3 Keys to Successfully Shifting Your Behaviors
As we’ve explored already, lasting positive change depends on effectively reshaping habits and automated behaviors. But where do we start implementing actual techniques to drive this rewiring? Research reveals three core strategies that, when combined, possess tremendous power for altering behavior patterns over the long haul.
Cues & Reminders
Our first ingredient for success centers on cues. As discussed previously, environmental triggers and preceding actions spark the subconscious habit loops dominating our behavior. The good news is that by becoming aware of these subtle factors, we can intentionally insert new cues reshaping our habitual responses.
Tools as simple as post-it note reminders, accountability questions from a friend or alarms on our phone can flip the switch in our minds prompting conscious deliberation when old auto-piloted urges creep up. Rather than getting blindsided by the impulse to bite your nails or check social media, you’re prepared to pause and consider: do I really want to repeat this pattern?
Re-routing even a small percentage of habitual reactions into intentional chosen responses starts the transformation process. Compounded over time, new neural pathways and self-perceptions take hold.
Public Commitments
Now nudging ourselves to exercise momentary mindfulness represents great progress. But sheer willpower fades. Competing priorities crowd our mental bandwidth. When push comes to shove, how do we stick to new desirable actions in the heat of the moment?
This brings us to our second key ingredient — accountability. By making our intentions public to someone we respect or fear letting down, we prime added motivation in those make-or-break moments. Even a simple weekly progress text to a friend adds social reinforcement helping us follow through.
Apps allowing users to “stake” money on achieving goals leverage this dynamic. We will go to great financial lengths to avoid losing face. However, accountability partners needn’t be punitive. Collaborative support communities dedicated to the change you seek can provide empowering peer validation and problem-solving.
Regardless the form it takes, adding accountable visibilityEXCEPTION blinks serving as choice reminders combined with the social trust implications of public goals assists tremendously in cementing new behavior patterns until they become independent habits.
Rewarding Progress
Now even with tactical reminders and accountability mechanisms put in place, attempting major lifestyle changes still requires substantial mental effort. Our willpower tanks empty quicker than expected. When depleted, backsliding into comfortable habitual ruts feels inevitable no matter how determined we felt originally.
This habit relapse danger highlights the importance of tactical positive reinforcement — our third key ingredient for success. By building in small, frequent rewards for proof of progress made, our motivation dashboards get refilled. Even tiny wins and celebrations nourish our momentum, especially during the vulnerable early phases of transformation.
The science is clear — our brains release pleasurable neurochemicals fixing actions that provide positive feedback. By treating ourselves to an endorphin boost when we walk the new talk, we chemically associate the adjusted behavior patterns with feeling good. Before you know it, intrinsic validation kicks in and external rewards become less necessary.
Through celebrating baby steps forward, we enjoy the path itself rather than fixating on an intimidating finish line. Mile by mile, we turn progress into its own motivation until our enhanced habits respiratory enjoys plenty of oxygen.
Allowing Imperfect Action
As much as cues, accountability and strategic rewards empower change, adopting one more mindset shift accelerates success tremendously — giving ourselves permission for imperfect action. We must recognize that progress towards enhanced habits rarely ever follows a straight line. There will be setbacks.
When we account for this truth and flexibly get back on track rather than punishing ourselves, the new behaviors become more sustainable. We avoid the demoralization of an “all or nothing” mindset when hit with occasional old habit resurgences. After all, if a single mistake means complete failure, why continue trying at all when stumbles feel inevitable?
However, when our self-narrative normalizes occasional two steps forward, one step backs, we extends patience and remain emotionally buoyant. We don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. Cultivating this sort of self-compassion prevents getting overwhelmed by the journey. And by building backslides into the model, we maintain dignity and forward drive.
Reinforcing Identity Evolution
As a final boost to solidifying positive behavioral changes, regularly noting accumulated progress made cementing enhanced habits powerfully reframes our identity and perceived capability. By consciously tracking what once seemed impossible becoming our new normal, we possessing proof of our evolution.
Periodically writing down or vocalizing celebrations of recent wins compared to where we started etched improved self-assumptions. Our internal monologue increasingly highlights what we are now achieving rather than what we once struggled with. We witness old limitations fading steadily in the rearview mirror.
These behavioral evidence logs enhance confidence and expectation going forward. We feel the snowball effect happening and underlying resistance softens. Instead of forcing ourselves forward against the inertia of habitual ruts, our emerging identity alignment propels us. We savour how much lighter and more effortless everything feels thanks to hundreds of tiny fractional gains.
The magic unfolds on its own built upon the foundation laid through intentional cue insertion, accountability structures, progress reinforcement and flexible imperfection allowance.
Pulling It All Together
When seeking meaningful lifestyle shifts, few things deliver more reliably than addressing the habit level foundations determining our behaviors. While despising bad habits, the automaticity behind them offers a blueprint for cementing positive changes faster once understood.
By first disrupting detrimental patterns at the neurological level using reminder cues and conscious choices, we regain influence over our actions. Stacking public accountability and commitment tools provides reinforcement for sticking to new paths as they form. Celebrating small progress sustains emotional energy required through inevitable occasional backslides.
In tandem, these three ingredients enable the most crucial element — our self-perception adjustment as we walk out better habits. The pride and proof of achievement experienced gradually transfers old limitations into outdated assumptions no longer applicable to us. We own the increasing evidence of positive transformation as part of our identity.
At that point, change becomes self-fulfilling. New cues signal new intuitive pathways built upon the foundations laid. What once required so much effort gets plugged into our neural autopilot. Healthy new habits stick not because we grit our teeth, but because we’ve defined ourselves by the progress made thus far. Positive change becomes its own perpetual fuel. We’ve installed the new software as default through intentionally debugging and upgrading our old programming.
***
Bryant D Nielson is the author of the book:
Lengthen Your Stride: The Power of 1% Improvements to Transform Your Life, Relationships, Career, Business, and the World
If you found this article valuable, don’t keep it to yourself — spread the word! Share it with your friends, family, and colleagues, and let us inspire more people to embrace the power of Lengthen Your Stride.
Before you go!
- Follow me for future stories and subscribe for email updates.
- Did you see what happens when you click and hold the clap 👏 button?
