Our lives are made up of habitual behavior. Behavior we tend not to pay attention to unless we have a sense that something is going wrong. When we do decide something is wrong and we try to change our behavior, we tend to run into obstacles. It can feel hard to create a new good habit. But it doesn’t have to be. There are four parts of a habit that we should address when we are trying to create a new habit. These are the cue, the craving, the response, and the reward. Manipulating the four parts that help to create a new habit will help you to be successful.
Let’s start with the first part of a habit, the cue. When we want to create a new habit, we need a cue to remember we want to do it. We need to make it obvious what we are supposed to do. The easiest way to do this is to change your environment so that the cue is something you look at every day. For example, if you wanted to start a habit of taking a walk everyday, you could leave your walking shoes out where you can see them. That is your cue, your reminder, of what your habit is. You can also use an already established habit to be your cue to walk. For instance, if you are used to waking up and having a cup of coffee in the morning, you can bundle your new habit of walking with drinking your morning cup of coffee. Just lace up your shoes immediately after you have had your coffee. After doing this for a while, it’ll become second nature to lace up your shoes and go on a walk coffee.
The second part of creating a new habit is to make yourself crave the new habit. You want to want to do the new habit. So you need to make the new habit attractive. In order to do this, you can pair your habit with something you already like to do. So, if you want to create a habit of walking every morning, you could listen to some special music that you like and that you only listen to while you are taking your walk. Soon, you will pair the feeling the music evokes in you with the feeling you get from your daily walk. You’ll start craving the feeling you get when you go on your walk.
The third part of creating a habit is the response to the cue and the craving. This is the meat of your habit; the part where you take action. When you are fist starting a new habit, make it as easy as possible to follow through. You want to create a habit that you can stick to even when conditions aren’t optimal. So, instead of your end goal of walking 2 miles every day, you want to make it a habit to walk 5 minutes every day. It is very easy to walk for 5 minutes every day. Even when you don’t feel very good, a five minute walk is achievable. Start there and you can build upon that. If you get in the habit of going for a walk every morning after your coffee, you’ve done the hardest part already. You’ve shown up to do the work. Adding time to your habit once it is formed is much easier to do, once you have the habit of lacing up your shoes after coffee.
The fourth part of creating a new habit is to make it rewarding. You want to get immediate gratification for participating in your habit. Your new habit of walking might not give you immediate gratification in and of itself. You can create a reward system that does provide immediate gratification and pair it with your new habit. Your reward could be putting a dollar in your vacation fund every time you go out for your walk. I have found that the simple act of visually tracking my progress on the calendar is rewarding in itself. All the marks on my calendar showing what I accomplished each day keeps a forward momentum going. Make sure the reward feels good immediately and is visible. It helps to be able to track your progress as a way to continue your streak.
For more information about how habits can change your life read “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
Category: Regular Life
Construction Fun!!!
Last week I came home to find my front door pasted with official looking documents. I figured that my apartment had been confiscated and it was going to take up days of my time fighting an uncaring bureacracy for the remains of my furniture. It turned out to be much worse than I feared. We were served notice that a bunch of loud jack booted construction workers were going to descend upon our peace and quiet in order to replace the siding and the windows in our rented townhouse. They commandeered all the available parking spaces for a month, turned off our water for no discernible reason, banged on our walls and just popped in through the windows at irregular intervals. Neither my partner nor I do very well with people in general, and these are people we didn’t invite coming in through the windows like commandos sporting caulking guns. It is pretty terrifying. Unfortunately, my partner deals with his anxiety by yelling at me about what the workers are doing, which makes me even more anxious. I spent most of yesterday in a puddle under the bed with the cat.
Renter’s rights are sorely lacking in Oregon. The notice stated that they would access our townhouse between the reasonable hours of April 28 at 8:00am through May 10th at 5:00 pm. That is two weeks of all hours access that apparently gives them the right to invade us. It also read that neither the apartment complex nor the construction company was going to be responsible for any damage done to our property. I didn’t know that you could do that! I’m going to cancel my renter’s insurance and car insurance and just send letters out saying that I will not be responsible for any damage I do. Then I’m going to pop over to my landlord’s house, come in through the window and try to make conversation with them while they are still in they’re pajamas. This is apparently acceptable behavior nowadays! Yay! Since the contractor declined taking any responsibility for any damages, it seemed like the workers were told to inflict as much damage as possible on us. They took this as free license to grind all the hundred dollars worth of flowers we planted into sad little plant paste that will never bloom again.
I wait impatiently for the remodel to be over. I could hope that this will have a happy ending and that the new windows and siding will change my life for the better. I think the more likely scenario is that my rent will be going up. My partner and I have been talking seriously about buying some land in the desert with no utilities, because it’s all we can afford. Then we will build a house out of trash we collect. We’ll call it an earthship and it will be fabulous!