When we look at improving our health, we talk a lot about upscaling our daily habits to help align them with the health outcomes we want, whether that is better posture, to move more or to function better. This week, we are delighted to have some wonderful words of wisdom shared by Ellie’s sister, Pippa Pennycook (Head of Client Strategy at Cowry Consulting), about the how to change your habits!

Behavioural Science explains our decision-making through a series of mental shortcuts, or biases, that our ancient brain uses to avoid being overwhelmed. These shortcuts allow us to make rapid, intuitive and cognitively effortless decisions, often driven by emotion.

By understanding these behavioural biases, we can use them to our advantage when it comes to starting, stopping or continuing certain behaviours. Read on to discover 5 top tips to hack your habits.

1 – Use the Fresh Start Effect

This psychological principle shows that we look to certain milestones (or temporal landmarks) in our future as opportunities to change our behaviour. This could be a new year, a new month, or week. But it can also be certain life stages such as birthdays, getting married, or having children. The reason for this? These ‘fresh starts’ give us a heightened sense of optimism and motivation to make a change, and means we’ll be more likely to commit to them.

Think about how you can make the most of a fresh start – set simple new habits to start on the 1st of the month or send emails or texts you need people to reply to on a Monday to make the most of their fresh start effect!

2 – Make The First Step Easy

Another way to motivate our behaviour is to feel the progress or momentum quite quickly. This relates to our preference for things that give us instant gratification (like getting money today) over delayed gratification (getting money in a month’s time). By finding ways to make the first step feel easy, we can build a commitment to continue the progress we’ve made so far, with small and incremental changes.

For example, if you’re looking to eat more healthily, don’t switch all your meals at once. Start with something simple like breakfast and work. your way up to all your meals.

What’s more, goals that are framed as starting something are more effective than quitting something. Try saying “I’m going to start eating more vegetables” rather than “I’m going to stop ordering fast food”.

3 – Make Your Progress Visual

Seeing where you are in your journey towards a goal can make you more likely to complete it. This relates to a concept called Goal Gradient – our efforts and commitments towards our goal increase as we approach it, and we’re more likely to finish a task if it looks like we are closer to completion.

People are more likely to pitch into charity campaigns as they approach their target. This is because they feel more impact and satisfaction in donating at a later stage.

Make your progress more visual by keeping track of daily habit successes or goal progress, to reflect on where you are and how much you’ve achieved. Similarly, having an accountability partner helps you to continue building motivation and share your wins more publicly.

4 – Give Yourself Something To Lose

In our minds, losses loom larger than gains. This means that people are actually more motivated to avoid losing something than they are to gain something.

Vitality, the health insurance app provides subsidised apple watches as part of their health insurance packages on a monthly payment plan. However, if you don’t earn enough activity points in a month, you lose out on the subsidy and have to pay the full cost for that month. Psychologically, this works because not only are you feeling the sense of loss from paying more, but you’re also feeling the pain of paying which is also a strong driver of certain behaviours.

See if there’s anything you can work to keep, to incentivise the behaviour or habit you’re trying to change. Perhaps have a reward to look forward to, like an activity, a dinner out or a day trip.

5 – Stack Your Habits

You probably already have lots of positive habits that you do daily without even thinking about it. The concept of ‘habit stacking’ increases the likelihood that you’ll stick with a habit by stacking your new behaviour on top of an old one. That way, when you complete the usual behaviour, your brain will cue you to perform the new one you’re trying to turn into a habit.

Say to yourself” When / Before / After I [complete the current habit], I will [complete the new habit]; for example, “When I brush my teeth in the evening, I’ll stretch my calves at the same time”.

And for anyone interested in learning more about habits, here’s three great books to get you started:

•               Good Habits, Bad Habits – Wendy Wood

•               The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg

•               Atomic Habits – James Clear

Heal > Adapt > Evolve