Have you ever struggled to build good habits? Me too! Unless you are a rainbow unicorn, not only building good habits but consistently keeping them is really hard. Will power is hard. Self-discipline is hard. Doing the right thing is hard. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Although the world so often tells us to do whatever feels good, this is terrible advice for everyone. Lots of times, I feel like having a giant bowl of ice cream late at night. I feel like watching just one more episode even though it is way past a decent bedtime. I feel like scrolling social media even though I need to clean the kitchen after a meal. Most of the time I don’t feel like doing what I ought to be doing.
One habit that I have been struggling to establish for a long time, is the habit of drinking enough water. Water is like magic juice. If you don’t drink it, you get sick, and if you drink an adequate amount, it has untold health benefits, including increased physical energy, and mental clarity. I don’t know about you, but as a busy mom, those two things alone sound pretty appealing.
I have tried multiple creative ways to drink a sufficient amount of water, but none of them have really stuck. Lately, however, I have been using a super simple strategy that not only helps me drink more water, but also helps me to increase my willpower and decrease the amount I engage in bad habits. Sounds too good to be true right!
My formula is pretty simple. When I am about to engage in some less than great activity, like eating sweets (I have a terrible sweet tooth), I delay gratification until after a designated portion of the good habit has been completed. For example, I walk past a box of sweets and start to reach for one, but stop myself and wait until later in the day when I have finished a full water bottle. This not only gives me mini goals to focus on, but also means building up self discipline since I am delaying the instant gratification of eating sweets. This is not the same as simply giving yourself a reward every time you accomplish a goal, but rather, delaying some habit you already would normally engage in. It is important not to merely treat the gratification as a reward, or your brain will start to link the bad habit to the good habit. In my example, this would mean that I don’t immediately have something sweet after drinking a glass of water, but rather the next time I see the sweets and reach for them, it is ok to have one. Although I use the example of water and sweets for myself, it could be used in a myriad of different ways. For example, if you want to establish the habit of cleaning the kitchen after meals and you find yourself procrastinating by wasting time on your phone, you might delay scrolling social media on your phone until sometime after you have finished all of the dishes.
Although this method is simple, and works if I apply it, unfortunately simple does not always mean easy, and I am certainly not always perfect about using it. The great thing about it, however, is that no matter how many times I mess up, I can simply start again at any time. It doesn’t matter if I was faithful yesterday, or this morning, right now I can be faithful.
