Why Habits are So Hard to Keep…
By: Matthew Taylor
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Development, Intentional Living, Habit Building, Habits

From my research, I discovered something that seems pretty essential to understanding all this: there are three phases of habit formation as outlined by Tom Bartow.

1. The first phase is known as ‘The Honeymoon.’ This is a relatively short period, 3 days to a week or so after you encounter the trigger which got you to think about and start trying to build whatever habit you’re trying to form. This is typically very easy because you are motivated as the trigger is usually something inspiring, let’s say you watched a YouTube video of someone playing the piano at a very-skilled level and you are inspired and decide to pick it up yourself, (that is an example of a trigger.) That is all well and good however the difficulty is that all honeymoons must end and so must your initial burst of inspiration and motivation.

The ‘Honeymoon’ Phase — Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash

2. The second phase is known as ‘The Fight Thru.’ As the name suggests, this is the part that makes a habit hard to build and maintain. Whatever habit you might be trying to build hasn’t yet become second nature like brushing your teeth is, when you wake up and before you go to bed, but you’re also beginning to lose motivation by this point. Because it’s not second nature, and therefore not yet a habit (which is defined as ‘an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary’) you have to make the conscious decision to carry out this activity or task each time you do it. Making that decision when you are low on motivation is hard though.

Forming a Habit is a fight to be won — Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash

3. The final stage, phase 3 is known as ‘Second Nature.’ This is when you get into the pattern of carrying out a certain habit so that it is an almost automatic activity and you don’t have to make the conscious choice to carry out the task every time you do it, as though you’re programmed to do it. There are certain factors which can interrupt this such as disruptions to your regular schedule, allowing negative results to discourage you or getting complacent and thinking you’ve succeeded when the habit still needs to be kept up and this can send you back to the second phase but generally if you‘ve got the habit into the Second Nature stage of habit formation, then you’ve hit your goal.

Habit Trackers can be useful in coming up with the motivation — Photo by My Life Journal on Unsplash

So it’s obvious, then, that we need to find a way to get through the second phase if we want to sustain a habit for more than a short period. So, how can we do this? First, you need to recognise the fact you are in this stage but once you’ve done that ask yourself 2 questions when trying to come up with the motivation to carry out the task:

How will I feel if I do this?

and…

How will I feel if I don’t this?

Remind yourself of the initial trigger and if you still can’t motivate yourself, imagine where you’ll be in 5 years if you sustain this habit and where you will be if you don’t. This is all in the name of showing yourself the positive consequences of continuing and the negative consequences of giving up.

That got quite technical but essentially if you’re in the middle of a rut of motivation then here’s a cheesy quote that can help start to shift your mindset.