This post is all about how to create healthy habits in your life.

You are writing your new year’s resolutions, or maybe it´s the beginning of the month. And you say to yourself, no… you promise to yourself that you´ll start eating healthier, that you´ll go to the gym, you´ll wake up earlier…

You accomplish it a week maybe two, but when the end year or the month comes and you look at those goals and habits you planned to accomplish and implement you realize it was a complete fail.

And you ask yourself why did it happen… again? Why can´t I stick with those habits I planned to create?

If you relate to this situation, don´t worry… you are not the only one.

We all have goals and habits that stayed on paper.

But why does it happen? Why is it so hard to build new habits and replace the bad ones with better ones?

Today I want to share with you the ultimate guide on how to create healthy habits that will guide you through the path of creating new habits and destroying the toxic ones.

Grab a cup of coffee or tea, a notebook, and get ready to take notes because we are about to start a journey that has the power to change your life.

What are habits?

Let´s start by understanding what are habits. There are many ways in which a habit can be explained.

A habit can be defined as a behavior that has been repeated enough times to be performed automatically.

Habits can also be interpreted as the physical manifestation -behavior- of what is inside, of your conscious or unconscious, of your emotional body. Habits flow from what is already inside.

But a habit can also be defined as a solution we use for recurring problems. As we go through life we encounter several problems, some bigger than others. Whenever we come across these problems, our brains start looking for solutions. And as you come across solutions to recurring problems in life, you start to automate those solutions.

There are many different solutions to the same problem. The same way a that a person when comes home can play videogames to relax after work, another person could smoke or go running or painting.

Your original solution, the one that you are used to, may not be the optimal one.

But why are habits so important in our lives?

Because any result that we have in life is directly related to our habits.

Every action that you make is a vote for the kind of person you think you are. When you take these actions, you build up evidence of a particular person you are.

Before looking deeper into habits, how can create new one´s, change bad one´s… let´s understand the science behind habits.

How to create healthy habits. The science behind habits

Our brains are the most energy-consuming organ in our body. In order to spend as little energy as possible, the brain acts based on the strongest neural connections and the most automated processes that are recorded in the subconscious. Leaving the least number of decisions to the conscious mind, which are the most energy-consuming.

In theory, our habits are those automated processes that the brain is able to carry out unconsciously.

The way we tie our shoes is an automated process learned many years ago that the mind draws on whenever necessary.

How you get home from school or work is a route your brain has memorized and already knows how to carry out almost unconsciously.

How you brush your teeth is an automated process of a daily action that your mind calls upon every time you brush your teeth.

Our mind does not stop to think whether these habits, these automated processes, are good for us or not. It simply carries them out because it is programmed to do so.

This has a scientific name. It´s called “cortical thickening” – the growth of new neurons and stronger synapses in response to repeated practice.

The habit loop

How can I do better? How can I create positive results in my life? How can I become more successful? How can I be happier?

By changing the habits that don´t work for more productive and effective ones.

How can I do that? How can I actually create and implement new and more useful habits into my life?

Let´s have a look at this four-stage explanation of how habits work explained in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. This guide represents the mental path our minds go through when building new habits, “the habit loop”.

Stage n1: Cue

Cues are bits of pieces of information that hint at rewards. Cues motivate our brain to start a behavior or action. Since the prehistoric era, humans have been paying attention to cues that hinted at primary rewards like food, sex, and water. Nowadays we look for cues to receive secondary rewards like fame, friendship, money, power…

Our mind is like a scanner that is constantly analyzing our internal and external world, looking for rewards.

Stage n2: Craving

Once our minds have found a cue, a desire, a craving for that reward awakens. Craving is our motivational force when building a new habit.

We are not motivated to make a change, to move out of our comfort zone unless there is a reward underneath or the desire to make a change. What we desire is not the habits or the action but the reward we obtain from it.

Every craving is linked to a reward, for the desire for internal change. You work out because you want a healthier body. You study because you want to learn new things, become smarter. You clean your house because you want to live in a clean space. You watch a movie because you want to be entertained.

Stage n3: Response

This step consists of the development of the habit. Whether you perform the habit or not depends on how motivated you are. If the action or behavior requires an excessive amount of physical or mental effort you won´t probably carry it out. Another important factor to have in mind about this step is your ability. A habit can only happen if you are capable of doing it.

Stage n4: Reward

The final step of “the ride”. The goal. The reason why we started this process. We analyze our internal and external world looking for rewards. When we find one, a craving inside of us to obtain that desire awakens. This craving motivates us to respond and perform the action or behavior to obtain the reward.

We crave rewards because of two reasons. The first one to satisfy us. The second is because they teach us something.

As we previously learned, our brains are reward detectors. Why? Because rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering and repeating, which actions satisfy our needs.

Feelings like satisfaction and disappointment help our brain decide which actions are worth repeating, thus becoming actions, and which are not.

How to create healthy habits with the habits loop

Now that we have seen and understood how habits are created and the mental path our minds go through, let´s see how can we use this information to create or destroy habits.

If we want to create new habits we need to use these 4 steps as a guide to making the task easier.

Remember that if the brain doesn´t clearly detect the reward, the desire to obtain it, won´t awaken. If the craving is not strong enough we won´t be motivated to do the action or the behavior. In the same way that if we think the action is too difficult for us or requires too much effort we won´t perform it.

Think of these four laws as a staircase. If any of the steps is higher than the previous one we´ll simply stop climbing. The mental path will not complete itself.

The trick when wanting to build new habits is to make climbing the staircase as easy as possible.

Make the cue- obvious

craving- attractive

response- easy

reward- satisfying

How to break bad habits

To break bad habits we just need to invert the process, we have to make the staircase very difficult to climb.

So say for example that you want to minimize the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. To achieve this you could try placing the drinks at the back of the refrigerator so that they are not so visible and harder to reach.

3 Tips to create health habits

Change the behavior benefit to identity change

The Nº1 tip that I have learned when changing your habits, is focusing on the person you embody when you perform that action instead of focusing on the result.

You don´t write a book, you become a writer. You don´t work out daily, you become an athletic person.

True behavior change is identity change. When you change your behavior and your daily actions, your identity, the person you are, changes.

Focus the benefits on the change of identity instead of the change of behavior.

The power of small actions. When you focus on the result is more difficult to implement the habit.

Say you have had a crazy and you didn’t have time to work out. You only had time for a 10-minute workout. When you are focused on the result you wouldn´t do a 10-minute workout because you don´t believe it has any impact. Why waste your time?

But when you are focused on the person that you align with when you perform that habit, the decision changes. Going back to the previous example if you have the goal of becoming an athletic person and you only had time for a 10-minute workout, you would do it because you are focused on the person you want to embody, not the result.

We live in a society where we are always encouraged to aim for big goals and achievements.

It´s all or nothing.

We have forgotten about the impact that small actions have on our lives.

You don´t become wiser by reading 1 book a week for six months, but by reading maybe 10 pages a day for the next 10 years.

You don´t obtain the body of your dreams by going to the gym for two hours every day for half a year. But by having a consistent plan that you can maintain for years.

It´s about the long-term and the effect that small habits have in our life when they are repeated for a long period of time.

Don´t forget to make it interesting and easy!

Remember that if you don´t feel motivated enough, the whole process will fall apart.

Let´s see some examples to understand this better.

Say you don´t like to wash the dishes because you find it disgusting. You could try using thick gloves when washing to avoid any comfortable sensation.

If you don´t like cleaning, have you tried putting music and having a concert while you are at it?

If you don´t like working out, have you ever considered trying other types of exercises, different forms of moving your body?

Just because there are many people who do things a certain way doesn’t mean you have to do it the same way.

If you find it difficult to carry out a certain task, move things around, include things that you like or that you think would make the action more enjoyable.

Final thoughts on how to create healthy habits in your life

Now that you have learned the most successful method to create new habits in your life, you have no excuse to try it.

Choose a goal that you have wanted to implement for a long time. Make the cue obvious, the craving attractive, the response as easy to perform as you possible, and the reward satisfying.

Remember to focus your goal on the person you want to become instead of the behavioral change and not underestimate the power of small habits in our daily life.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post on how to create healthy habits. Success is not something that you can achieve in one day or one week. It´s a path filled with struggles, teachings, blessings, setbacks…

However, it´s not impossible and I hope the steps in this post will help to make that journey a little easier and more enjoyable and become your best self!

Remember that you are worthy of even your deepest desires!

What does your personal development plan look like? I would to read you in the comments!