PPI #94: The Power of Habit: Setting Up "Triggers" to Sustain Habits

Are you fed up with not sticking to your habits? Well, then stick around for today's message because I'm going to be taking you through some things that you can install to give you a much better chance of sticking to the habits that matter most to you.

Hi, I'm Eric Partaker, and I help entrepreneurs close that gap between where they are and where they'd like to be from a peak performance point of view, from a company building point of view, or just from a life point of view. Today, I want to talk about habits because, look, the whole trajectory of your life, whether you achieve all the things that you want to achieve in your life or whether you don't, will be strongly linked to your ability to stick to the habits that you know are doing you well. And of course, to not be doing all the habits that you know are holding you back. So today I'm going to be sharing with you some techniques that you can use to get better at sticking to the habits that matter most. And it's also about using something called triggers. And look, for me, this is a massive area of personal development in my life. One of the coaching certifications and apprenticeships that I completed was with Professor B.J. fogg. He runs Stanford University's Behavior Design Lab. And the whole purpose of that coaching certification and apprenticeship was to understand how do we design behavior, or more simply, how, how do we create powerful habits that will do us good, that will serve us well, that will help us achieve the things that we're seeking to achieve. And I know you might be sitting there thinking that, well, I'm horrible though, Eric, at maintaining habits. I've tried this before. I just can't stick to stuff, you know, this isn't me. That's precisely the point, though, of today's message. This is about how you can introduce what's called triggers and to increase your ability to stick to your habits. Okay, so we're going to be talking today about a handful of things that you can do, all called triggers, to help you stick to your habits. Now, what are triggers? Well, if you've read the book the Power of Habit, fantastic book. If you haven't read it, highly recommend it. You'll understand that all habits break down into what's called a habit loop. So the habit loop consists of three parts, and it basically starts with a trigger. Or you think of this as like the event that happens right before the behavior or the habit. So you have something that triggers a habit, and then you perform whatever that behavior is. And then there's an aspect of it called the reward, which is why you do the habit, because you're seeking some kind of reward, you know, physical, emotional, mental, whatever that may be. So with this in mind, we can design triggers, we can design events right before the habit that we'd like to be doing, or we can design triggers, we can design events, things that will happen, such that they remind us to do this new habit. And the more times that the trigger happens, and then the more times that we do the habit, the more that becomes ingrained in our psyche. And after a period of time, often we don't even, maybe even need the trigger that we are using to cue or to signal the habit. So let's go into a few different areas in which you can be using triggers to. To start creating the habits that you're seeking to create in your life. So the first area that I want to talk about with regards to triggers are phone alarms. Now, I use phone alarms all the time. I have alarm for so many different things. You know, one of my boys, he's joked around with me before, saying, you know, dad, you even have a phone alarm that says, brush your teeth. I mean, I don't actually need a phone alarm to brush my teeth. I brush my teeth. But the point is, is that I've used my phone alarms, you know, quite a lot to trigger new habits. Not always, but especially in the early days, to get a habit going. But there is one particular area where I've used a phone alarm every single day now for years. And it's to define how I want to be showing up in certain areas of my life. And I think about my life across my health, wealth and relationships. And I'm using this as a little story, a little example of, of how you could use triggers and phone alarms in particular to start showing up in a better way to cue certain habits. So what I use in this example is I use my phone alarms to trigger a way of being across those three areas that I previously mentioned in life. My health, my wealth, or my work and relationships. So at 6.30am, the first alarm on my phone goes off and it says, world Fitness Champion. And that's to cue that identity, that Persona, that version of me who's going to go to the gym. And it changes the way it forms this habit of me showing up with a lot more conviction, a lot more confidence, a lot more determination, because I'm cueing that version of me. It's creating this habit of showing up more strongly, all because I've simply come up with a little phrase and put that on my phone as an alarm to queue that version of me. Second alarm for me goes off at 9am it says world's best coach. Similar sort of thing to kind of cue that version of me, you know, to create that habit of showing up, you know, with my work as strongly and as confidently as possible. And then the last alarm that I have on my phone is at 6:30pm it says World's best husband and father. To prompt the question, well, how would the world's best husband and father walk through that door right now? You know, as my work day is coming to an end and I'm transitioning to home life, I want to cue the habit of showing up as my best, you know, as a husband and father. And so I use a phone alarm for that. One other quick area that I use a phone alarm for, from a habit forming point of view is I have an alarm in the evening set at, well, these days I put it at 8pm and it just says Digital Sunset. You can name a phone alarm whatever you like when you're setting it. And so Digital Sunset pops up on my screen when that goes off. And that is to cue the habit of shutting off all the electronics so that I'm not looking at any of that harmful blue light, which reduces your ability to sleep at night just before bed. So I'm kind of freeing myself up from all of that electronic stimulation so that I end up sleeping better. But you could set a phone alarm and use that as a trigger to cue all types of habits. So if there's a habit that you'd like to do more regularly, especially at a certain time of day, or if it's just that you want to cue or signal a certain kind of way of being, as I've done with that example that I, you know, with the example I provided. Well, think about using your phone, right? Because the thing with our phones is, you know, rightly or wrongly, we have them with us like nearly all the time. So start using it as a device, as a trigger device to bring out and help you develop whatever habits that you're seeking to work on. The second thing that you can do with regards to trigger, or the second area, if you will, in which you can create triggers is your environment. So think of that in terms of like your location. If you can plant or create environmental cues, they will trigger whatever habit that you're trying to form. Let me give you a quick example. Let's say that on a daily basis you'd like to start reading in the morning, even if it's just for five minutes or 10 minutes. So one of the things that you could do is take the book that you'd like to start reading and put it, you know, on the kitchen table, maybe next to the coffee pot, wherever it is that you're not going to miss it. So that one of the first things that you're going to see in the morning is that book. Now don't put the book like at the foot of your bed because yes, it might be the first thing you see in the morning, but then you're going to perhaps trip over it or walk by and start doing other stuff. You want to put it strategically in the place, in the location where by seeing it, it's at the exact right moment where you could also then be picking it up and taking it. And you're doing that right there in that moment, reading the book. So you want to strategically place that book in the right space within your environment so that you're ready to start working on, on your reading habit and you can apply this to other things as well. So if you want to kind of cue yourself to work out in the morning, you could lay out all your workout clothes and have those ready to go in the location in your room that you can't miss. And that will by sight make you think, okay, yeah, I got to put those clothes on that I laid out the night before and it's time to go work out. The other thing that you can think about when it comes to environment is just having a particular location that you associate with all always doing a certain habit. Let's say if you're working on writing a book or trying to learn a new skill, associate that maybe with a particular type or, sorry, a particular location, you know, in your home so that you know that whenever I go into this room, I always do this, this, this particular thing. And then whenever you're in that room, that will trigger, you know, that habit and that, that desire over time to, to work on whatever it is that you're trying to work on. Another area in which you can create triggers relates to time. So I'll give you a quick example here. Every Thursday morning at 10am without fail, I send out a weekly Peak Performance Insights email to my subscribers. And by the way, if you're interested in Peak Performance Insights and you'd like super practical, simple tips to help upgrade your business or life or.

Simply your desire to reach your full potential, then head over to my website@ericpartaker.com where you can subscribe to that newsletter. So every Thursday morning at 10am without fail, I send that newsletter. And because I've been doing that so often without fail, every Thursday morning at 10am it's become this habit. I don't even have to think about it anymore. I know Thursday morning, 10am I've associated that with a newsletter going out. So I always know that it's either on Wednesday morning or Thursday morning, depending on what my schedule looks like, where I'll be working on that newsletter. So I've associated a particular habit, sending out the newsletter, with a specific time within the week, and that's helped me trigger that habit in a much better way. There's no chance of forgetting it because it's always associated with that time, same time, every single week. So you can think in your own life where what are the best times of day or times of week or sorry, days in the week that would most logically link to the habit that you're trying to form? And then the secret there is to always do that the same every single week. Don't keep changing up the time of the day or the day of the week. It will be much less likely that that habit will form. The habit needs consistency. So same time of day, same day or days of the week, and that will help you trigger whatever new habit that you're trying to form. Another fantastic area that you can use to create triggers for good habits is in the arena of emotions. So whenever you have a positive or a negative emotion, you can start associating and linking a particular habit to that. So let me give you two quick examples.

In general, I find that the peak performers that I'm working with are the people who want to achieve peak performance in their business or life. They're not so good at respecting or appreciating the things that have gone well in their day or life. And one of the most powerful things that you can do in that regard is to create a habit around gratitude and appreciation for the things that have gone well and that you are enjoying. And so the trigger that you would use in this instance is getting into the habit of whenever you feel positive or happy or super grateful about something, you take note of that throughout the day. And you could do this in the moment, or perhaps you do it at the end of the day and you reflect back to when did I feel happiest or.

You know, the most positive during the day and just develop that habit of using that emotion as a trigger for noting whatever it was that made you feel that way. And over time, when you do that, you start to generate more happiness in your life simply because you're using the emotion as a trigger to record and note whatever it was that that emotion was a result of. Now, you can also do this for negative emotions. So we've all been here. You get angry, frustrated, and typically when that happens, we might lose our cool or say something that later we regret. And a nice habit to link to those emotional states is whenever you get flustered or, you know, frustrated or anxious or angry, you can link the new habit of just pausing.

Just pause, take a deep breath, you know, walk out of the room, go for a walk. Develop that habit of creating a bit of space between whatever is the trigger and your response to that by taking a pause. And the side benefit of doing this is that your response will almost always then be better. So another example of how you can use an emotional state as a trigger to then perform the a habit that you think will serve you well. And last but not least, one other area or arena which you can use as a trigger for good habits is simply the art of making and creating checklists. So if there are certain things, certain habits that you'd like to start doing on a daily basis or, you know, throughout your day, or make sure that you've done by the end of your day, create a checklist. Create a checklist that perhaps you review at the start of the day and perhaps that you check in with at the end of your day to make sure that you're doing the things that you want to be doing. And the checklist itself becomes a trigger. So you can have all of your activities on there that you're looking to do. And you can combine this with some of the other methods, right? So you could set a phone alarm that says check, you know, checklist, and that could be set at the start of the day so that you're checking in and you're saying, okay, here's the things that I know lead to a great day for me, and I'm going to try to tick off all of those things on a daily basis. So I hope you've enjoyed that. And if you head over to my website@ericpartaker.com you'll also be able to subscribe to my weekly Insights newsletter.