How to Make Good Habits

The trick to changing a lifestyle lies in tapping into the subconscious to solidify the behaviors as a habit or an automatic response like brushing your teeth or putting on your socks before your shoes.  This takes the oh-so-finite and fleeting motivation and willpower out of the equation, because there is no emotion attached to a habit.  This works for diet and exercise both, and by consciously deciding to make something habitual, it becomes a part of its own neural pathway in the brain. 

There are steps that can help one convert a behavior to a habit. It can be used for diet, exercise, meditation, reduction of stress, changing sleep patterns, and more. Small goals, boring little tasks, are easy conversions and don't really interfere with other habits.  Things like switching a bag of chips with celery sticks as a snack, or stopping to stretch for 5 minutes during break-times at work.

Triggers are so common on the cheating-side that it is easy to forget that they too can be used to launch a good habit as easily as a bad one.   Triggers are something that cause you to take another action.  If you always eat a salad before the rest of lunch, then lunch will bring salad to mind.  If the morning alarm clock means time to get up for a workout, then it will trigger that every morning.

Making habits stick earlier in the morning takes advantage of higher willpower and less fatigue.  This is a time when pre-planning and careful thought can pay off all day. Make sure all the tools to do the job are present.  Good walking shoes and a pedometer will help to encourage that daily walking session. Make it convenient and make it fun.  Taking roadblocks and irritations out of the equation, as well as keeping up with the regime, is more likely to result in a healthy new habit.