The Science Behind Forming Long-Lasting Habits

When I was struggling with my mental health several years back, it occurred to me that my anxiety would spike on the mornings after getting a minimal amount of sleep.

Then I began seeing a pattern of feeling more anxious after drinking, eating unhealthy foods, or going long periods without exercising. It took me years to realize the connection between my habits and mental health. The worse my habits became, the worse my anxiety became.

Then I launched Upplifter and began researching habit formation and how to create long-lasting habits.

I came across authors James Clear and Charles Duhigg, who wrote excellent books on the power of habits and habit formation. I was so intrigued that I read both within a few weeks of each other and began implementing newer, healthier habits into my life.

But how did I do it? What worked and what didn’t work?

Let’s start with some basics about habits.

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 being 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?

THE STEPS

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 to Charlesduhigg.com

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.

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN CREATING NEW LONG-LASTING HABITS

1. REPETITION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE AMOUNT OF TIME

There are many myths about habit formation that people still love to believe and spread as truths. One of the most popular myths is that to create habits, you must spend a specific amount of time performing the new action.

But this has been proven to be false.

As habit expert and New York Times best-selling author James Clear points out, “How long it takes a new habit to form can vary widely depending on the behavior, the person, and the circumstances.” On average, studies have shown it takes more than two months or sixty-six days for a habit to become automatic. But there is one exciting caveat – missing one opportunity to perform the behavior didn’t materially affect the habit process.

What does this mean?

It means that you can skip a time or two of the new behavior and still develop the habit.

You don’t need to be perfect to form long-lasting habits.

The overall consensus with repetitions versus time when it comes to habits is this: the repetitions are much more important than the amount of time you perform a new behavior.

The more repetitions you do, the better chance it will become a habit.

2. SMALL ACTS MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

Years back, I read a blog post written by a friend and personal development blogger, and she talked about how much she enjoyed waking up early. She spoke about how productive she was earlier in the morning and described how much it helped her build her blog.

After reading, I was inspired to make my morning changes. At the time, my schedule was all over, and I never had a set time to get up. ‘Random’ would’ve been an accurate word to describe my sleeping schedule in those days.

So I came up with an idea.

I was going to wake up at six in the morning, every morning.

“I can do it!”

That experiment never even got off the ground because I had mentally psyched myself out by having to be perfect.

I wasn’t going to start unless I was positive I would wake up at six every morning.

And guess what? I failed most mornings miserably.

I didn’t plan for the massive pushback that my brain and body would give me.

Where did I make mistakes?

I should’ve started small. That’s important in creating long-lasting habits.

Instead of going from waking up at eight or nine in the morning to six, I should’ve tried waking up at seven forty-five for a few weeks and eased my way into it, maybe adjusting the time by five or ten minutes every week to begin. This would have made an enormous difference and given me a much better shot at sticking with my new morning habit.

Small, specific steps make a big difference in creating long-lasting habits.

Think in terms of what you can accomplish right now. And then get crystal clear on the specific goal.

3. HABITS SAVE YOUR BRAIN ENERGY

Most people don’t think of the brain in terms of a processor – but that’s what it is. It processes the world around us and within us. Your brain is the most powerful processor ever created. But all processors need energy.

Did you know that your brain makes up 2% of your total mass but consumes 25% of all the oxygen you inhale?

If your brain is zapped of energy, it can’t do its job as efficiently.

Creating long-lasting habits (that are healthy) saves your brain energy.

Your brain divides patterns that are complex into small chunks. Each of these chunks becomes automated, which requires less brain activity; the more often it is repeated.

So whenever you learn a new (healthy) habit, you are helping save your brain energy for other useful endeavors.

4. BELIEF IS IMPORTANT

Believing in yourself is a trait that can serve you well throughout life. Try finding an elite athlete who doesn’t have a belief in themselves. Walk into a courtroom and find me a superior trial lawyer with a lack of belief in his work. Or get me an A-list actor who doubts their ability to play the role of a lifetime. Belief is everywhere, and it’s an essential factor that directly correlates to our success.

But how does belief correlate to creating long-lasting habits?

If you don’t believe that you can create and maintain a new habit, then you’re going to have a difficult time pulling it off.

Belief doesn’t have to be religious or spiritual, but it must give a sense of confidence. If you believe you can achieve whatever you are setting out to achieve, your likelihood of success is much greater. So before you begin your new habit, make sure you have an underlying, strong belief that you can do it and stick to it.

5. KEYSTONE HABITS CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE

Think of a time in your life when you made a change. This change might have seemed relatively insignificant at the time. But later, as you soon discover, the change you made creates ripple effects throughout other areas of your life.

New York Times best-selling author and habits expert Charles Duhigg, who wrote the book “The Power of Habit,” defines keystone habits as “small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.”

Adding the right keystone habit can help in other areas of your life as well.

One of the anecdotes Duhigg shares in his book is about former Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill. When O’Neill took over in 1987 as CEO of Alcoa, a large aluminum manufacturer, he vehemently promoted worker safety. Investors and clients alike complained, saying he was a “hippie” that would destroy the company.

But it turns out O’Neill was right. Worker safety was the keystone habit at Alcoa. When O’Neill retired as CEO in 2000, Alcoa’s net income had quintupled.

He decided to optimize and enhance worker safety – this keystone habit helped streamline the production process, growing profits five times over.

Keystone habits are essential in creating other long-lasting habits.

6. ACTIONS THAT INVOLVES PHYSICAL MOVEMENT ARE EASIER TO MAKE INTO A HABIT

Over the years, research into habit formation has shown us some interesting data. One of the more fascinating tidbits of information that has been revealed is that physical activity seems to heighten the chances of a habit sticking long term.

For example – if your new habit is going for a run every morning, then part of the physical activity would be grabbing and putting on your workout clothes and tennis shoes.

Another example would be waking up every morning at the same time. You set your alarm, and when it goes off, you get up out of bed. Easy peasy.

But what about non-physical habits, such as reminding yourself of your most important daily tasks? Try incorporating something physical into it, such as setting the alarm on your phone as a reminder of putting it on Google calendar.

Physical activities prove valuable when it comes to creating long-lasting habits that are conditioned to stay.

7. AUDITORY AND VISUAL CUES MAKE HABITS EASIER TO MAINTAIN

Think of your cell phones and computers – why are they so addicting? Because they have both auditory and visual cues. Sounds go off when you get a text or call and reminders ding on your online calendar. Facebook and Instagram continually notify you of any activity on your account, and so forth.

Adding some sort of audio (alarm clock) or visual (sunrise, sunset, etc.) cue to your new habit is another way of helping make it stick over time.

IN REVIEW

Forming long-lasting habits is not for the faint of heart. It takes effort, consistency, and patience. Understanding the science and techniques behind habit formation can help you navigate the process. Forming these habits won’t be easy, but it will be well worth your time. And in doing so, you can build a foundation in your life that can sustain you through any turmoil you may experience.

If you have any questions or would like a free life coaching consultation – contact me at brad@upplifter.com.

Although we strive to provide accurate general information, the information presented here is not a substitute for any kind of professional advice, and you should not rely solely on this information. Always consult a professional in the medical and health area for your particular needs and circumstances prior to making any medical or health-related decisions. For your health-related questions, please seek the advice of a licensed physician or any other qualified health care provider immediately.

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Brad Coreno

Brad has been a blogger since 2013 and a Certified Anxiety & Mindset Coach since 2021. Over his 15 year career Brad has developed many skills by working for several start up companies (including his own) as well as hosting a podcast interviewing former athletes and entertainers. During this time he also was gaining knowledge and learning the tools to manage and reduce anxiety, develop healthy and sustainable habits, and improve mindset. In 2019, Brad decided to use both his business acumen and mental health knowledge to help others by launching Upplifter.

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