Life hacks: Anna Geary on how to make success a new habit

It’s important to focus on positive goals if you want to make lasting changes, says lifestyle and performance coach Anna Geary

‘We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit’.

Aristotle hit the nail on the head when he wrote these words.

Did you know that more than 40% of the actions we perform each day aren’t actual decisions, but habits?

Why are habits important? Well, if we didn’t form habits we’d find it hard to get much else done in the day. Each time we do something for the first time our brains are fully engaged. By forming a habit, the brain can conserve its energy for tasks that require more thought and engagement.

University College London carried out a study where the main finding was that if you do something every day in the same situation, it will become an automatic reaction in response to those situational cues — in other words, a habit. So, when a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making.

This is good news for forming habits that, for example, help you eat a balanced diet or exercise regularly. Unfortunately, the brain cannot distinguish between forming a good habit and a bad one.

Creating new habits

Opening your email inbox as soon as you turn on your laptop might help you to feel connected. But constantly looking at all those emails can damage your productivity, divide your attention, and overwhelm you before you even begin to tackle any tasks. However, it can also prevent you from feeling like you’re “missing out”, so you repeat the process throughout the day.

Because bad habits provide some type of benefit in our lives, it’s very difficult to simply eliminate them. Therefore, advice like “just stop doing it” rarely works.

Thankfully, it can be easier to create a new habit than to ditch an old one. The key is to cut out as many triggers as possible. If you crave sweet food when you are at home in the evenings, don’t keep confectionary items in your kitchen. If you tend to mindlessly scroll through social media, delete the apps from your phone and only allow yourself to log in via a laptop, which isn’t as convenient. Make it easier on yourself to curtail bad habits by avoiding the things that cause them.

Expand your network

Depending on what habit you want to create — for example, doing exercise in the mornings before work or bringing in your lunch to work — it can be helpful to surround yourself with people who live the way you want to live. I’m not saying you need to ditch your old friends or colleagues, but don’t underestimate the power of adding some new people into your circle.

It’s easy to get caught up in how you feel about your ‘bad’ habits. You can allow yourself to feel guilty or waste time dreaming about how you wish things were, but these thoughts take you away from what’s happening in the present. Alternatively, you could ask yourself the following questions: When does your bad habit occur? How often do you do it each day? Where are you and who are you with at the time? What triggers the behaviour?

Simply tracking your answers will make you more aware of the habit and help you create new habits to counteract it.

Developing habits takes commitment. It was once believed that it took 21 days to change a habit, which has now been labelled a myth. According to psychologists, while it may take approximately 21 days of conscious and consistent effort to begin to form a new habit, it takes far longer to make a habit more sustainable, 66 days in fact.

Committing to new habits

During my inter-county career, I tried to develop habits that would support me during the season, relating to food, fitness, and managing my day. One of the lessons I learned was to stop focusing on the things that I wasn’t going to do as this instantly set a negative goal. For example, ‘I am not going to miss my gym sessions’.

Art Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Texas, author and HuffPost contributor says, the brain’s habit-learning system doesn’t really learn anything by ‘not doing’. Instead, frame your goals in terms of what you are going to do.

I tried to replace it with a positive goal — “I am going to complete at least 90% of my weekly gym programme” — which was also a more realistic aim, helping to set me up for success.

Yes, habits are essential to living, but people often overlook just how critical it is to create an environment that makes desirable behaviours easier to establish and undesirable behaviours harder to do.

I am currently trying to put this into practice. Up until recently, I was in the habit of checking my phone first thing in the mornings. I found I was comparing myself to what other people were doing. I was often getting out of bed in a reactive state which doesn’t promote productiveness or happiness. Now I’m trying to leave my phone outside the bedroom. It’s a work in progress.

I know what you are thinking: What about setting your alarm? Well, yes, it has been successfully used for years. But removing distractions (like technology) and managing your environment means you are more likely to succeed. We all want to be successful, but our rituals (scheduled morning gym sessions, Sunday ‘to do’ lists for the week ahead, 10-minute daily meditation/‘me time’) can determine our results.

The weekend is upon us, so take some time to look at your habits. Does anything need tweaking? One small improvement could be the start of a new habit and greater productivity in your life. Just some food for thought this Friday.

Top tips

Start small: The trick is to make the new habit so small that it’s barely noticeable. Don’t make it so big that you have to overhaul your schedule at the start.

It takes two: If you want to build a new habit, pair up with someone and work on it together. The two of you can hold each other accountable and celebrate your victories together. Knowing that someone else relies on you is a powerful motivator.

Audit your actions: Pick a regularly occurring action (most likely a habit) and track it for a week by answering these questions: What is it? (dissect the habit); How often does it occur; Where am I when I do it?; Who am I with?; Why? (what behaviour triggers it). The very act of tracking and measuring your habit will help to combat it.

Plan for failure: We all slip up every now and then and if it takes 66 days to lay the foundations to form a new habit, then you may encounter setbacks along the way. Be ready for them and be kinder to yourself if they do happen. Just get back on the wagon immediately.