How Habits Affect Our Lives: Becoming Better Humans Through Consistency

How do habits affect our lives? How do habits affect your life? Habits are a vital part of our daily activities, making up 40-45% of what we do on a daily basis according to recent studies. Why not become aware of how habits affect us to improve our lives?

What is a Habit?

So: Habits. What is a habit, exactly? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” Basically, habits are simply the things we do on autopilot, and are often what form the basis of our lives and what we perceive to be our identities. This is precisely why it’s so crucial to become aware of our habits so that we can keep the ones that are beneficial and change ones that aren’t so great.

How Habits Affect Our Lives

Every action we take, big or small on a daily basis, is a vote for who we want to become. Everything adds up over time to big results, just like how, in monetary investments, compound interest works to magnify small, individual actions. This is essentially how habits affect our lives; why it’s so important to become aware of how we spend our time in a day. Someone who habitually takes the stairs and goes to the gym regularly is likely in shape, someone who smokes in their spare time likely has sad and battered lungs, and someone who habitually makes their coffee at home instead of ordering Starbucks saves an extra $5-10 a day. These things all add up to results over time that are often greater than the sum of their parts.

How to Create Habit Systems that Work for You

Now to get into the juicy stuff: How to take charge of our habits and become the best versions of ourselves. How habits affect our lives is completely dependent on what our habits are — the good, the bad and the ugly. This week, try to document how you spend your time. Be as detailed as you can, and include even seemingly meaningless things like the time that you eat or go to bed. The amount of insight we can gain from this sort of record is actually pretty incredible — these little things tell us a lot about ourselves and give us a great starting point for changing habits, breaking bad habits and creating good ones. “Good” is relative, of course. It’s really just whatever serves you best in your life!

The most important thing here is learning to build good habits that last. Once you have this skill mastered, you can pretty much do anything else you want with your life.

As a quick breakdown, building effective habits entails having a solid “why”, or the reason why you’re doing what you’re doing, putting together a plan to stay on track when you feel unmotivated, creating accountability systems, and using the power of habit stacking and discipline in making something a habit.

Diving Deeper Into Creating Habits

Let’s dive a bit deeper into this. When it comes to having a strong sense of why you’re doing something, you are much, much more likely to stick with doing that thing in the long term if you know why you’re doing it than you are if you are sort of just, well, aimlessly flopping around. Your why is what will keep you going when things get tough. Motivation ebbs and flows; it’s your mindset that will keep you on track to creating new, good habits and eliminating bad ones.

Building a Motivation Emergency Kit

Next up in how to build habits that last: putting together a little motivation emergency kit. As we’ve talked about already, motivation is not constant. Definitely, definitely not. This being the case, it’s helpful to put together some things that will help you get back on track when — not if — you fall off the wagon a little bit. Compile some inspiring quotes or affirmations, a little vision board containing what you want to achieve by building these good habits. Throw in some comfy clothes and chocolates maybe, to remind yourself that life is good. Whatever works for you, do that!

Accountability Systems

Now for creating accountability systems and habit stacking. These are both super helpful when it comes to building good habits. If you want to get into the habit of running, get a friend to run with you. Or, sign up or a training program. Or, listen to guided runs (yes, that’s a thing, sort of like a guided meditation) that will help keep you motivated. When you start a habit with someone else — or even the illusion of someone else — you are much less likely to bow out because you don’t want to disappoint the other person, or break your streak in the program or challenge you’re completing.

The Power of Habit Stacking

Habit stacking is a bit different, but no less helpful. Habit stacking is based off of the idea that our habits are triggered by other habits, called instigator habits. For example, when you wake up, you automatically drink a big glass of water. Or, as soon as you finish eating lunch you go outside to smoke. In these cases, waking up and finishing lunch are the instigator habits — the ones that trigger other habits. We can use this to our advantage by setting up systems in which we insert a new habit after one that we already have. Perhaps tell yourself that as soon as you finish breakfast, you’ll meditate. Maybe it’s setting 20 minutes to read right after you brush your teeth. Then, stick with the new, good habit for a while and it will become just that — an automatic habit.

If you found value in this post, you may also enjoy the content on my blog. I'd love to connect with you there! In the meantime, have a beautiful day.

Wishing you so much joy and light,

Emma