Building New Habits

This is the super life hack that is the base of all other changes, how to make new habits.

Instructions

• Chunk down your new habit into the smallest goal possible. You won’t eat the whole elephant today, start with small bites, then when bundled together are large changes.
• Set a trigger or cue to do the new thing. An alarm, post it note, etc.
• Do the new thing.
• Give yourself a positive emotional reward. You’re Pavloving yourself, the stronger the reward, and the quicker it is given, the stronger the habit. This can be a brief internal imaging of your “new self”, fist bump, self high five, positive affirmations, etc.

A lot of self help resources say it takes “X days” to build a habit. How long it takes to build a habit depends on a number of factors, one of the biggest is how powerful and how quickly you give yourself a dopamine hit by giving yourself a positive emotional reward. Strengthening grit is a way to continue habits after motivation starts to wane.

Have any thoughts, questions, suggestions, or comments on this article? Broken link? Wondering how to this can be applied, modified, or adapted to your polyamorous, swinging, kink/ BDSM, or otherwise interesting relationship? Feel free to reach out to me here.