Forming healthy habits is the key ingredient to living a less anxious life.
Many years ago, I began to heal myself from anxiety, depression, and childhood trauma.
I never could imagine the path it would lead me down.
By the time I hit the age of thirty, I had experienced enough emotional trauma and anxiety to last a few lifetimes.
Over my first three decades on earth, it never occurred to me that my (unhealthy) habits were affecting my mental health. And specifically, my habits were negatively affecting my anxiety.
But how were my habits causing an increase in anxiety, depression, and negative thought patterns?
HERE’S A QUICK BREAKDOWN
I began journaling about my daily activities.
Everything from what I ate, to my sleeping pattern, to when I drank alcohol, exercise schedule, the people I closely associated with, and other daily and weekly routines and habits. I then kept track of my mental, physical, and emotional state during these days.
After a few months, patterns were emerging.
For example, on nights I would drink alcohol; my anxiety was always worse the following morning.
Or when I went long periods without exercising, I noticed a spike in agitation and anger.
When I ate lots of junk? My moods would fluctuate tremendously.
But also, there was my pattern of no set sleeping schedule.
One night I’d head to bed at midnight, the next at 2 am. Then, one morning I’d wake up at 6 am and the next, I’d wake up at 10 am. There was no rhyme or reason to this sleeping schedule. But then there were the traveling and sleeping arrangements. Because of my day job and lifestyle, I would often be traveling numerous times every month. One week I’d be sharing a room with a colleague, the next, I’d be alone on the west coast before spending an entire week at my apartment. Again, there was no consistency in my sleeping arrangement.
And this lack of consistency had a significant negative impact on my mental health.
After a while, I realized that I needed healthier habits.
But there was one glaring problem – I didn’t have a clue how to form a healthy habit that would last.
WHAT ARE HABITS
Before you can make any significant changes to your daily habits, you need to understand habit formation basics.
Let’s start with the essentials.
Habits are “a settled tendency or usual manner of behavior.”
Although people are likely familiar with habits, many do not fully understand what makes a habit.
Author James Clear’s bestseller, “Atomic Habits,” is an insightful read on creating better habits. Journalist Charles Duhigg’s bestseller, “The Power of Habits,” covers the power of habits within businesses, politics, and organizations. Both are excellent reads on the topic of habit formation.
When describing habits, think in terms of building blocks.
Healthy habits are robust and reliable building blocks in which to create a sustainable foundation. While unhealthy habits are quite the opposite, they are the damaged, broken building blocks that crumble under any pressure.
Think of each like this:
HEALTHY HABITS = STRONG, STABLE BUILDING BLOCKS.
UNHEALTHY HABITS = WEAK, UNSTABLE BUILDING BLOCKS.
Now, what do habits look like in our daily lives?
Habits can encompass anything from getting up at a particular time, dietary preferences, thought processes, to workout routines (or lack thereof).
They also can be more subtle activities like brushing teeth, putting on shoes or socks, and turning on a specific radio station when getting into your car.
The critical aspect of defining habits in your life is aware of them.
You also want to understand which habits are hurting your mental health.
TRACKING YOUR HABITS
Now we’ve covered the basics of what a habit is; we need to dive into tracking them.
If you don’t have an overview of your daily habits, you won’t know where to start as far as changing them.
You need to first track all of your daily habits for a few weeks. I recommend tracking them for six weeks if you want more in-depth analysis, but that isn’t necessary for the beginning.
Two weeks should suffice.
How do you track them?
There are a few different ways. But I use the method below, which I discuss in my article about habits and anxiety.
Here is a snippet from that article:
Imagine being able to take a broader perspective over your life.
You can see every aspect of how you live.
What would you change or improve?
How would you manage your daily tasks?
What would you deem the most essential?
These are all questions I asked myself before diving into the tracking process.
Author Chris Bailey wrote an excellent book called “The Productivity Project,” where he outlines how he became more productive by tracking his everyday life.
Tracking your habits is one of the most effective ways of managing your routines.
But how do you go about doing this?
Simple – take a look at all of your daily habits. Keep a journal and write down everything you do, including free time or daydreaming, and track it for at least two weeks. This may sound time consuming and exhausting, and I admit it can be, but the benefits of this activity far outweigh the aggravation associated with it.
Make a list of every habit throughout your day and mark each as:
- Healthy
- Unhealthy
- Neutral
After the two weeks is up, take a look at all the items you have listed. For the ones you marked healthy, see where you can expand on these when applicable.
Neutral habits remain the same.
And unhealthy habits should be replaced and reduced depending on the habit. Sure, eating junk food every once in a while is usually alright, but eating junk food three times a day will harm your body over time, and therefore make your foundation less stable and increase the chances of heightened anxiety.
Try looking at healthier options. Other areas of improvement could be sleeping patterns, thought patterns (obsessive or worst-case thinking), exercise, relationships, porn or sex addiction, drug or alcohol abuse, etc.
The key is to take unhealthy habits and eliminate and replace as many as possible.
This will have an overall impact on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being and anxiety.
UNDERSTANDING THE HABIT LOOP
Researchers studying habits at MIT found a simple, neurological “loop” at every habit’s core.
They refer to this as the Habit Loop.
But what is it, exactly?
The Habit loop consists of three fundamental elements: A cue, a routine, and a reward.
Here is a breakdown of each:
Cue: The trigger for an automatic behavior to begin
Routine: The actual behavior itself
Reward: The “high” the brain gets from the routine
photo credit above to: https://charlesduhigg.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Slide11.jpg
Author and habits expert James Clear defines the habit loop as the cue, craving, response, and reward. He replaces routine with craving and response, but essentially, they mean the same.
Understanding the habit loop is the first step in making any long-lasting changes to your daily habits. Without this knowledge, you won’t have the foundation to create sustainable healthy habits while breaking unhealthy ones.
The first step is recognizing the cue. The cue can be anything from a time, a location, a preceding event, an emotional state, or other people. Once you start spotting the cues in your environment, you’re enhancing the awareness around your habit loops. Doing so will make it easier to spot and change habits that aren’t aligned with who you want to be.
EXAMPLES OF HABIT LOOPS
Habit loops are all around us all the time.
The more you become aware of your daily habits, the easier it will be to spot and change unhealthy ones.
So let’s go over three examples of habit loops.
MORNING HABIT
- CUE: The alarm clock sounds at 7 am.
- ROUTINE: You wake up, walk into your kitchen, and put on the coffee.
- REWARD: Drinking coffee while sitting on your front porch.
SOCIAL HABIT
- CUE: Your favorite football team scores a touchdown.
- ROUTINE: You jump up and high five the people around you.
- REWARD: Enjoying your team, scoring a touchdown with the fans around you.
WORK HABIT
- CUE: Your boss walks out of the office.
- ROUTINE: You walk over to your co-workers’ desk to talk.
- REWARD: Talking to your co-worker without fear of repercussions from your boss.
These are simplistic examples. Some of your habits may be a bit more challenging to diagnose. But the goal is to get good at spotting the cues, and then everything else will follow.
THE FIRST STEPS IN FORMING NEW HABITS
1. FIGURE OUT YOUR WHY
The most underrated and least talked about aspect of habit formation is the why.
The ‘why’ is your reason for making the change.
A big misnomer when it comes to habit formation is that our motivation will carry us through. This, according to the James Clear above, is his book Atomic Habits, is not accurate. The research does not bear that out over time. Relying on nothing but motivation to get you through your tough days is not a recipe for success. And this is why so many people who create New Year’s Resolutions give up after a few weeks; they eventually ran out of motivation and had nothing else to sustain their action.
Sure, motivation can help at first, and I’m not downplaying motivation as a helper when you start. But over time, your motivation will wane, and you will need something more sustainable.
This is where your why comes into play.
What can your why be?
Anything.
Examples:
Changing your drinking habits, so you don’t affect your relationships with your family members.
Practicing your free throws so you can help your basketball team win.
Eating healthier foods to benefit your overall health and to feel better.
Putting sunscreen on when you go out in the sun to avoid the possibility of skin cancer.
Going to bed and waking up at the same time, so you have more energy.
When you have a strong WHY, it will help you during the days that you don’t want to continue pursuing the new habit.
2. TRACK YOUR CURRENT HABITS
Becoming aware of your habits, the healthy, neutral, and unhealthy ones is the first step after understanding your why. You cannot make an impactful change when you don’t know what you need to change.
By tracking your habits, you will see which habits benefit you and which habits are holding you back. There are different ways to track your habits accurately. But I use the method I described above, which I discuss in my article about habits and anxiety.
Once you track your habits and pinpoint the unhealthy ones no longer serving you, then it’s time to move on and make the change.
3. UNDERSTAND YOUR CUES AND ENVIRONMENT
Once you have decided on your why and tracked your habits, you can begin reviewing your cues and environment.
Let’s start with the cues.
It’s important to note that some of your cues are out of your control. At the same time, others are entirely in your control. But since every habit starts with a cue, you need to do a little detective work and discover what they are. Once you have a grasp on your cues, you can then decide on your new routine or action that will proceed with the cue.
Secondly, and arguably the most undervalued aspect of habit formation; your environment.
James Clear mentions that research suggests that people with great self-control aren’t any different than people who lack self-control. The critical difference is that those who demonstrate self-control put themselves in situations where they don’t need incredible willpower.
The goal is to give yourself the best opportunity to succeed.
Examples:
If you know that one of your unhealthy habits is over-drinking every time you run into your friends out at a bar. Instead of trying to muster up the willpower to say no, the wiser choice would be avoiding the bar altogether.
Another example would be eating junk food. If you know that every time you stay up late to binge on Netflix, you also binge on junk food, then you need to put yourself in a more manageable situation. This might entail watching Netflix earlier in the day, right after dinner, or in the morning, sometime when your urge to binge on junk food won’t be as high.
Putting yourself in a manageable environment will significantly enhance the chances of increasing your self-control while forming new, healthier habits.
4. REPETITION, REPETITION, REPETITION
Creating new habits is heavily reliant on consistent action.
After all, if you are trying to work out every morning after you wake up and only work out once a week – this won’t change much in your new habit.
As I always say, persistent consistency is the goal.
You want to be steady in your approach.
In his research, James Clear points out that it’s not the amount of time that goes by that determines if a new habit will stick. So, doing something for” 60 days” won’t ensure it as a new habit.
Instead, focus on the number of times you do something.
I’ll mention it again – focus on the number of times you do something instead of the amount of time that passes.
It’s not the amount of time you do something; it’s the number of repetitions.
This is what helps us form new habits.
5. ASSESS AND MODIFY
As with learning anything new, you will need to assess and modify as you go on.
There may be certain cues or environments that work better for you than others.
You may need to tweak areas of your life that negatively impact your new habit.
The way I assess is to look at my new habit and find all other habits that affect it.
Example:
If you’re trying to eat healthier, yet you find on certain days, you seem to crave junk food. Then you may want to track the other factors in your life and see what looks different on the days you have a stronger craving. You may find that on nights you don’t get a lot of sleep, this leads you prone to feeling icky the next day and eating more junk. Or during more stressful times at work, you seem to binge on more junk food.
Once you establish patterns by tracking what is going on, both internally and externally, you’ll go back and modify the behavior.
As I mentioned in number two, tracking the habits also applies to after you begin forming the new habit. You need to understand how your life’s different areas are affecting the new habit you are trying to develop.
Doing this will, in turn, give you a much better chance at sticking with the new healthier habit long-term.
IN REVIEW
Habits make up much of how we live our lives.
You can look at any person and directly correlate their successes and struggles to their habits.
Forming new habits can be tricky and often challenging, but with some effort, focus, and the right environment, it can be done.
Before you get started, ask yourself:
What new habits do you want to form?
Why do you want to form these habits?
What will you do if the habit isn’t sticking?
Take your time and give yourself some grace along the way.
All of these questions and having patience will lead you closer to the goal of creating healthier, long-lasting habits.
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