Get Triggered! How to Build a Rock Solid Healthy Habit

Practical tips for habit forming

Hello friends,

Change is hard. We know what we want to do, what we need to do. But we don’t do it.

This is one of the biggest challenges I hear:

“How can I get myself to exercise/ walk more/ go to the gym/ do yoga? I know I should do it, I want to do it, but I just don’t know how to get in the habit of doing it. It’s so hard to even get started. I just want to forget about it.”

Yeah. It does seem like it’s impossible. It’s like a big mountain, and we’re looking at the peak from the bottom, thinking, I can’t do this.

I have faith in you. You can do it. You can build a new healthy habit that becomes automatic and easy to do, day after day. It won’t be so hard once you build yourself a system.

What qualifies me to talk about it?

Simple. I’m so lazy.

Yet, I do a lot of stuff because I trained myself like the dumb mutt I am to just do it. I had to learn all these underhanded methods to trick my lazy ass into doing things I didn’t want to do, like these:

• Yoga every morning

• Meditate 10 minutes a day minimum

• Write some books

• Going for walks after work

• Remembering to wash my popcorn

Motivation is a useless illusion, a distraction. It gets you excited, but it doesn’t last. I did all of my stuff without motivation. Instead I created systems, and plugged my lazy ass into them.

Let the system do the work. Trigger, behavior, reward. Done.

Stick with me and we’ll dive into how to build a rock solid habit. And if you want to come up with a personalized plan, I’m ready to help you with that too.

Pick a Specific Behavior

The first thing you need to do is get specific. You’ll never build any sort of habit on vague hopes, wishes and aspirations. That’s the stuff of motivation. Airy fairy illusions.

“I want to be healthy” is vague and wishy washy. “I want to go to the gym and work out three times a week” is specific.

“I want to have a morning routine” is vague. “I want to get up and write in my journal for 15 minutes each day” is specific.

“I want to walk more” is vague. “I want to walk at lunch and get 6000 steps a day” is specific.

“I want to write a book” is vague. “I want to write 500 words a day and have my book rough draft completed in 4 months” is specific.

For your first habit build, pick something simple and easy to start. Write it down or put it in the notes on your phone, and go to the next step, picking/ designing a trigger.

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The Trigger

If you want to start a new behavior, the easiest way to get moving is to pick or create a clear signal for yourself that it’s time to do the thing. If it isn’t a super-obvious trigger, then you leave it up to chance, memory, and your mood to do the activity.

A good trigger is obvious, specific, and easy to arrange.

It’s best to not set it at a specific time, though. for example, if you want to start walking every day and pick 5PM as “Start walking!” time, what happens if you work 15 minutes late or get stuck in traffic, and don’t get home until 5:20? I’ll tell you what happens. You missed the trigger. Why bother walking now?

If, instead, you pick “Walk when I get home,” it isn’t tied to the exact time. Being 15 minutes late is no longer a deal breaker.

Here’s an example of one I’ve used, and still use.

When I wanted to start doing a daily yoga routine, I couldn’t remember to do it. I would get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, etc. Then about 15 minutes too late, I’d remember. “Yoga! Shit, too late. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.”

The next day, the same thing would happen. I’d “forget.”

So I built a trigger for myself. The night before, I unrolled my yoga mat in a spot where I had to step on it to get to the bathroom.

It’s easy to do things like this, because night-time me doesn’t have to DO the yoga, just put out the mat. Night-time me doesn’t care how hard he screws over morning me. I set a trap to catch myself.

Next morning, all unsuspecting and bleary-eyed, I stepped on that mat. Boom. I remembered my plans, and I almost had no choice but to follow through. I already had the mat out. If I didn’t use it, I was gonna have to just roll it up and put it away like a loser.

As soon as I started doing this, I got my yoga done at least 4 days out of 7. It wasn’t a perfect go. Sometimes I still couldn’t make myself do it. But every night I rolled out that mat, and my trigger was set.

After about three months, that habit was on autopilot, and I’m still doing it years later.

Common Triggers:

• Environment. You can set this up for yourself by choosing your location, or putting items in your path. Putting my yoga mat in the way is changing my environment. Driving past your gym instead of down the street with McDonalds on it is changing your environment.

• Time. This is one of the most used triggers. As mentioned earlier, it’s better to keep it a floating target, like “when I get up” or “at lunch break.” That way, if you miss the exact hour, your trigger will still work. You can use an alarm on your phone to notify you of a planned time, too.

• Preceeding event or action. This is my yoga mat trick in action. The event or action is me seeing or stepping on that mat. Other triggers of this sort are any habit that is triggered by an event in your life. For example, a notification on your phone is the trigger to look at the screen. You could use events like when you get off a zoom call, when you arrive home, when you see your significant other arrive, etc.

• Other people. The easiest way to use this to create positive habits is to choose people to hang around with who do that habit. For example meeting your friend to go for a walk. When you see them, you walk. Hanging out with the wrong people is a good way to reinforcer negative habits, like a social smoker who has friends that smoke.

Once you’ve picked a trigger, write it down with the activity that you want to follow. Or at least make a note in your phone.

Your intention is important. After you write it down say it out loud, do whatever you have to do to pound it into your mind. Here are some examples:

“After I get up and brush my teeth, I will do my workout.”

“After I get out of the bathroom in the morning, I will go straight to my desk and write 500 words.”

“When my 12:00 AM alarm goes off, I will walk outside for fifteen minutes.”

I’m telling you, it will make a huge difference if you write it down. Don’t skip this step! Type it if you must, but record it somewhere besides in your silly little head. Just thinking it hardly counts.

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Make It Easy

This is another crucial step. Starting something new needs to be as easy as you can make it. If it’s hard, complicated, and inconvenient, why would you bother?

You won’t.

There are rare unicorns that are filled with glee when they have to struggle. But the rest of us just don’t have the motivation to get over the hump of trying hard long enough to build a habit. We need it easy.

When I wanted to start daily yoga, I made it so super simple even a lazy moron like me could do it. I had my yoga mat right there. I laid out comfortable clothes the night before. I looked for a video to guide my morning yoga THE NIGHT BEFORE and had it in my favorites.

I didn’t try to make myself travel to a yoga studio to learn in front of super bendy females where I would maybe fart in public and die inside from embarrassment.

Way too hard. I did it in my home, in my pajamas. I couldn’t have made it easier.

Whatever you can do to make it easy, do it!

Imagine that Bob wants to start going to the gym after work. But he always forgets until he’s driven past the gym. Or he doesn’t have his workout clothes.

Bob could put his gym clothes in a bag, and put that bag on the driver’s seat of his car before he goes in the office. When comes back out after work, he has to pick up the bag and move it. Trigger! Bob has changed his environment and made it easy, so there’s no barrier to entry. Now he will remember to stop at the gym, especially if Bob makes a point of putting the gym bag on the passenger seat in plain view.

Think about your goals. How can you make it easy on yourself? Prep for success. Set yourself up to win.

If you want to write every day, have your supplies ready to go. Your laptop should be on standby, at a clean working space. Make sure your lucky charm is on display, front and center. If you have to get the laptop out, plug it in, and mess around to get the mouse working, that little bit of friction could stall you out.

If all you have to do is sit down, the barrier to entry is lower.

If you want to walk on lunch break, first thing in the morning set your favorite walkin’ shoes out where you can see them. Getting ready before the activity starts saves time, makes it convenient in the moment, and reduces mental friction.

If it’s easy, you’ll do it. If it’s hard, you probably won’t.

Bad habits usually form when they’re super easy to do. Think about your bad habits. How much work is it to scroll too much on your phone? Is it complicated to eat too much junk food, or is it easy?

Make the good habits easy too, and you’ll have a lot more success. Imagine how hard it is to start a new gym habit if you have to travel for two hours to get there, as opposed to a five minute walk.

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The Reward

There are three parts to any habit: The trigger, the behavior, and the reward.

People. They’re simple like dogs inside. You want us to roll over? Yell “Roll over!” and hold out a biscuit. The dog will learn to roll over.

Important: Don’t use dog biscuits to train yourself.

Milk Bones DO taste great, but food is a poor choice of reward unless weight gain is one of your goals.

When I was training myself to do yoga every morning, my reward was a cup of coffee and cuddles with our family pet. Our cat watched me while I was on the mat, eager to get her scratches once I was done.

Shortly after finishing the yoga set, I poured a fresh cup of coffee and the cat came to sit with me, every morning.

One of my friends has decided that he won’t let himself use his golf simulator until he finishes his workout. Playing a few rounds of golf is his reward.

What’s your dog biscuit? Pick something that you can do immediately after you do your chosen activity.

• Get a green smoothie or snack AFTER the gym.

• Watch Netflix AFTER you cook supper from scratch.

• Get to take your dog for a walk AFTER you complete the thing.

• Read a chapter in that fiction book AFTER you write 500 words.

The rewards that have worked the best for me were ones that gave me permission to relax and didn’t cost much.

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What If I Miss a Day and Lose My Streak?

Streaks are dumb. There, I said it.

If you miss a day, not a problem. Just do it the next day. Don’t even think about the one time you missed it.

Just don’t let it become two or three days. The next time your trigger hits, do it.

This isn’t about perfection. We aren’t perfect. One of the keys to my success with habit forming is not giving much of a shit about missing a day here or there. I tried the whole “endless streak of perfect action” thing and it doesn’t work. It causes people to quit and give up, because life happens and they miss days.

So if you miss a day, no worries. Your new habit is only at risk if you quit.

Don’t quit. Just do it the next time the trigger hits.

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Your Turn

All right! Now you have tools to make habit forming easier than ever. I really want you to try it out and report back. The best way to lock in this information is to use it.

One habit I recently built is to always flip my phone over or put it in my pocket when I’m talking to someone else.

Trigger: Someone is talking to me

Behavior: Put away my phone

Reward: After we are done talking, I get to check my phone.

This is now a habit with a built-in reward system. Try it for yourself and your life will be better, I guarantee it. What have you got to lose? Nothing but a few moments of screen time, and I know we can all spare some of that.

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Do You Have any Tips or Tricks to Share?

I’m always looking for helpful examples that I can give to others to help them make habits. If you’ve got a good one, please leave a comment at the bottom!

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It’s an opportunity to make positive changes in your life. Let me help you come up with a plan! Then, we can set up milestones and check-ins to keep you on track.