10 Tips to Build Habits That Stick
1. Identify the right habits and commit to them.
2. Have a plan.
3. Set up a trigger and reward.
4. Make it convenient to do your daily habits.
5. Remind yourself why this daily habit is so important.
6. Use a habit tracker.
7. Find an accountability partner.
8. Focus on tiny daily habits.
9. Change your inner beliefs and lifestyle.
10. Focus on the system.
BONUS - Don't give up.
Links mentioned in this episode:
10 Tips to Build Habits That Stick
1. Identify the right habits and commit to them.
2. Have a plan.
3. Set up a trigger and reward.
4. Make it convenient to do your daily habits.
5. Remind yourself why this daily habit is so important.
6. Use a habit tracker.
7. Find an accountability partner.
8. Focus on tiny daily habits.
9. Change your inner beliefs and lifestyle.
10. Focus on the system.
BONUS - Don't give up.
Links mentioned in this episode:
There is one secret to success and that is building a habit. And once you have that down, you are set. That is the one secret I teach in the silver wellness academy and stuff, the mindset, but you want to know the habit you are building is successful and you don't want to waste your time. So today we are talking about how to build a habit.
You're listening to the stop, the mind screw podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen Certified Fitness Trainer, and Mindset Coach since 2002 transforming lives and magic fashion teaching. Stop the mind screw process.
Most people build habits backwards. They have an audacious goal, but they fall flat. They have weight loss goals. They have trouble spots they want to hit, or they want to be more productive in their day. These goals are great, but very vague. And we must build habits that stick. And that is what we're talking about. We're going to talk about 10 different tips to help you build habits that stick. And number one tip we're talking about right now is identify the right habits and commit to them.
Weight loss is my goal, or I want to get in the habit of healthy eating, but we need to identify if it is right for you or not. What are you going to commit to? Be very careful with your commitment. You can either overcome it or not commit enough. Here's an example of a friend of mine I was working with and she was like, I kept the, I want to lose weight.
I want to do this. I want to do that. And I'm like, okay, cool. So, you know, I was also her trainer at the time and we went through the drive-through at a restaurant. And she orders a burger on the menu because that's what she wanted. Hey, that's all great. But I was like, maybe you better order the kid's burger or something like that.
And she fell flat because she's like looking at me with disappointment. I'm like, oh, okay. What happened was she didn't identify the goal with all the details and it didn't become habit. She didn't commit to it because ideally if you committed to it, it's okay to have a burger, but maybe cut it in half and eat half of it now.
And half of it later, or order a healthier option. But you got to identify the habits you're going to commit to and stick to it. Tip number two, have a plan. If you have a plan and you know exactly what you're going to do, it's way more likely you'll stick with.
Here's some examples of plans.
Do you want to eat healthier? Set up a meal plan with healthy dishes, veggie snacks, and delicious smoothies. And that meal plan create a shopping list with all the ingredients that you need and plan when exactly you will be going to the grocery store and go shopping.
Do you want to work out consistently, then set up a workout plan, define exactly which workouts you will be doing.
You want to wake up earlier, create a specific plan about what exactly you're going to do with these extra hours. And then transfer your game, plan into your agenda, or set up a recurring task on your Google calendar with a reminder. So you remember to do this new.
Number three, set up a trigger and reward.
This is classical conditioning at its finest. You know, dog training. You don't just tell your dog to sit and expect them to do so. No, you say sit that's the clue he sits down. That's the activity and you give him a treat. That's the reward. The activity is the actual habit itself. You have a trigger set up that reminds you to do the habit.
Then you perform the habit and reward yourself for performing the habit. Examples of triggers and rewards are your habit. You want to be organized. So after dinner, you immediately wash your dishes. So they don't pile. Your habit, you want to be more productive right before you go to sleep. You take a moment to plan out your next day, your habit of morning exercise.
When your alarm goes off, you know, it's time for your daily workout. The habit mindfulness. After your morning yoga session, you take some time to reflect and journal. So tip number three is set up a trigger and a reward.
Tip number four, make it convenient to do your daily habits. Set yourself up for success.
You're basically removing all potential obstacles that are in between you and doing the work. One of my fitness mentors talked about making her kitchen. Healthy and convenient. And what she did was she may bought all of her healthy meal choices and prepared everything and then put it in the refrigerator.
And what ended up happening was it was so appealing to everybody in the family. They started eating healthy. Everybody started eating the veggies that were in. Some other examples of making it convenient. What I like to do is I like to make my workout drinks the night before, so they're ready to go. My pre-workout is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
That is my trigger and reward. Actually, you can also make it convenient by laying your clothes out for the next day. And write your to-do list for the next day and have it handy. And, oh my gosh, I love notion for this tip.
Number five, remind yourself why this daily habit is so important. Why is this habit that important and impactful to you?
How will your life change when you do this habit on a consistent basis? Think back to my friend who. Wanted that burger. She didn't remember why that habit was going to be so important to her when she was at the drive-thru. It's something that you need to have in front of you. So if you're a visual person, it can really help to create a vision board that is directly related to the.
You're trying to create. Don't just put inspirational coats or beautiful sunsets on your vision board, but make it as concrete and specific as possible. Are you trying to save money for that vacation this summer, then picture a specific vacation spot you are trying to visit. You're wanting to visit, put that on your vision board and keep it here.
So that you're always reminded of why this habit that you're trying to create is so important.
This episode is brought to you by perfectly fit with Kathie the doors open on Monday, January 24th. And we incorporate building habits that stick. That is one of the main things. That's why I'm teaching this right now even is because once you get your habits to stick, they become just like it says habits and also learn in Perfectly fit with Kathie
The entire stop, the mind screw process, which helps you stay healthy fit and well, and it's all on mindset. I've got bonuses in there. Routines all about your morning routine, your afternoon routine, your evening routines, finding money to maybe pay for the entire course. And then some with expert finance, coach, Natalie kine, and my.
Teaching Stop the mind screw process. Those are some bonuses and your entire course can be played at your convenience and your earbuds on the podcasts. That's one of my most frequently commented and appreciated things in my course is that you can listen to it in your earbuds while you're out and about.
Sign up todaywww.kathieowen.com/waitlist and that's K a T H I E O w E N. Hope to see you there.
All right. Tip number six, youth, a habit tracker. Keep yourself accountable by using a habit tracker. Either you can draw it on a piece of paper and stick it onto the fridge or in your bullet journal.
Or you can use an app on your phone. Notion has a good habit tracker, by the way, no matter how you track your habits, it can really help you to visualize your progress by crossing off every day. You have completed that. And it's also just so satisfying to cross up those days and see this chain appear that becomes longer and longer.
As you continue to do the habit on a daily basis, it prevents you from skipping a day because that would mean you would break the chain by the way you got this. Number seven, find an accountability partner don't underestimate the power of accountability. Find someone that keeps you accountable and checks in with you on a regular basis to check.
If you're still keeping up with your habits, this doesn't necessarily have to be someone that is close to you either. This can be someone that you've met online in a social media group with similar. That can, you can hold each other accountable as well, even better. If you can find someone with whom you can do the tasks together, a walking partner, a meal prep buddy can be really motivating since you won't feel alone in this journey.
Pretty powerful. If he asked me number eight and I love this tip focus on tiny daily habits, James clear of atomic habits. The book suggests setting a habit that is so easy and tiny that you don't need any motivation to. For example, setting a habit to put on your workout clothes and doing five pushups on a daily basis.
This habit is so tiny and accomplishable and less than five minutes that it won't trigger much resistance. And in the majority of cases, after doing these five pushups, you'll probably end up doing some other exercises as well, or maybe a complete workout. You know, people that work out all the time. They all have struggles.
They're there. I don't want to work out every day. I have my struggles as well. And I even posted on my stories today that. I didn't want to get up this morning. I had to have a talk with myself when I was trying to talk myself into going back to bed and I have to do that pretty frequently because otherwise I would not stick to that habit.
So one of the tiny habits that I have is kind of something I learned from David Goggins, and that is. To talk to my ego and tell it to shut up and tell it that I hear ya. I hear you want to go back to bed. I hear you want to do the easy way, but we're not going to do that today. And. Therefore you have a shift.
And that is one of my tiny habits that keeps my big habits going. And one of my big, I would call it even a trigger. I even use it as a trigger because I inevitably will try to talk myself into going back to bed, but that's not going to serve my goals. And guess what? On my habit tracker, I don't get to check off my habit.
So therefore it holds me back. Yeah. Number nine, change your inner beliefs in lifestyle. Now the inner beliefs are definitely addressed in stop. The mice crew. I talk about this kind of stuff all the time. You hear me talk about it on my podcast, but I also teach it as part of the process. Really immerse yourself into the habit.
You're trying to create, read about it, research it, watch documentaries about it. Even with tiny daily habits, such as taking your vitamins, you can research what affects taking vitamins on a daily basis can have on a long-term effect on. Or research successful people who wake up at the same time, you want to wake up and what they have accomplished because of this change.
I always give myself, you know, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, time to research, little things that I'm working on every single day, I have times on my phone or I can research it on Pinterest or research it on Instagram, but there are ways you can do this, you know, um, even if you're. Looking at stuff.
That was what I like about Pinterest. You can find things to research, save it to a board, go look at it later. Therefore you have that board. For example, I'm trying to create a habit of doing photography on a daily basis. This habit is not. Super easy to create. It's just something I've got to remind myself of.
So I've been doing research on photography and recently that is my hobby. So whatever your hobby is, You creating balance in your life by also researching your hobby or whatever habit you're trying to create, do some research on it, save it on a Pinterest board, make it private. If you want to that way you can just go look at it on your own.
And that way you can also go back and look at those things. When you have that five minutes of time. Or during your lunch break, you can watch a YouTube video on whatever that is. You're trying to create. Tip number 10, focus on the system, make it a lifestyle. That's what I try to instill and teach in my clients.
Make it a lifestyle. We're not just changing this for the moment. Imagine this, you set the ultimate goal to reach your dream weight with little mini weight loss goals every month. This is awesome. But from the moment you reached your goal, you reached your dream weight. You think yay, go accomplished and you can quit that habit.
But a few months later, your weight starts increasing again and suddenly you're back at square one. Oh, I see this happen so many times and I'm not just talking weight loss. I'm talking exercise, I'm talking fitness, wellness, health. Your health is your wealth. And that is where you want to focus on building your habits in general.
But to avoid this from happening, it's way more sustainable in the long-term to focus on the system itself. Focus on. Maybe if your goal is weight loss focused on how energize these healthy dishes make you feel, or how satisfied you feel after an intense workout, focusing on the system itself will make you achieve your goals.
Inevitably. And it will help you trigger it into a habit that's going to sustain even after you achieve, achieve your goals. And instead of always focusing on the future, you're actually focusing on the present moment and truly enjoying the journey because you know, the journey and the destination are one.
And like we teach in stuff the mind screw. It is getting into flow, getting into the zone, which is exactly what this is talking about. We're challenged meets skill and you stick it out. So I have a bonus tip for you today. So there were 10 tips, but actually there's 11.
And your bonus tip is. Don't give up.
There will be days when doing your habits will be extremely difficult and days where it goes super easily days where you're incredibly motivated and days where you can bang your head against the wall. Nonetheless, if you feel happy, sad, angry, you just have to do the damn daily habit. Unconditional. Your motivation goes up and down during your journey, but discipline is the thing that gets you started your motivation often comes when you were already in the middle of doing your habit.
It's just like my workout this morning. Like when I'm talking to myself for tell myself to get back into bed, I'm not motivated to go to the gym, but once I'm in there and once I'm getting it done, I feel so much better. Trust me. If you exercise, like I teach you start to get the help, happy, good feeling, brain chemicals going in your body.
And therefore it just helps with everything in general and it keeps you on track, but don't give up, prepare yourself mentally for different scenarios that might happen that can de-motivate you to do the work. What are you going to do if you're extremely tired or what are you going to do if you just received some bad news?
What if it's raining outside and you want to go for a jog or what? If you had a super busy day? Those things you want to prepare for when, you know, in advance what your potential obstacles are. You can't anticipate these and then take strategic action to overcome them. For example, what are you going to do?
If you're really, really tired? I always schedule a rainout day in my workout week. And that doesn't mean because it's going to rain. That means because I'm going to give myself a day where I could take a day off. If I need a day off for rest. If I need two days off of risks. Mostly what I look at and the way I teach people, how to set up their workout, routines and schedules is look at it from a month perspective.
It's okay. If you take a week off, sometimes that is more important than working out itself. You've got to have these setup in your plan, just like in the tip on the. When, you know, in advance what your potential obstacles are, you can take strategic action. All right. In conclusion, here are the 10 tips, really 11 number one, identify the right habits and commit to them.
Number two, have a plan. Number three, set up a trigger and reward. Number four, make it convenient to do your daily habits. Number five, remind yourself why this daily habit is so important. Number six, use a habit tracker number seven. Find an accountability partner. Number eight, focus on tiny daily habits.
Number nine, change your inner lifestyle and beliefs. And number 10, focus on the system and your bonus tip. Don't give up, you got this. All right. That's my episode for today. I hope you enjoyed it and be sure to check out the show notes and the description below. And if you're watching this on you. Be sure to check out the description below for all educators till next time.
I'll see you next time. Peace out. and Namaste.