Find your MAP to your Habits

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Feb 2, 2022 | Maria Benzo | @mvbenzo | Comments (12)

To change or incorporate a new habit is difficult.

I want to share Tiny Habits®, a method designed by a scientist at Stanford University, Dr. BJ Fogg, that you may find useful (I do). For starters, habit formation is a skill, the more you practice the better you get, but Tiny Habits aims to rewire the brain to make your habit second nature.

For any behavior change to happen there are three ingredients: first motivation to do the behavior, second is the ability to do the behavior and the third is a prompt or anything that reminds you to do the desired behavior. Yeah! When those three ingredients come together at the same moment the behavior happens, it creates a pathway in your brain for further changing your behavior

A secret to start planning is to make the behavior really easy to  incorporate.  Identify the smallest (tiny) version of the habit that you want to incorporate in your life. When we say habit we mean an actionable behavior, not a long-term outcome. For example, a behavior can be "eat one fruit per day" which is different from an outcome "lose weight". We want to focus on tiny actionable behaviors that are easy to accomplish. A little advice…lower your expectations: Take any new habit you want and scale it back so it's super tiny and simple so that it's almost like you have no excuse not to do it. So even when you're in a rush or you're sick or you're distracted, it's so tiny you can still do it.

Then you find where the tiny change fits (anchor) naturally in your existing routine. For example, do you turn on your computer each day, do you brush your teeth, do you prepare a cup of coffee, do you put on shoes? Any repeated action that you already are in the habit of doing daily can serve as an anchor moment for you to attach the new habit that you want.

Then every time you do this tiny change you need to fire off a positive emotion (a celebration). It can be a "Woohoo!", a fist pump, a smile, a happy dance, it can be whatever makes you feel good.

Like mnemonics? Check this...There are three things to consider when choosing your new habit and this can be summarized in the acronym MAP.

M: Motivation; Why is this new habit important to you? Why does it matter that you do it?

A: Ability; Is this behavior doable? Is this something within your control?

P: Prompt: When will you do it? What will be your Anchor moment?

So here you have it, find your MAP to your new habits, and make your own recipe so it will work.
Then, just do it.

Related blog posts:
The power of tiny actions