Learn the 4 simple steps to forming positive habits

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

Most of our lives revolve around our habits. Habits govern a lots of our daily activities. For example, when stressed and incapable of making a decision, we resort to our habits. Old habits are hard to break. New habits are hard to form. This is due the behavioural patterns which humans repeat become imprinted in neural pathways.

In this post I’ll cover four steps which when learned will give you the foundation to change unhelpful habits into positive ones.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

Formation of habits

As a habit is forming, it can be analysed in three parts:

1. the cue,
2. the behaviour, and
3. the reward.

The cue is the thing that causes the habit to come about, the trigger of the habitual behaviour. This could be anything that one’s mind associates with that habit and one will automatically let a habit come to the surface. Some examples of triggers:

• When you wake up (trigger), you start the coffee machine (habit).
• You arrive at work (trigger), you check your email (habit).
• When you get stressed (trigger), you eat junk food (habit).