Every year for New Years people resolve to break bad habits and replace them with good habits, especially with respect to health. Many fail to see these resolutions through - but why, and how can you prevent it from happening to you?
A habit is defined as "an inclination to repeat specific behaviors given a stable context, and are characterized by the lack of conscious thought required to make a decision or execute an action."
Habits are made stronger by repetition and are notoriously hard to break. Habits can be good or bad, and a significant amount of any given person's behavior is habitual.
One key component of habits is context - the situation in which your habitual behavior takes place. We know that given a stable context, you are likely to repeat the same action every time. The simplest way to disrupt a habit? Change the context.
One study (1) reported that moving to a new home increased the likelihood of successfully making life changes compared to remaining in the same environment. A disruption of the environment changes the context, making the behavior less automatic and increasing the need for conscious thought. While moving to a different city is likely not an option, other environmental disruptions are easy to create, and can play a key roll in changing habits.
If your goal is to exercise more, and spend less time on the couch, try to increase the convenience of physical activity while simultaneously decreasing the convenience of sedentary behavior. This could be accomplished by laying out exercise clothes on your couch before leaving for work, which provides a reminder and makes it easier to get dressed for the gym at the same time. For the latter, placing televisions in locations without comfortable furniture makes it harder to sit still and watch for long periods of time.
Eating habits can be changed in the same manner. Decreasing the convenience of unhealthy food, by moving it to the basement, or a high-up shelf, will help curb consumption. Increasing the convenience of eating healthy food by pre-preparing or leaving fruits and vegetables in plain sight will make it easier to eat well!
The bottom line is that if you want to change a health-related habit for 2017, try to modify the environment in which your habit takes place. This will make it significantly easier to resist that tempting bar of chocolate or the urge to watch one or four hours of television in a night.
Heatherton, T. F., & Nichols, P. A. (1994). Personal accounts of successful versus failed attempts at life change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(6), 664-675.
A habit is defined as "an inclination to repeat specific behaviors given a stable context, and are characterized by the lack of conscious thought required to make a decision or execute an action."
Habits are made stronger by repetition and are notoriously hard to break. Habits can be good or bad, and a significant amount of any given person's behavior is habitual.
One key component of habits is context - the situation in which your habitual behavior takes place. We know that given a stable context, you are likely to repeat the same action every time. The simplest way to disrupt a habit? Change the context.
One study (1) reported that moving to a new home increased the likelihood of successfully making life changes compared to remaining in the same environment. A disruption of the environment changes the context, making the behavior less automatic and increasing the need for conscious thought. While moving to a different city is likely not an option, other environmental disruptions are easy to create, and can play a key roll in changing habits.
If your goal is to exercise more, and spend less time on the couch, try to increase the convenience of physical activity while simultaneously decreasing the convenience of sedentary behavior. This could be accomplished by laying out exercise clothes on your couch before leaving for work, which provides a reminder and makes it easier to get dressed for the gym at the same time. For the latter, placing televisions in locations without comfortable furniture makes it harder to sit still and watch for long periods of time.
Eating habits can be changed in the same manner. Decreasing the convenience of unhealthy food, by moving it to the basement, or a high-up shelf, will help curb consumption. Increasing the convenience of eating healthy food by pre-preparing or leaving fruits and vegetables in plain sight will make it easier to eat well!
The bottom line is that if you want to change a health-related habit for 2017, try to modify the environment in which your habit takes place. This will make it significantly easier to resist that tempting bar of chocolate or the urge to watch one or four hours of television in a night.
Heatherton, T. F., & Nichols, P. A. (1994). Personal accounts of successful versus failed attempts at life change. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(6), 664-675.
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