Make it Satisfying, Make it Rewarding

The cardinal rule of behaviour change. 

What is immediately rewarded is repeated, what is immediately punished is avoided.

Reward yourself immediately after completing new habits. “If the puppy does a trick, it gets a treat” - yes you are a puppy in the metaphor.

And no, we aren’t saying to have some chocolate after you eat some Protein and NDFs. 

Our goals are delayed rewards that obviously take time, so we need an immediate reward to stay on track. We need some reinforcement to keep practicing healthy eating behaviours. 

With nutrition, we can increase the satisfaction of a meal by making it taste good. WHAT? A healthy meal that tastes good? It can’t be true! But it is!! 

Using flavours, herbs, spices, seasonings, and low calorie sauces can reward us to make this a repeated behaviour. In the background, our delayed reward of health and body composition are accumulating.

We can also give ourselves a reward each time we practice a new habit or after we’ve reached our weekly target.

Each time you practice your habit, celebrate (remember the ABC strategy). Tick it off your list. Share your win with a group or accountability partner.

If you’ve hit your weekly target, how can you reward yourself? (Try not to make it food related though). 

Example: When I have Protein at Breakfast, I’ll take a photo of it and share it with my coach to get feedback.

When I complete my tasks for the day I’ll go for a walk and listen to a new podcast.

When I’ve hit my plant target 5 times a week for 4 weeks I’ll by myself a new book. 

Find a positive, goal aligned way to reward yourself so you look forward to repeating the habit.

Remember the earlier lesson the habit loop. The reward is the reinforcer.

Make it Attractive

Make It Attractive, Fun Gets It Done

Let’s be honest, if good habits were fun you’d already be doing them. When we find a task boring or monotonous, we may not want to practice it. However we know that we need to practice them to get in the successful reps in order to form new habits. Healthy nutrition habits are perceived to be pretty boring - meal prep, shopping, boring meals - but that doesn’t have to be the case.

There was an engineer who loved Netflix and wanted to exercise more, so he created an exercise bike that was powered by Netflix if he cycled at a certain speed. 

What we can learn from this is that if we combine the fun stuff with the not so fun stuff, the latter is more likely to be completed. 

This is known as “Temptation Bundling”.

 

Pairing an action you want to do with an action that you need to do.

Pair something you love with a habit you want to build and you may find yourself doing it more, and even enjoying it. When we enjoy things, we do them more often - successful reps!

Josh loves music and podcasts. He likes to pair that with his more boring tasks like cooking or shopping. 

How do you create a temptation bundle?

Create 2 columns. 

In the first column, write down a list of pleasures and temptations you enjoy doing. 

In the second, write a list of tasks and behaviours that you should be doing, that you want to start doing and that are aligned with your desired identity.

Then, pair them up.

Eg. Taking your headphones to listen to music while doing the shopping

Listening to music/podcasts/audio-books while walking to get your steps up

Watching Netflix while chopping the veggies or cooking dinner. 

You’re more likely to find a behaviour attractive if you get to do one of your favorite things at the same time.

How are you going to pair something you’re trying to practice with something you already enjoy doing?

The focus strategy for this week is to make it attractive, make it enjoyable, or at least a little less painful

Make a Plan

Make it Obvious, Make a Plan 

We all have goals but a common misconception is that we lack motivation. What we actually lack is a plan. 

In studies, people who actually wrote down a plan of when and where they intended to practice a new behaviour, such as exercise, were more likely to follow through with that intention compared to groups who simply said they wanted to exercise more. 

This process is effective for sticking to goals. It increases the odds of sticking to a new behaviour such as studying, exercising, recycling, quitting smoking, going to bed earlier, etc.

People who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are more likely to follow through. Often we are too vague with our goals and intentions. “I want to exercise more” or “I want to eat healthier”, but we never say where or when these habits will happen OR even what we intend to do. 

This process creates CLARITY in the actions you intend to implement.

Here is an example:

I will [BEHAVIOUR] at [TIME] in [LOCATION]

I wanted to start reading more and be on my phone less to start the day so mine was.

I will READ MY BOOK at 530am in the LOUNGEROOM, after I shower every morning.

Want to get to the gym more? 

I will GO TO THE GYM at 5pm at CROSSFIT GEO.

Want to meditate?

I will MEDITATE at 8pm in my BEDROOM

For your nutrition, writing a plan of what you intend to eat can be how you implement this strategy. 

Want to add more PROTEIN to your diet?

I will add PROTEIN POWDER to my oats and berries for BREAKFAST at 8am.

I will eat CHICKEN with rice and veggies for LUNCH at 12pm.

I will eat YOGURT and fruit for my SNACK at 4pm

I will eat FISH with salad for my DINNER at 8pm. 

If you don’t plan out your actions, you rely on willpower or motivation. If you plan out when and where you will practice your desired behaviours, your goal is real.

This week we will be focusing on the MAKE A PLAN step for habit building. 

Think about the habit you want to focus on this week and make a plan for it. Make it obvious. Schedule it in and stick to it.

Things are easy when life runs to a plan or schedule. We can plan our day, plan our meals, plan our training, even plan our sleep.

But how often in this life we live do plans get turned on their head and chaos happens. 

When chaos happens, our intentions and rhythm are thrown out of order. Chaos creates a barrier, and with barriers come excuses. 

So how can we stay on track or at least do our best when we experience chaos?

 Forming if-then plans can improve your rate of achieving your goal. 

An if-then plan is essentially a Plan B.

This strategy can prevent you from straying off course, by giving you a plan of action on how to stay on track if you do sway slightly from the plan.

“If-then” planning acts as a safeguard in case you need to use the “break glass procedure.” It requires a realistic view of the future, by assessing potential critical situations. By thinking ahead and devising a Plan B you are prepared to react right away, minimizing the possible damage.

The “If-Then” technique forces you to create a strategy for when chaos strikes. It gives you a plan of attack before a barrier arises so you are prepared and can then stick to your schedule.

All you need to do is complete this phrase:
“If [something unexpected], then [your response].”

If I don’t wake up in time to go to the gym before work, then I’ll go after work.

If I eat a large indulgence meal tonight, then I’ll scale back my carbs and fats tomorrow.

If I forget my lunch at home, then I’ll get a bbq chicken and salad from the shops.

If I have a drink during the week, then I’ll have one less on the weekend.

Planning for chaos and using the “If-Then” technique can help find ways to stay on track even when life is pulling you off course. 

The “if–then” strategy gives you a clear plan for overcoming the unexpected stuff. You can't control when little emergencies happen to you, but you don't have to be a victim of them either.

Make it Easy

There is no set time frame for building habits. It is about getting in successful repetitions. How many times you practice that behaviour.
 

A way to ensure we get the successful repetition is is to: MAKE IT EASY

New habits require willpower and willpower is limited. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. 

When Chinese weight-lifters first start learning their skill, they spend 12 months on a PVC pipe and 6 months on an empty barbell. Arguably the best in the world, spend 18 months practising a new skill the easiest possible way to ensure the movement patterns become engrained; a habit. That is how they get in the successful reps. If they added weight too early, their form may have faltered and the number of successful reps would be reduced.

Here are a few ways we can Make it Easy when it comes to Nutrition and Lifestyle Habits.

Create an environment where making the right choice is easy.
We want to remove the barriers of practising the desired behaviour whilst also making it more difficult to practice old behaviours. 

Make it easy to make Protein and Plants your first choice by having them visible and easy to consume. Have a variety of protein sources available in your fridge, freezer and pantry. Keep fresh and frozen fruits and veggies in an easily accessible area whilst reducing the ease at which you can choose more indulgent processed calorie-dense items.

Cook and prepare meals within your skill level. When Josh first started his nutrition journey, he began with Kangaroo burger patties, frozen veggies, tins of tuna and microwave rice. He built the habits of making healthier choices that were aligned with his goals and then built upon that skill of cooking. 

Look for ‘No Prep’ or ‘Easy Prep’ options that don’t require much time or effort so it is easy to get started. 

-Fruit and yoghurt

-Salad and tinned fish

-BBQ chicken and salad packets

A new habit shouldn’t feel like a challenge at the start. It should feel easy. 

Break it down. What is the simplest thing you can do today to help practice your new habits? 

Starting easy and small can also help you build self-confidence.

If you’re having trouble or finding it too difficult, ask yourself: 

Do you have enough time to do the behaviour?

Are you physically capable of doing the behaviour?

Does the behaviour require a lot of creative or mental energy?

Does the behaviour fit into your current routine, or does it require you to make adjustments?

For example, many people struggle with eating healthy. Not because they don’t have enough time or money. It’s because it doesn’t fit into their current routine or they are trying to change too many meals at once.

If they can find a way to break it down, to make it easier, they would feel more capable.

Other ways we can make it easy.

• Increase your skills. Learn more about the habit you’re building while you’re motivation is high. Learn from a coach, from someone you trust or research the skill.

• Get tools and resources. Buy tools that make preparing your meals easier. A sharp knife, chopping board, food processor, blender, non-stick pans, Tupperware, the FNC Recipe book. 

• Make the behaviour tiny. Focus on the lead domino - one small move toward the desired behaviour that creates momentum. 

• Shrink the Change. Take the behaviour you want and shrinking it. Protein at every meal becomes protein at breakfast. 2L of water a day become 1 glass to start the day. Go from 15 beers a week to 12.

Remember, when it comes to habit formation, simplicity trumps big leaps.

Consistently practising a simple behaviour is more effective than inconsistently practising a difficult one.

More easy nutrition tips:

- Find easy ways to add protein and plants to your meals including no prep or quick-prep options: tinned and frozen fish, pre-cooked meats, jerky, protein yoghurts, fruit, frozen berries, frozen vegetables.

- Try a slow cooker to prepare proteins in larger quantities. 

- We also want it to be easy to make a health aligned decision by having an environment that is full of cues and reminders about the choices you want to make.
- Cook within your skill level
- Keep protein and plants in your food environment. Make them the first things you see when you open the fridge/cupboard.

- Pre chop vegetables when you have time and store them in containers in the fridge.

- Pre-packaged salads can be easy options and good on the run.

- Frozen/Microwave vegetables are convenient and just as good as fresh.

- Pre-prepared meals are convenient, or you could make a couple of extra meals to keep in the freezer for busy times.

This week the focus is to MAKE IT EASY with your chosen habit.

Effort Barriers

Following the theme of MAKE IT EASY, we have the strategy of EFFORT BARRIERS.

Effort barriers can prevent us from practising a behaviour or make it more difficult to do something. It adds extra steps or effort.

Effort barriers can work for or against us.

We can REMOVE effort barriers to make habits EASIER.

We can ADD effort barriers to make habits more DIFFICULT

We can implement an effort barrier to prevent us from repeating an undesired behaviour.

Examples:

Leaving our phone in another room to avoid temptation to use it during work, study or even sleep.

Keeping tempting, red light, indulgent foods out of our environment.

Removing certain apps from our phone.

Having fewer pre prepared/packaged foods in the house.

We can remove effort barriers from desired behaviours that are aligned with our goals to make them easier to practice.

Examples:

Getting gym clothes ready the night before.

Placing a book beside the bed.

Having protein and plant meals prepared.

Having fresh fruit easy to consume.

Keeping a large water bottle filled in the fridge each night to drink in the morning.

We want to reduce the friction between desired behaviours so they are EASIER to practice.

We want to increase the number of steps needed to practice an undesired behaviour to make it more DIFFICULT to practice.

Example:

Easier: Protein and Plants are already prepped, easy to consume.

Difficult: You want an indulgence, you’ll have to leave the house to get it.

Ultimately, make desired behaviours easier and make undesired behaviours more difficult.

What barriers can you implement to make a behaviour more difficult?

2 Minute Rule

Another way to make it easy. The 2 Minute Rule!

When starting a new habit, scale it down to a 2 minute version. My scenario is going to be preparing veggies.

The idea is to make building new habits as easy as possible to start.

Anyone can do anything for 2 minutes. Meditate, read, stretch, run, even cut veggies.

This is a powerful strategy because once you've started, it is easy to continue doing it. A new habit shouldn't feel like a challenge. The first 2 minutes should feel easy and something you are 10/10 confident in doing.

Essentially this is a gateway habit that leads to a more productive path.

You may think it is strange to get motivated, excited and pumped up to do something for 2 minutes, but the point isn't to do the thing.

The point is to master that habit of showing up.

As you master the art of showing up, the first two minutes are basically the ritual of a larger routine. The more you ritualise the beginning of a process, the more likely it becomes that you can slip into the state of deep focus that is required to do great things.

By doing the same warm-up before every workout, an athlete makes it easier to get into a state of peak performance.

By getting everything reading to chop your veggies, you are creating a routine that can enforce your desire to keep going.

Basically saying, "well I've started now, I may as well keep going"

JUST GET STARTED and get into the habit of SHOWING UP.

Once you've shown up, you'll want to stay in the zone.

ABC Recipe

This is a 3 step formula to help you successfully build the daily practices to form habits to help you move towards your goals.

This follows the habit loop principle of:

Cue, Routine and Reward.

Anchor is a Cue.

Behaviour is the Routine.

Celebration is a Reward.

Try to use this each week and every time you want to form a new habit. 

A - Anchor

Find an Anchor Moment. 

An anchor moment is an existing routine or event that happens. The anchor moment is a cue or reminder to practice your new behaviour/practice. Eg. Brushing your teeth, Phone Vibrating, Walking in the Door

B - Behaviour 

Ideally, we want to break this behaviour down to make it small and simple to practice. The behaviour is done immediately after the Anchor moment.

C - Celebrate

Immediately after practising the behaviour, celebrate your success to reinforce the habit. Tick it off your list, give yourself a high five, or tell yourself how awesome you are. Make sure the celebration works for you and it helps you feel happy and successful.

Attach the new behaviour onto a current behaviour (the anchor) and use it as a reminder or trigger to practice the new habit.

The celebration reinforces the behaviour and form the habit loop.

Habit Stacking

In line with the ABC Recipe (Anchor, Behaviour, Celebration), we have the strategy of Habit Stacking.

One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify a current habit you already do each day and then stack your new behaviour on top. This is called habit stacking.

You pair a NEW HABIT with a CURRENT HABIT.

The habit stacking formula is:

After/Before [Current Habit], I will [New Habit]

Again, the reason habit stacking works so well is that your current habits are already built into your brain. You have patterns and behaviours that have been strengthened over the years. By linking your new habits to a cycle that is already built into your brain, you make it more likely that you'll stick to the new behaviour.

Once you have mastered this basic structure, you can begin to create larger stacks by chaining small habits together. This allows you to take advantage of the natural momentum that comes from one behaviour leading into the next.

You can also insert new behaviours into the middle of your current routines. For example, you may already have a morning routine that looks like this: 

Wake up > Make my bed > Take a shower. 

Let’s say you want to develop the habit of reading more each night. 

You can expand your habit stack and try something like: 

Wake up > Make my bed > Place a book on my pillow > Take a shower. 

Now, when you climb into bed each night, a book will be sitting there waiting for you to enjoy.

Overall, habit stacking allows you to create a set of simple rules that guide your future behaviour. It’s like you always have a game plan for which action should come next. 

Consider when you are most likely to be successful. Don’t ask yourself to do a habit when you’re likely to be occupied with something else.

Be specific and clear. The specificity is important. The more tightly bound your new habit is to a specific cue, the better the odds are that you will notice when the time comes to act.

For me personally, I’ve implemented habit stacking the following ways:

Brushing teeth at night in the shower

Making the bed when the kettle is on for my morning coffee

I put the dishes away before I wash the next set of dishes up

I write in my journal when I have my morning coffee

I have my Vitamin D and Fish Oil when I have my morning water

I read when I drink my tea before bed

Nutrition Habit Stacking - add Protein or Plants to your meals

Eg. if your current breaky is oats add a scoop of protein powder to my oats

Love avo on toast, add a side of ham or smoked salmon

Protein bar/shake snack add a piece of fruit

If you want to build a new habit, see if you can stack it onto a current habit as a trigger to prompt you to start it.

Pick 1 Thing

Building new habits requires energy. 

We have a limited amount of resources and energy that we can allocate throughout the day to work, study, exercise, family, friends, etc.

In order to give ourselves the best chance of success in building habits, we recommend working on 1 thing at a time.

Research has shown that when people try to change a single behaviour at a time, the likelihood that they’ll retain that habit for a year or more is better than 80 percent. When they try to tackle two behaviors at once, their chances of success are less than 35 percent.  When they try for three behaviors or more, their success rate plummets to less than 5 percent.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

Research has shown that when people try to change a single behavior at a time, the likelihood that they’ll retain that habit for a year or more is better than 80 percent. When they try to tackle two behaviours at once, their chances of success are less than 35 percent.  When they try for three behaviours or more, their success rate plummets to less than 5 percent.

It can be hard to slow down and just pick 1 thing when we are motivated, we want to make the most of it and try lots of things at once.

Let’s try to focus on 1 thing at a time and give ourselves the best chance of success in building long term habits.

If you’re looking to change your nutrition, for example you ate 3 meals a day 7 days a week, that’s 21 meals. Now imagine trying to change all of those, seems pretty daunting. 

Instead just say: I’m going to work on my breakfast this week OR work on increasing protein at 1 meal per day. 

Working on 1 thing every week for 8 weeks and being successful is going to be more effective than trying 5 things at once and burning out in 5 weeks.

Breaking Habits

In order to break bad, undesirable, or non-goal aligned habits we can do a number of things. All of these follow what we’ve previously learnt about habits, often just reversing the ideas that are used to build new habits.

We can break the habit loop at 2 points. Either at the cue/trigger or the routine/behaviour.

Cue/Trigger

Remove as many triggers as possible to the behaviour. I’ll say it again: control your environment. Try not to keep these trigger foods in the house or at least keep them out of sight. Create an effort barrier between you and these foods. Change your environment, change the outcome. 

Routine/Behaviour

This is probably going to come into play if you don’t have control over your environment for example at work. Probably the more difficult approach, but we grow through the struggles we choose. Practice urge surfing. Just like ocean waves urges start small, grow in size then break up and dissipate. Ride out the cravings until they go away. Remember urges pass by themselves, we normally give in before the urge passes which reinforces the craving/behaviour. If struggling to let it pass naturally, ask yourself if giving into the craving is aligned with your goals? Is it helping you cast a vote for your desired identity, your future self or it is just reinforcing a behaviour that is perhaps holding you back?

Without the behaviour, there is no reward.

Without the trigger, there is no behaviour, therefore no reward.

If you break the loop, you take one step towards breaking the habit. 

We can also find a substitute for our habits. Often keeping the cue and the routine the same. 

Refer to the previous email of Replacing Ryan who solves his boredom/stress/emotional habits by replacing his eating/drinking with positive behaviours when the cues/triggers arose. 

Ultimately we want to break the habit loop, make the habits less desirable and reduce the frequency in which we currently practice them. 

We are halting the momentum and getting less reps in. 

Less repetition, less reward, less of a habit.

Here are ways we can break the habit loop using the inverse of our habit building strategies.

Make It Difficult

 When we looked at building habits we focused on making it easy, obvious, attractive and rewarding.

Let’s use the opposite when we are trying to break old habits and habit loops.

Create and implement an effort barrier.

Increase the number of steps required to

practice the habit you want to break.

Have less pre-prepared indulgences in the house.
Don’t keep cold beer in the fridge.

Unplug your playstation after using it.

The best way to break a bad habit is to make it impractical to do.

Add more steps that seem a little bit ridiculous to implement to get the small reward.

Eg if you want chocolate you’ll have to walk to the shop and get it.

To order pizza you can’t order it off your phone you’ll have to drive there and get it.

To drink a beer you have to put it in the fridge and wait for it to get cold (by then the craving might pass)

To play playstation you’ll have to set it up.

If snacking is an issue, don’t get ready made easy to consume snacks in the house. 

Make It Invisible

Our of sight, out of mind

Remove the cues from your environment.

Reduce your exposure to the habit.

Eg. Try not to keep tempting foods in your house.

Once a habit has been formed, the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear. 

Stop expecting yourself to rely on willpower or self control.

Bad habits are autocatalytic. They feed themselves

It’s known as “cue-induced wanting”: an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it.

The best strategy to eliminate bad habits is to cut off at the source. Reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

Rather than make it obvious, make it invisible. Remove a single cue and the entire habit often fades away. Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.

People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than to resist it.

Make It Unattractive

 Reframe your mindset. Highlight the benefits of avoiding the habit you're trying to break.

Eg. you'll move towards your goal quicker.

Every behaviour has a surface level craving and a deeper underlying motive.

Our habits are modern-day solutions to ancient desires. Some reduce stress by smoking a cigarette while others go for a run.

Once you associate a solution with the problem you need to solve, you keep coming back to it. 

Habits are attractive when we associate them with positive feelings and unattractive when we associate them with negative feelings.

To reprogram your brain to enjoy hard habits, make them more attractive by learning to associate them with a positive experience. Highlight the benefits of avoiding a bad habit to make it seem unattractive.

By saying no to this habit I’m saying yes to my goals and my future self.

Make It Unsatisfying

Remove the reward and add a consequence

 Behaviour is avoided when the experience is painful or unsatisfying. Pain is an effective teacher. The more immediate the pain, the less likely the behaviour.

For some people removing a reward and adding a consequence can help.

To prevent bad habits and eliminate unhealthy behaviours, add an instant cost to the action to reduce their odds. There can’t be a gap between the action and the consequences. As soon as actions incur an immediate consequence, behaviour begins to change.

Add in a consequence for practising your behaviour. Create a contract.

Eg. Snoozing alarm = eating your most hated food.

Complaining = 100 burpees
 

Get an accountability partner. Ask someone to watch your behaviour.

Create a habit contract. Make the costs of your bad habits public and painful. 

Remember to break a habit, think about where you can break the habit loop.

The cue, the routine or the reward.

The Habit Loop

Habits follow a 3 step loop.

1. Cue

2. Routine

3. Reward

The cue is the trigger for your behaviour.

It acts as a reminder and the instigator of the sequence. It could be triggered by sight, sound, smell, sensation, emotion, environmental. It can even be the people we are with or the time of day.

Eg. It’s 7 am.

See a chocolate bar

Smell fresh bread from the baker

Stressed from work or seeing the inlaws

The routine is the behaviour we practice immediately after the cue. 

Following the examples above. 

7 am - coffee time

See Chocolate Bar - feel the urge to eat it.

Smell Fresh Bread - start to feel hungry.

Stress/In-Laws- feel the need for a drink.

Finally, we have a reward. This is how our habits are reinforced. Rewards are increases/decreases in pleasant/unpleasant sensations, emotions or thoughts.

As a result, we practice the response until it becomes a reliable and automatic habit.

It locks the habit loop in place and the more it’s reinforced with the reward, the strong the link. The stronger the link, the harder the habit becomes to change.

Examples of rewards from above: 

Amazing tasting coffee

Craving satisfied with chocolate

Hunger fulled after eating bred

Stress relief after a drink

Repetition triggers long-term changes to the brain’s structure. These then become learned behaviours.

With time, the brain begins to expect and crave the reward as soon as the cue arises.

Every time we smell the fresh bakery bread we feel hungry. When we anticipate stress we crave that drink. When it’s 6:59 am we have a yearning for that rich aromatic blend of coffee.

Whether intentionally or by accident, whether good or bad, the habits we’ve formed follow this sequence.

Now that we know the anatomy and structure of habits and how they are formed, we can use this to build new habits and break old ones.

Find The Cue

The cue is the trigger for your behaviour. It acts as a reminder and the instigator of the sequence

The cue is what triggers you to do the habit, for example sitting at the kitchen table and grinding salt and pepper onto your meal before you start. The cue is sitting down with the plate in front of you.

How do we figure out what actually triggers us to do a certain behaviour? (Especially if we want to try and break or replace a habit)

We need to Find the Cue

Most habit cues fall into one of 5 categories:

- location

- time

- emotional state

- other people

- immediately preceding action

To change a habit:

To find out what your cue is for a certain behaviour, answer these questions every time you practice that behaviour for 1-2 weeks. (or however long it takes to identify the cue).

The one (or more) that remain consistent are likely to point to the cue.

Where were you?

What time was it?

How were you feeling?

Who were you with?

What happened beforehand?

Examples:

Time: If you tend to crave a sweet treat at 3pm every day

Location: If you pull into Maccas because you drive past it on your way home

Emotion: If you drink too much when you’re stressed

Preceding event: If you head to the fridge every day when you walk into the house

People: If you tend to overeat or indulge with a certain person/group

Once we have the cue, we can work on the plan. The plan is simply to then think ahead and figure out what your choices are when the cue occurs to rewire the habit loop.

What are your cues for a habit you're currently trying to change?

To build a habit, we can use cues as triggers.

Select one of the following cues:

Time: At 7am I will..

Location: When I drive past “x” I will

Emotion: When I feel stressed I will

Preceding event: When I walk in the front door I will

Other people: When I am with Dave, next time I will

The cues are our anchors that we attach our routines to. 

We’ve identified or created the cue.

The next step in the sequence is the routine.

The routine is the behaviour we practice immediately after the cue. 

This is the habit we are trying to build or change. 

It’s the drinking the coffee, the stress eating, the eating protein at breakfast, the stretching, the journalling, the sleep routine, etc.

If we want to change a habit, we can follow the principle of “Replacing Ryan”.

Sometimes it is difficult to change our cue, so our next best option is to replace the routine.

Take Replacing Ryan for example. 

Everyday at 3 pm (his cue), he craves a piece of chocolate. Since Ryan struggles to control his portions of chocolate, he wants to replace his behaviour. He is also trying to build a habit of having more protein in his diet so Ryan decides to replace his chocolate with a Protein Mousse his coach Josh told him about. 

Examples:

Time: If you tend to crave a sweet treat at 3pm every day, can you be prepared with a piece of fruit?

Location: If you pull into Maccas because you drive past it on your way home, can you drive an alternate way home?

Emotion: If you drink too much when you’re stressed, can you find a replacement behaviour when stress is triggered?

Preceding event: If you head to the fridge every day when you walk into the house, can you leave a note near the door reminding you to do something else?

People: If you tend to overeat or indulge with a certain person/group can you communicate with them and find an alternative activity that doesn’t involve food?

When trying to build a new habit: 

Time: At 7am I will write in my journal

Location: When I drive past Maccas I will get in the furthest lane to prevent drinking in.

Emotion: When I feel stressed I will call a friend

Preceding event: When I walk in the front door I will get changed straight into my gym clothes

Other people: When I am with Dave, next time I will meet him at a cafe instead of a pub.

When we have a new routine or a replacement in mind, try to plan it out and mentally rehearse yourself practicing it. You can also write down the steps of the sequence to help reinforce the chain events.

That’s Cue and Routine, next is the reward. 

Reward is the reinforcer.

This is what locks in the habit loop and makes it a continuous circle likely to be repeated.

What gets rewarded gets repeated. 

The reward is how habits are built and the stronger this link gets, the harder it becomes to change them. 

Our rewards are the taste, the satisfaction, the stress relief, the filling of a void, the enjoyment, the happiness, the dopamine rush, etc. 

Rewards are increases or decreases in pleasant or unpleasant sensations, emotions or thoughts.

Consequences can also be used as the opposite of the reward in order to try and break a habit.

If we consciously or subconsciously enjoy a reward, we naturally want to experience the reward again. A message is sent to the brain saying “that is good, give me more of that”. So it reinforces the habit loop including the Cue and the Routine. It remembers all the parts of the sequence.

If the opposite occurs and we don’t enjoy a consequence, the brain will send a message saying “nope, I do not like that, let’s not do that again” and it will also remember the Cues and Routines in order to avoid them in the future. 

The rewards/consequences can occur naturally or we can create them.

In the habit building or breaking process we want these to be immediate as they will have a greater impact on the habit loop. Long term rewards such as weight loss, improved health, improved sleep or long term consequences such as weight gain, poor health, poor sleep, etc don’t seem to be as effective because they are delayed. 

We want to bring the rewards forward, make them more instant.

Think of the carrot and the stick.

The carrot is the treat, the reward:

Treat yourself in a way that is aligned with your goals and reinforces the habit. It might be ticking it off your list, giving yourself some points or a high five. 

Be thoughtful about what new habits this reward itself might create.

Publicly show that you’re proud of your action.

If you have a great support network, tell them about it and check in with them to keep you motivated.

Visualise your desired outcome and remind yourself of it often. Tell yourself you’re moving towards your goal every time you practice the habit.

Track progress and celebrate all your wins.

Small wins reinforce the behaviour and increase your self confidence.

Set up some sticks

What will happen if you practice your undesired behaviour? 100 burpees? Write and read a poem on Instagram? 

Create a contract with yourself. The threat of breaking it can be a simple yet powerful motivator. 

Make a public commitment to people whose opinion you care about but who are not so close they won’t judge you if you fail.

You can either create a reward to build a new habit or add a consequence to break an old one.

This is how the habit loop is created or broken.

The 3 steps are now complete.

You have your cue.

You have your routine.

You have your reward.

Now we need repetition. 

Repetition triggers long-term changes in the brain’s structure (learning).

The structural changes that lay the foundation of our habits are triggered only by extended, consistent practice.