Making habits stick

COVID19 has given many of us the opportunity or the mental push to focus on starting new habits. Whether they are health related, creativity oriented or professionally directed these habits are only helpful if they are maintained long term. I did some reading about habit maintenance, and I learned about five different techniques that help to maintain new habits. 

1. Instigation Habits: Instigation habits act as cues to remind you and set you up to get started with the intended action. If daily exercise is your target habit an instigation habit might include putting on workout clothes every morning and having a workout plan (youtube video or exercise list) prepared the night before. For the goal of daily meditation an instigation habit might include having a physical space in your home set up with a comfortable meditation cushion and having your meditation app set up with a daily reminder at the right time. The strength of the instigation trigger may be a key component of making that habit remembered and assisting you in taking that first step.  
2. Tracking Progress: Bringing awareness to your successes can help you to stay motivated to persist. Tracking your progress is most important for lifestyle changes that include taking away something negative from your life. For example, quitting a health related vice will not require a daily reminder to do anything. Rather, giving yourself a star at the end of the day to mark the completion of a full day of absence from your vice may help to mark your progress and maintain motivation. I used a habit tracker app on my phone to help me track my progress with my goals. Both the check marks and seeing the percentage of my consistency with my health related habits motivate me to persist each day.
3. Recognizing Milestones: Recognition of milestones can also be an integral component to maintaining progress along your journey. This way you are able to feel accomplished and motivated to continue along your path. This may entail personally celebrating the completion of your 5k run, even though your real goal may be the 10k completion. Or celebrating 30 days of healthy eating, when your goal is to make this a permanent change. Without celebration of our progress it can become even easier to give up when our goals are long term. 
4. Supportive Cheerleaders: It is also important to recognize the impact of the people that you surround yourself with. Are they encouraging your success? Are they partnering with you on your habit? Or are they motivating you simply because they themselves are successful habit people? If the people in your life contradict your values and goals then it may be harder to feel supported in your pursuit for self improvement. 
5. Self Efficacy & Value Alignment: Self-efficacy beliefs are another important of maintaining motivation to continue with goal habits. If you don’t believe that you are capable how can you expect yourself to keep persisting? Is this habit meaningful to you? Is it aligned with your personal values? Write out why you are making this habit change and what your life will look like if no change is made at all. This helps to solidify the meaning behind your intended goal or behavioural change. When we are clear on the importance of our goal attainment we will be more able to believe that we can maintain our lifestyle changes. 

Today we explored five different techniques that we can use to help us maintain our progress and continue to persist with our habit related changes. 
What other techniques do you find helpful? Let us know on our social platforms.
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