Our 9 tips to help you form new healthy habits
It is important to plan recurring self-care moments in our daily lives. The idea is that you make time for yourself every day. Something that fits into your daily routine so that you can feel relaxed, away from the busy schedule and obligations. However, that is easier said than done.
Why is it so hard to form new habits?
Humans are programmed for comfort zones where it is familiar, comfortable and safe. Why would you change anything? The mechanism is complex. Researchers have discovered that habits are so hard-wired into our brains that you cannot just resist them with willpower. Instead, you have to consciously reprogram everything. That takes time, patience and a lot of discipline.
This is where most people give up and go back to square one:
They try to change too many habits too soon
They get impatient the results don’t come more quickly
They slip up when life gets busy
Our 9 tips
We have 9 tips that help you gradually and consciously create healthy habits, like meditation, breath work, yoga, yoga nidra, journaling and other awareness exercises. If you are interested in the science behind habit building, read our blogpost “How to build healthy habits”.
#1 Single tasking works best. Don't try to change everything overnight. Choose one healthy habit that you want to learn and focus completely on this habit for three months.
#2 Don’t try it, DO IT. Don't try to build a healthy habit, DO IT. Language shapes how we think and experience things. So how you express something is crucial. You are not trying to spend more time to yourself daily. You will spend at least 30 minutes a day on yourself. Point. This also means that you formulate your habits in a positive way. Do not say what you no longer want to do, but clearly formulate what you want to do.
#3 Create something to hold on to, your “habit anchor”. The best way to form a new habit is to tie it to an existing habit, experts say. Habits are always linked to a specific situation. Make use of this mechanism by consciously creating a habit anchor. For many of us, our morning routine is our strongest routine, so that’s a great place to stack on a new habit. A morning cup of coffee, for example, can create a great opportunity to start a new five-minute meditation practice. Or, before or after you are brushing your teeth, you might choose to take three conscious deep breaths.
#4 Make it easy. Habit researchers know we are more likely to form new habits when we clear away the obstacles that stand in our way. Wendy Wood, a research psychologist at the University of Southern California, says she began sleeping in her running clothes to make it easier to roll out of bed in the morning, slip on her running shoes and run. Dr. Wood, author of the book, “Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick,” calls the forces that get in the way of good habits “friction.” If you would like to take better care for yourself, join a community like MOAI that provides you with easy practices, guidance and support which you can access easily on your phone.
#5 Stay realistic. The smaller and simpler they are, the more likely you are to keep them. B.J. Fogg, a Stanford University researcher and author of the book “Tiny Habits,” notes that big behavior changes require a high level of motivation that often can’t be sustained. He suggests starting with tiny habits to make the new habit as easy as possible in the beginning. Taking a daily self-care moment of just 5 minutes, could be the beginning of a structural self-care habit. You begin by 5 minutes to make the habit stick and can build it up over time.
#6 Intrinsic motivation: make it concrete. Define exactly which healthy habit you want to adopt. Healthy habits always have a decisive advantage for you: they are healthy. Unfortunately, "healthy" is a rather abstract concept and is often not sufficient as a motivation. Define exactly what you hope for with the new routine and why you want to teach it to yourself. And write it down. For example, it could look like this:
“I want to have 15 minutes of self-care each day, because then I feel more balanced, and it makes me a better person, partner, parent and colleague”. Every time your schedule does not seem to allow the 15 minutes of self-care, you think about this motivation again.
#7 Reward yourself. Rewards are an important part of habit formation. When we brush our teeth, the reward is immediate: a minty fresh mouth. But some rewards, like the mental changes from meditation, take longer to show up. That is why it may help to build in some immediate rewards to help you form the habit. Buy yourself a nice book after two weeks of meditation, for example. Or do a yoga session together, so the reward is time with a friend.
#8 Do it every day. British researchers studied how people form habits in the real world, asking participants to choose a simple habit they wanted to form, like drinking water at lunch or taking a walk before dinner. The study, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, showed that the amount of time it took for the task to become automatic, a habit, ranged from 18 to 254 days. The median time was 66 days! The lesson is that habits take a long time to create, but they form faster when we do them more often, so start with something reasonable that is very easy to do. Btw, don't throw the whole project overboard just because you failed for a day or a week. Just move on, you can do it.
#9 Last but not least: do it together! You do not have to go on this habit-building journey alone. Stop relying on yourself and start relying on outside forces. Exchange experiences, find like-minded people, inspire others and be inspired. Like the international supporting like-minded MOAI community.
Residents of Okinawa, Japan, are considered an extraordinarily healthy and happy cohort, where members live well into their 100s. Researchers wanted to know why. One of the things they discovered is a remarkable tradition called “moai”.
The power of Moai’s
A moai is an informal group created by people who commit to offer emotional, social or even financial assistance to one another. Moai serve as extended family where social and emotional needs are met. Essentially, a moai is a group of people who “have your back” and commit to all aspects of your well-being.
Members of a moai live longer. Because of contagion theory, where behaviors in a group spread among group members, a moai also helps sustain a healthy lifestyle. If one member of the moai eats well, meditates or exercises, it spreads to other members, quickly becoming the group norm. Research has found that our social networks heavily influence our lives and that “certain health behaviors appear to be contagious. When the people closest to you — especially in a close-knit group like a moai — start doing something, you’re probably going to follow suit.
WHY MOAI - With everything from losing weight, quitting smoking, exercising, studying, the support of others allows us to stay engaged and achieve more powerful results. Group accountability helps us to show up and enables us to turn lofty ambitions into consistent routines. That is why MOAI designs programs for the workplace - a place where we spent most of our time, together with our colleagues. MOAI believes that when we, as colleagues, come together to learn and support each other, we can create healthier and happier selves and a happier, healthier workforce and organization. For individuals, we have our membership that helps you to develop a sustainable daily routine which includes self-care with the support of an international like-minded community.
Sources
Clear, James (2018). Atomic Habits.
Duhigg, Charles (2013). The Power of Habit.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W. and Wardle, J: (2011). How are habits formed: Modeling habit
Nilsen P, Roback K, Brostrom A, Ellstrom PE (2012). Creatures of habit: accounting for the role of habit in implementation research on clinical behavior change.
Tudor-Locke C, Craig CL, Brown WJ, et al (2011). How many steps/day are enough?
Wood, Wendy (2019). Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/well/mind/how-to-build-healthy-habits.html
