You know how when you do something repeatedly; you find that it starts happening without even thinking about it? Like getting up in the morning, making coffee is the first thing you do. You don’t think about it; you do it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a habit. We all have habits like brushing our teeth, checking emails, scrolling through social media, etc. They’re things we do even when we don’t have the motivation. Habits are crucial to building a healthy lifestyle, losing weight, building muscle, or whatever you want to do long-term. Yet habits can also be essential to NOT creating a healthy lifestyle. Those are what we call “bad habits.” Yep, we all have those too! Something we’ll explore in part two of the series. For now, let’s chat about building a habit.

How to build habits we want

Building a habit can sound overwhelming, and that’s okay. This post will lay out steps you can take to make this easier and more achievable. Steps like identifying what you want to build, the tools you need, the goals you can set, and even barriers you might face. 

Identify the habit you want to build

Sounds silly, right? That should be a give me, but it’s essential. When we think about building new habits, it’s common to think things like “I want to start exercising” or “I want to eat healthier.” Well, that’s sort of vague and can get a little overwhelming when you think about all the different ways that could be a habit. Thus, it can be helpful to be more specific so that you have something to build into with goals (more on this later) and even visualize what this would look like for you. For example, I want to strength train four times a week for 30 minutes and do one day of cardio for 20 minutes. It’s a specific habit and buildable with goals. Checkmark to the “pick a habit” box! 

Get the tools

Now what? TOOLS! Time to figure out everything you need for this habit, like gym shoes, a membership, a water bottle, and a workout routine, and find what days and times will work best for you. Things like that will help you feel prepared and prevent future barriers to your goals. I recommend making a list so that you don’t forget anything. So I’ve mentioned goals twice now; probably time to talk about those! 

Goals

Ah, the key to building a habit is small achievable steps called goals. That’s why they call it building a habit; it’s like building a house. It takes time, step after step, and patience. You can’t just throw up a house. Nope, it would help if you started with the foundation, then the framing, then the utilities- or something of that order; you get that idea, though. Picking the small steps can be foundational yet challenging, which we can be real about. If you choose big ones, you’re likely to give up because it’s too time-consuming or overwhelming. Kinda like “biting off more than you can chew” type of thing. Yet if you choose too small, you’ll not be challenging yourself, which can get boring. For exercise, small achievable goals could look something like this; 

Building each week until you get to where you want! Goals can look however works best for you! I suggest experimenting at first to see what a nice balance between achievable yet challenging will look for you. On that note, let’s go over barriers- what they are and what you can do about them.

Barriers

Barriers are a habits’/goals’ worst enemies; therefore, your worst enemy. They can be environmental, physical, emotional, social, and mental. Figuring out some of the barriers you might face can help you plan to overcome them before they even happen. This sets you up for success and prevents that feeling of “failure”! Some common barriers are time, money, resource availability- like how far the gym is, excuses, beliefs, and the list goes on and on. Once you know what your barriers will be, that’s half the battle. The next half is figuring out ways to overcome them.

For example, say your barrier is how close the gym is and money. Try at-home workouts with some body weight or things around the house you can use as weights. Maybe your biggest barrier are excuses (which are my biggest barriers) like “I’m too tired to go today” or “it’s been a long and stressful day.” Perhaps schedule your workouts in the morning to prevent either of those excuses. I highly recommend you take some real time during this step; it will genuinely help you in the future. 

That’s all folks!

There you go! You’ve just built a habit! Now here is the most challenging part of habit building, you have to repeat this behavior of “going to the gym four times a week” for as long as it takes to become second nature. Yes, I just said, for as long as it takes. I didn’t give a specific time because, guess what- everyone is different in how long it takes them to build a habit. It’s not 21 days for everyone. It depends on the habit; it depends on the level of effort you put in and how consistent you are. Habits don’t happen overnight so keep patience, understanding, and flexibility in mind! You’ll get there before you know it!