By Emily Kund

If you’re like me, there always seems to be a new goal out there you haven’t yet achieved. Maybe it’s drinking a gallon of water a day, eating your fruits and vegetables, or doing your mobility exercises. When faced with this challenge, I turned to the Tiny Habits® method to help hack my way to better health. Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford University has developed a method whereby focusing on tiny tasks can lead to big behavior changes.

Below are five easy steps to hack your way to healthy habits:

Step 1: Get out of the Grind

A lot of people rely on willpower to establish healthy habits. For some, when the willpower starts to run out, it seems like focusing on habits becomes a grind and the good progress slowly fades away. In his work, Dr. Fogg developed a model, which shows that behaviors are created when three elements - motivation, ability, and trigger - exist at the same time.

When a desired behavior is hard to do, even though we may be highly motivated, we rely on willpower or ‘grinding it out’ to try to affect change. Rather than rely on willpower, which requires a large amount of motivation and ability, Dr. Fogg found that by adding a specific trigger and making the desired action very easy, people found success.

Step 2: Get Tiny

One of the keys to successful behavior change is to make the action really easy to do. That means we must get tiny. A tiny action is one that takes less than thirty seconds to do, requires little effort, and is done at least once a day. For example, instead of flossing all of our teeth, we floss one tooth. When we pair the desired action with a specific routine, the new habit is manageable. Taking small, specific actions is easy and does not take a lot of time. A lot of clients say this is one reason why they are successful, because they feel like they can take that first small step. Some clients do more than the Tiny Habit (i.e. they floss more than one tooth), but the goal is to take the tiny action and celebrate it. Additional actions are like extra credit!

Step 3: Find what works for you

Sometimes the recipes we develop to make a change are not successful at first. This is where we practice and revise the habit recipe. If after practicing for a few days we still aren’t successful, the habit may need to be revised. Let me share my personal example. My goal was to drink a gallon of water every day. My Tiny Habits® recipe was this: After I step off the elevator, I will fill my water bottle. But I was unsuccessful with this recipe! When I asked myself why, I found that when I got to work, I was sometimes delayed because of traffic, and I just wanted to get started working. I still had this goal, so I looked at other ways I could create a habit around it. What worked for me in the end? Using the following recipe: After I pack my lunch, I will fill my water bottle. Now I have a full water bottle and I can get started working without disruption. Revision is part of the process and is totally normal. The objective is to find what works well for you!

Step 4: Visualize Success and Celebrate

Another tool to help people be successful at establishing and maintaining healthy habits is to mentally rehearse the habits. Celebrating is another key factor in developing good behaviors. When people mentally rehearse the Tiny Habit, including a celebration, this helps to make the habit more automatic in their daily routines. The positive emotion associated with doing the new habits each day makes us feel good, and this reframes our mindset and sets us up for long-term success. What’s one way to celebrate? Say, “I’m awesome!” You can also fist pump or do whatever feels natural for you.

Step 5: Grow

Whether it’s flossing one tooth or packing a piece of fruit in your lunch, this Tiny Habit is the first step towards change. Once the new tiny habit becomes automatic, you can start building on it by increasing the frequency in which you perform them. Examples of high frequency routines include:

· Washing hands
· Flushing the toilet
· Checking email or social media

Small actions can lead to sustainable behavior change, so take the first step by trying out a Tiny Habit tonight!