What does it take to become the best version of yourself? A lot of people picture some mix of spa treatments, ambitious exercise routines, and strictly counting calories and macros. These extreme strategies can give you the most dramatic changes in the short term, but they’re also the most likely to get abandoned. Once you slide back into your old habits, you’ll eventually look like your old self again.
That’s why wellness coaches emphasize the importance of healthy eating over restriction, activity over exercise, and lifestyle changes over 30-day cleanses. Your current health is a combination of genetics and the day-to-day choices you make. Although you can’t do anything about your genes, the second half of that equation is under your control.
In even better news, when it comes to lifestyle, small changes can end up having the biggest impact. That’s because you’re most likely to turn them into lifelong habits. Those small benefits compound over time.
How Do We Form Habits?
The basic psychology behind our daily habits is trigger, habit, and reward. So what does that look like in real life? Many of us brush our teeth first thing in the morning. In this case, the trigger is waking up and noticing your breath isn’t fresh. That leads to you going to the bathroom sink and brushing. You get immediately rewarded by feeling minty fresh.
There’s also the longer-term benefit of good dental health. However, our brains don’t get very much dopamine from picturing abstract or far-off rewards like not developing cavities in the future. It’s the immediate, enjoyable fresh feeling that really cements the habit into place.
Make the Habit Loop Work For You
Yes, it really is that simple. Every day when we repeat an activity and get some kind of reward, we start to build habits. Some are healthy, others not so much. The good news is that, once you understand the cycle, you can upgrade unhealthy old patterns into new ones. Addressing common issues like swelling can often be a natural byproduct of habits that improve overall circulation, such as walking or elevating the legs after a long day. Small, consistent changes in how you move and care for your body can reduce fluid retention and help you feel more comfortable overall. Keep reinforcing the habits that are good for you, and soon you’ll have turned them into small but lasting lifestyle changes.
Adopting Good Habits for Life
Let’s start by breaking down how to adopt a brand-new habit. What if you want to drink more water? Think about how that fits into the trigger, habit, and reward cycle. Is there something that happens every day that can trigger you to drink a glass of water? You might hydrate at work or program reminders into your phone. Now, how can you healthfully reward yourself for following through? Maybe you could experiment with flavoring your water with mint or different fruit. Every sip gives you a tasty reward.
Hacking Unhealthy Habits
Lifestyle changes aren’t just about adding healthy habits; they often include doing something about the unhealthy ruts you’ve fallen into. The tricky thing is, that hacking bad habits isn’t as simple as ‘just stop doing it!’ There’s a reason we keep doing these things. We are getting something out of that activity. Lifestyle changes won’t happen until we change that cycle.
Let’s say you have a bad habit of lying in bed doom scrolling when you should be sleeping. The triggers are lying in bed feeling anxious or bored. You grab your phone, dive into the endless feed, and are distracted from your anxiety… at the cost of your sleep quality. Instead of desperately trying to break the habit, change it. Try meditation
or a hot bath for stress management, and put an audiobook on a timer so you’ll have something to listen to as you drift off. The immediate reward, feeling better as you drift away, can lead to a healthy lifestyle of getting better sleep.
Maximize Your Health With Multitasking Habits
When we think about improving our physical and mental health, we often divide those into separate categories. Walking is good for the body, just like nutrition. Meanwhile, sleep and creative outlets are good for your mental health. Right? Well, that’s usually wrong. The fact is that our bodies and minds are connected. A lot of lifestyle changes may look like they offer a small benefit to one area of health, but they’re actually powerful multitaskers.
One Little Habit, Many Big Benefits
Walking is a classic example of a habit that’s good for all areas of wellness. It’s an inexpensive, accessible way to get your body moving and lightly exercise your muscles and cardiovascular system. Walking also takes you outside. There you get a dopamine boost from waving to the neighbors and playing with your pet in the park. You don’t need to walk a long time or wait for great weather. In fact, walking with your dog in winter can give you a much-needed mental boost to fight off the holiday blues.
Start Small
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you try to make too many lifestyle changes at once. There’s a second pitfall here, too, of being too rigid in your goals. For instance, many people decide they will go for a run every day for a month and see how that affects their physical and mental health. That’s a great goal, but what happens if you get a minor injury? Do you keep going, or ‘lose’ the personal challenge by breaking your streak? Pressuring yourself to be perfect makes it harder to make habits permanent.
A little leeway, for instance giving yourself a set number of ‘cheat days’ every week, keeps you from getting discouraged. If things go well, you may build up to a daily habit. When you’re struggling, you can adjust your goals or the habit cycle to something you can stick with over the long term.
Turning Habits Into Permanent Lifestyle Changes
Habits can feel hard to start and even harder to break out of, but they aren’t static. Lasting lifestyle changes happen when you understand how to make the trigger, action, and reward cycle work in your favor. It doesn’t have to be dramatic changes or happen every day, either. Every small success builds on the last, and over time these add up to healthy habits that last a lifetime.
Ashley Nielsen
Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.
