Happiness Hack: Habits

We all have habits both good and bad. Habits are made up of four parts: the cue, the craving, the response and the reward. The cue is the trigger to the brain to signal an opportunity for a reward. The craving is the emotional relevance for that cue. The response is the habit or behavior that is performed to get the change you desire. The reward is the satisfaction gained from the action that was taken. This builds a pathway from the cue to the state of pleasure so every time you experience that cue your brain will be triggered to want that pleasure again. This will prompt you to perform the same action, and there you have it, a habit is formed.

So what does this have to do with happiness? There are so many small habits you can add to your day that will bring joy. In James Clear’s Atomic Habits, he discusses the power of making small improvements in behavior because these behaviors compound. An example Clear gives is saying one nice thing to your spouse won’t make a massive change in your relationship, but doing it every day will. So start by doing one thing to make you happy every day. Then use the power of habit stacking to add another habit. Habit stacking is the practice of pairing a new habit with an existing habit to make it stick. For example, maybe you get the floss out every time you brush your teeth to remind you to floss after.

Another technique to keep up habits is to use a habit tracker. I use Habit Tracker (iOS) and the thing I love the most about it (this was hard to choose — there are so many awesome features) is that it gives you partial credit so you still keep a streak going:

So you can see, some of the brush teeth are not as brightly colored as the rest and on those days I only brushed once (whoops don’t tell my dentist) but it still colors it in some so it’s not an all or nothing mindset. You can also connect it to Apple Health so it will automatically bring in your steps, calories, and even water if you use a fancy water bottle like the Hidrate Spark (affiliate link) like I do. You can also set goals for the week like the number of miles to cycle or that you’d like to contact your parents on the weekend or your friends. You can even share goals with friends and complete them together (not totally sure how this works as I’m not using it but it sounds neat).

For my brush teeth habit, I bought a connected toothbrush that gamifies brushing your teeth and sends you a report on how you did that month.

The Hum toothbrush from Colgate is pretty remarkable. It also has an interactive brushing guide to make sure you get a complete brushing.

Reading books has never been something that came easily for me as I am so easily distracted (thanks ADHD) and find myself having to reread the page over and over again, but there are many non-fiction books that I have a genuine interest in consuming. Enter audible. I have to take my dog Bert for two 40 minute walks a day as he is a bit shall we say chunky and it’s good for both of our overall health. That’s 80 minutes of “reading” time every single day. By habit stacking, I was able to add reading to my daily habits with no problem.

Next habit I tackled was journaling. I set aside time in my morning routine after I brushed my teeth and walked and fed Bert to journal. Even if all I did was open my Day One (iOS/Mac) app and wrote “I don’t know what to write today”. Or talked about the weather and how weird it is that it was 80F yesterday and then a freeze warning today. Eventually my entries became longer and more involved but if I’m struggling I’ll look up prompts or revert to “I don’t know what to write today” over and over again for 10 minutes. Usually something comes out of that.

Lastly, I’ve added meditation to my daily habits. I generally do a sleep meditation before going to bed to help me relieve myself of the worries of the day and drift off into a peaceful sleep. According to Psychology Today, meditation is the strongest mental practice that has the power to reset your happiness set point, thus turning you into a more joyful person and actually rewiring important areas in your brain.

Happy habit hacking!