 2 important requirements according to which we can choose what our reward should be.

1. It should come immediately after performing the "Action." If you tell yourself that your reward is a better appearance after 6 months of training, that is a bad "Reward" because your brain will not associate (connect) this reward with your "Action" since the reward is far away in time. A good example of a "Reward" is immediately after training to make yourself some very tasty healthy food or to watch your favorite TV series, go out with friends, etc. And since the "Reward" comes immediately after the "Action," your brain more easily connects the "Action" (in this case – the training) with the "Reward" (in this case – the tasty food, watching the series, going out with friends).
2. The reward must be PLEASANT.
   For example, good rewards are – rest, games, tasty food, sex, going out with friends, etc. The more pleasant your "Reward" is, the easier it will be to stick to your Habit. If the habit you are trying to build is to walk from 5,000 to 10,000 steps a day, for example, then as a reward you could watch your favorite TV series.
   One of the main reasons we fail is that we do not find the habit we want to build to be PLEASANT. This can be changed with the right choice of reward.
   A 2014 study at Duke University found that not only do we perform better when we like the task we are doing, but we also get tired less.

3.5. Summary:

1. Choose a signal that will remind you to perform the action and appears every day in your daily life. (Eating, going to the bathroom, waking up, going to bed, driving to work, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, logging into your computer, etc.)
2. Choose your "Routine" (The habit you are trying to build) and set a work range (the minimum and maximum work for the action). For example, reading from 5 to 30 minutes a day; training from 10 to 90 minutes a day; studying a subject from 20 to 120 minutes a day, etc.
3. Choose a "Reward" that you will receive IMMEDIATELY after you have completed your "Routine". The reward should be something very pleasant for you (food; watching a movie, resting, etc.)

3.6. Replacing a bad habit with a good one

It is a great idea to replace an existing bad habit with a good one. In this way, as the saying goes, you kill two birds with one stone. To do this, you need to know what the "Cue" is that makes you start the bad habit.

For example, if your "Cue" is the desire to eat chocolate because you are bored/feeling depressed/stressed from work (university), then your "Routine" (Habit) is eating that chocolate, and your "Reward" is stress reduction. In this case, you can replace the "Routine" with another action, for example, when you notice that you want to eat chocolate, immediately eat a fruit or do something different, such as going for a walk/calling a friend/going to exercise, etc. This way, you replace the action of the bad habit with an action that can build a healthy habit and displace the bad one. In this way, by resisting the temptation and doing the new "Routine", you will get a "Reward" which will be expressed in reduced stress and along with that, a feeling of satisfaction that you did not give in to the temptation.

When we realize that we have a bad habit, we need to sit down and think about what the "Cue" is that prompts us to do it. And once we discover this cue, we need to feel when it appears and replace the subsequent "Routine". This is not an easy process, and as we shared with you, you really need to think carefully and analyze why and how the bad habit happens in order to get rid of it and replace it with a good one.

No matter how good the information in this article is, if you do not apply what you have learned from it, it will be meaningless. So after reading this article, try to apply the new knowledge from it.

4. Conclusion (Summary)

As you understood, you cannot rely on motivation, so you must strive to build habits that will lead you to success. To do this, you can use the model we showed you: Cue –> Action –> Reward

Initially, choose 1 habit to build, not several big ones at the same time because that is a recipe for failure!

Try to replace bad habits with good ones. To do this, find the "Cue" that makes you start the bad habit, and whenever you get this cue, do another "Action" to build a new better habit and get rid of the bad one.

Building habits is a slow and difficult process, but we guarantee that when you embark on the path of building healthy habits, you will achieve things you never even imagined you could.

In the next article, we will share with you the most important habits you need to build to lose weight in the best and most effective way, so follow our blog.

We sincerely hope that this free reading was useful to you and that it will help you achieve not only your fitness goals in 2020 but also your goals in every other aspect, as habits are the key to change and long-term development. We would be glad if you share the article on your social networks and become part of our rapidly growing brand!

Sources:
1. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
2. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2015/763680/