When is the Best Time to Start a New Habit or Life Change?
While the time around New Years is often busy with the talk of goal setting and new habits, the fact of the matter is that:
The best time to start a new habit is when you are ready to break an old habit.
The research (Lally, 2009) has shown that it is easier to start a new habit than to stop one, and easiest to substitute in a new habit than start a new one.
Because cultivating habits and routines creates ingrained neural pathways in your brain, you can leverage internal cues and reminders that already exist at specific times and redirect that energy to your new routine behavior (Martiros, Burgess, & Graybiel, 2018).
It’s building a new overpass on the highway rather than building an entirely new interstate.
If you immediately reward yourself for that action you kick-off the brain’s “happy” chemicals and begin to “rewire” what is there. It should excite you and help you start to change what you are craving, and makes you more likely to act next time around. This is especially important when the change doesn’t feel like it has immediate benefits (like stopping smoking, exercising, dieting, learning any new skill…).
How Long Does It Take to Build a New Habit or Life Change?
There is some folklore around how much time it takes to create a new habit. At thirty days of a new habit you are just beginning to form new neural pathways, and only into the 66-144 day window (depending on if it's a substitute or fresh habit) does it start to feel more ingrained and require less willower (Lally, 2009).
In fact, research around the stages of change from “The Transtheoretical Model” (Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992) has found that people spend six months to five years growing their confidence in the change and feeling less tempted to relapse. However, don’t let that discourage you!
The name of the game is consistency, not perfection - you don’t have to do it perfectly to make change, just get back on the horse (Lally, 2009). It’s a marathon mindset.
How Might I Make the Change as “Easy as Possible”?
Start by making the time for your habit ridiculously small - less than thirty seconds.
Willpower will not sustain you, so focus on creating a system and a journey you will honestly enjoy and feel good about.
It’s about creating a series of mini habits and routines that increase your success in the long run while feeling successful every day.
For example, if I want to get back into an exercise routine, I might look to habit I don’t love, such as drinking multiple cups of coffee during the day. I could use the cue of when I usually want the third cup to be my cue to do some sort of exercise for 15 minutes. A first mini habit might be putting on your exercise clothes or shoes at the coffee break instead. Once you’re dressed and you get that chemical ping of success on your action, you’re more likely to then pick up your dog's leash or roll out your yoga mat. If you’re not sitting, stand still or lying down, you’re exercising!
Time is never an excuse! What are you ready to shift this year to help you reach your dreams?
References
Lally, Phillippa (2009). How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology. 40(6), 998–1009.
Martiros, Burgess, & Graybiel (2018). Inversely active striatal projection neurons and interneurons selectively delimit useful behavior sequences.Current Biology. 28 (4) P560-573.E5
Prochaska, J.O., DiClemente, C.C., & Norcross, J.C. (1992). In search of how people change: Applications to the addictive behaviors. American Psychologist, 47, 1102-1114. PMID: 1329589.
