The Secret to Staying Motivated

How to make healthy living something automatic and effort-free

January 2021

By Alex White and Dr. Nick Beard

We tend to blame willpower if a new diet or exercise program fails. Many experts think we’re wrong about that. They say unconscious habits play a bigger role in guiding our actions than we believe. This is a crucial insight.

The good news

The view that habits drive our behavior has some positive implications:

• It explains why change can be so hard. We’re focused on the wrong thing. Instead of thinking about forming habits we focus on outcomes (‘lose 5 pounds’) and expect self-discipline to get us there.

• It explains why some people find things easy. Successful people don’t have more willpower; they have better habits. We’re all on autopilot most of the time, but their autopilots are better programed.

• You won’t need to try so hard. With good habits in place, you won’t need to make a conscious effort to eat well, exercise or relax. These things become as automatic as taking a shower or cleaning your teeth.

We should also stress that a habit doesn’t have to mean a big commitment. Tiny actions can have a huge impact because they signal to your brain that you are serious about making a change.

The bad news

The downside to accepting that our habits guide our behavior are:

• Bad habits are easy to form because they tend to give us immediate rewards. Sugar, for example, lights up the reward sensors in our brain as strongly as cocaine.[i]

• Good habits are hard to form because they tend to give us delayed rewards. We know the payoffs of eating well or exercising are huge, but we’re wired to prioritize immediate pleasure over long term benefit.

• Bad habits are hard to break. Some experts even argue that we never truly break habits. We just find ways to avoid or channel the cravings they create and to respond differently when we are tempted by them.

Evidence-based tips on how to build healthy habits

The 6 P's of habit formation

Promise

We’re better at acting on good intentions if we write them down. For example, writing ‘I will go for a walk in the park at 12 o’clock’ makes you more likely to do it. It is like a promise to yourself or someone you love.

People

Habits are contagious. Live and work with a smoker and you’re more likely to smoke. If you live with someone who jogs every day, chances are you’ll start exercising more, too. We can harness this difference for our benefit.

Process

Habits are like a computer program saying: ‘click this to open that’. This is true of both bad habits (like eating junk food after dinner) and good ones (like exercising after work). Again, the key is to use this to your advantage.

Place

Twenty percent of soldiers in Vietnam had a heroin habit. Eighty-eight percent of them successfully quit after getting home.[ii] Yet, most people leaving rehab relapse. Why the difference? The soldiers came back to a place where they had been clean. After rehab, most people go back to where they were using drugs. Surroundings matter.

Price

Habits don’t last if the cost (or ‘price’) exceeds the reward. The price could be measured in money or in the effort involved. The key is to make our new habits as cheap and easy to perform as we can.

Prize

Because our brains place more value on immediate rewards than delayed ones, we need to find ways to reward good habits right away. The bigger the reward we get from a habit the more likely we are to do it again.

Alex White and Dr. Nick Beard Co-Founded Brightplate.