The first step to forming a Habit

There are essentially four steps to forming a habit. I'm going to go over these one by one each week. This is only a quick overview but I hope it's a powerful learning tool you can use in your life.

The Cue

The first step to forming a habit is the cue. This is essentially what makes something a habit.

Something triggers you to perform a habit.

You wake up in the morning and that triggers you to brush your teeth because it's a habit. You sit down to watch tv and you get a snack. You started eating a meal and you get a soda.

Most of this is done subconsciously. One of the first steps to changing a habit is realizing it's a habit and admitting it's something you do subconsciously. Once you do that, you can consciously change it. We'll talk about that more later.

Back to the cue. There are two different types of cues: Internal or External.

An internal cue could be this: every time you feel stressed you stress eat, or every time you feel sad you eat dessert. Every time you feel a certain way, you do X, that's an internal cue. It comes from within you.

An external cue is you performing a habit after something external happens. Every time you go out with friends you drink alcohol. Every time your family goes out to eat you drink soda. Every time someone brings desserts to the office you eat at least one. An external situation caused the cue.

Right now I'm not going into whether these are healthy habits or not. But the point here is, these things are types of cues. If you did want to change a habit, you need to recognize the cues.

Your environment itself can be a cue.

Maybe every time you open the pantry you see that healthy snack and that can be your cue to eat something healthy.

Changing the cue, can change the habit. We'll talk more about that later.

Next week we'll look at the second step of a habit, The Craving.

See you then.

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