Tiny Changes, Big Results: How Micro Habits Can Change Lives

Change your life one small habit at a time. Learn how micro habits can make a big impact. Discover the secret to lasting change.

 

What Are Micro Habits and How Do They Make a Difference?

Everyone has habits, both good and bad. Habits are anything we repeat time and time again. They are automatic behaviours that become so ingrained that we aren’t always aware of them. Habits are generally a reflection of how we think and operate. We aren’t always aware of why we develop some habits, while other habits we make consciously to start or stop doing something. We may decide to take a daily walk to start a healthy habit or decide to give up table salt to banish an unhealthy habit. Starting and/or stopping behaviours can help improve our lives.

 

What are Micro Habits?

Micro habits are super small actions that require very little commitment. They are tied to goals which are much bigger, loftier end games and help make them possible. Imagine you have the goal to read more. If you don’t already have the time set aside for reading, it may seem like you couldn’t possibly add reading to your long to-do list. Creating the micro habit of reading one page per day is an excellent first step towards becoming an avid reader. Finding time in the day for one page in a book is nearly effortless. Once you establish the micro habit, expanding your reading over time is easier.

 

Micro Habits Are Great for Making Changes

A habit can be anything you repeat over and over again until it becomes automatic. Do you brush your teeth each night before bed? That’s a habit! Do you bite your nails? That’s a habit, too. Some habits are desirable, while others aren’t. Building or breaking habits can be easier when you break them down into micro-actions that are easy to adopt. Micro habits are great for making changes because they require little motivation or effort and have the staying power to shift behavior over time.

 

What’s the Difference Between Micro and Regular Habits?

Thinking about a habit as a system can help you better understand how your system may or may not work well. If your system is big and complicated, it can be hard to stick to, or you could be missing important steps. Breaking things down into micro steps reduces activities and behaviours to manageable micro habits.

So, developing the habit of vegetarianism may feel overwhelming if you routinely polish off a steak during dinner, but starting your vegetarian journey with one meatless meal each week is easy and can lead to a more sustainable habit.

Micro habits are effortless and make a big difference when trying to change behavior. Smaller habits, done routinely over time, can greatly impact your health and overall lifestyle.

 

 

Our Lives Reflect Our Habits- The Effects of Accumulation

Do you collect things? A collection starts with one or two items and builds over time. Whether it’s collecting t-shirts or rocks, the more you add to your collection, the larger it becomes. The accumulation of items expands and starts to represent you in a way. You become the guy or gal who loves band t’s or heart-shaped rocks and everyone knows it.

Habits can be a lot like that, too. The more we engage in certain activities, the bigger their presence is in our lives. In fact, our lives tend to reflect our habits. Let me show you how.

 

Your Finances Reflect Your Spending Habits

Your bank account reflects your spending and saving habits. Your average daily balance is a cumulative reflection of how well you spend and save money. Over time, your small money decisions add up and impact your wealth…or lack thereof. If you habitually save, the accumulation will show up in your savings account. If you habitually spend and live paycheck to paycheck, it will also reflect.

Small steps can make a big difference over time when it comes to micro habits. Saving as little as 10% of your income consistently adds up, and thanks to compound interest, there’s a big incentive to save.

 

Your Health Reflects Your Dietary and Activity Habits

Other than living with a chronic illness or injury, your weight, health, and overall lifestyle reflect your habits. The types of foods you eat, whether or not you exercise, and how tidy your home is all reflect the cumulative habits you engage in.

Simple but small habits like making the bed each day or pre-packing lunches can greatly impact your attitude and health. The small things you do daily add up to the results you see when you look in the mirror each morning or how you feel when walking into your home.

 

Nothing Happens Overnight

You won’t become wealthy by saving once or overweight by eating one piece of cheesecake. Nothing happens overnight. The accumulation of behaviours and habits adds up to your results. The good news is that micro habits can help you achieve your desired outcomes. Small things done over time accumulate, and the results can be amazing.

 

 

Habits Are More Important Than Goals

There’s a lot of information out there about goal setting. Businesses routinely create goals, and many people start the new year with a list of fresh goals, hoping to make positive changes in their lives.

Goals are important. They represent ideas, hopes, and dreams. If you’ve set goals before, you know the excitement of creating a vision and setting your sights on achieving it. Setting goals is important, but goals don’t mean anything if you don’t develop the habits to reach them.

 

While goals are important, habits may actually be more important. Here are three reasons why-

 

-Goals are Inspiring, Habits are Sustaining

-Goals are Complex, Habits are Easy

-Goals are Finite, Habits are Endless

 

Sustainability is more important than inspiration- Goals can be very inspiring. Dreaming up new ideas can get anyone excited about the possibilities. In the goal-setting phase, nothing is off-limits. As the saying goes- if you can dream it, you can do it, right? Not always.

Goals are inspiring and can motivate you to make changes, but as soon as the motivation wanes, so does your inspiration. Habits are more important than goals because they create something sustainable. Creating, engaging in, and adopting a habit morphs into something automatic that you can do whether you are inspired to or not. Brushing your teeth doesn’t require inspiration; it simply happens because it’s a sustainable, routine hygiene habit.

 

Ease is more important than doing things the hard way- Goals are complex because they don’t consider roadblocks or unforeseen issues, or their achievement is realistic. Goals are easily abandoned when they get hard because there isn’t a system to reach them. Habits are easy because they are small. Done consistently, they become effortless. Building a system of habits may take time, but in the end, it’s easier to get where you want to go by adding easy-to-do habits together.

 

Building a lifetime of good habits is more important than reaching a goal- Goals are finite. If you decide to run a marathon, your goal ends with the finish line. If you develop the habit of running each day, you have a life-long health habit that surpasses the goal of running a marathon. Setting a goal to make a specific amount of money by a certain due date is great, but developing the habit of making consistent income and saving every time you are paid builds wealth.

 

Goals are great, but building habits that help you reach and surpass them is more important. Ultimately, you can’t reach your goals without developing key habits that make it possible.

 

 

Are You Ready for Change? Here’s How You’ll Know

Deciding to make changes is a process. Deciding that thoughts, behaviours, and attitudes need to shift takes time. A light bulb rarely goes off, and your mind swiftly decides to change. It’s more likely that you’ll go through a process before making the final decision. There is a cycle that everyone goes through on their way to deciding to change. If you’ve considered changing your habits, you are likely somewhere on the scale. It looks like this-

 

1. Pre-contemplation
2. Contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. Maintenance

 

Pre-contemplation- Before people decide to change, they get inklings, warnings, nudges, or bits of insight that a change may be a good idea. In this cycle phase, there is likely no intention to make changes; it is only the pre-thought that perhaps a change is in order. This can also be a phase when others comment, give feedback, or share concerns that indicate you may need to evaluate the need to change.

 

Contemplation—This phase begins when the inkling to change starts to grow. It is a dynamic stage because the mind is often at war with the benefits of changing versus keeping things the same. Until the benefits of change outweigh the benefits of changing, there likely won’t be any commitment to changing habits.

 

Preparation- When change seems like a proper next step, preparation begins. Time frames may be set, or actions may be triggered. This could look like joining a gym, signing up for a meal delivery service, or making an appointment with a dietician. Planning for action is the natural step that precedes changing habits.

 

Action- The action phase can be lengthy or short, depending on how long it takes to internalize the new habits. This is a tough time because the action and implementation of new habits reveal roadblocks, and things can easily fall back into old patterns.

 

Maintenance- Once enough action has taken place and the new habits are routine and automatic, it’s all about maintaining the rhythm and keeping up the good work.

 

Note: Be prepared to re-cycle. At any time during the process, it’s possible to break the cycle and re-cycle through again. It’s normal. Sometimes, moving through the cycle in one phase takes longer and shorter in another. Everyone has their own pace. Once changes become permanent and the experience of change has normalized, it becomes easier to make changes in the future because you know what works best for you at each stage of the cycle.

 

You can gauge your readiness for change by finding yourself on the scale. Be confident that change will happen when the time is right.

 

Why Attempts to Change Fail and What You Can Do About It

An arguable but alarming statistic says that 70% of attempts to change fail. The reasons for failure vary but include-

 

-Resistance to change

-Ineffective systems or processes

-Lack of support or resources

-Bad timing

 

These, and a handful of other reasons, can lead to frustration and failure in pretty short order. Trying to change poor behaviour or start a new and better one is hard if you aren’t properly prepared for the shifts in attitude and actions needed to change. All change comes with growing pains, roadblocks, and a degree of difficulty. The key is to be aware and ready when they come.

 

Here are some great tips to help you stay in the top 30 percent and ensure your changes stick.

 

Make Micro Changes—Whether you are making a change to drop bad habits or shifting to change and begin new ones, start small. Wide, sweeping changes can be nearly impossible to stick with since they can trigger an avalanche of problems. It’s much easier to shift your behaviour in small ways and build on them as time passes. Make one small shift per week and add a new shift from there. This allows time to adjust to any hiccups that come up.

 

Celebrate the Small Wins- Goals are great, but you shouldn’t wait until you achieve them to celebrate. Attempts to change fail when you forget to celebrate the wins along the way. Every step you take towards change is symbolic and should be positively reinforced to help keep you motivated and moving forward.

 

Plan to Fail- Failing to plan is planning to fail, but there’s no way to ensure you won’t fail. You may take two steps forward and three steps back for a while until you permanently implement changes.  Allowing yourself room for failure is important. If you knew everything you needed to know to make the change, you likely wouldn’t be in the spot you’re in, so be kind to yourself and plan to fail, but never give up.

 

Get Amnesia- One of the reasons we fail is we compare our current attempts with past attempts and assume they will turn out the same way. We look for evidence that supports the belief we can’t or won’t be able to make permanent changes. Resist the urge to compare your attempts to other experiences you’ve had. If time has gone by, you are likely older, wiser, and better equipped to make change and whatever happened before isn’t guaranteed to happen again.

 

Most attempts at change fail, but they don’t have to. There’s a 30% chance that things will go well and you’ll achieve permanent change. Be mindful of your desire to change; your success rate will increase.

 

 

Build Better Micro Habits by Changing Your Environment

They say we are the sum of the five things that influence us the most. For the most part, we are the sum of…

 

-The five foods we eat most often

-The five people we spend the most time with

-The five ways we recreate regularly

-The five resources we use most to educate ourselves

And more!

 

Our Environment influences our Habits

Our environment greatly influences our habits. The things we do regularly, the people we see, and the activities we engage in are all moulded in our environment. When the environment is healthy, habits tend to follow. In the same way, an unhealthy environment can promote unhealthy habits.

It’s entirely possible to adopt poor habits in a good environment. Even when you live among health-conscious people, it’s common to become sedentary or eat unhealthy foods. The good news is that it’s fairly easy to shift your habits and make positive changes in this situation.

Breaking free and making better habits can be harder when your environment isn’t great.

Our environment is shaped by culture. Family, religion, career, and friendship all have a culture and it’s normal to be driven by being the same or similar to the culture. Breaking free can be hard, even when it’s the healthiest and best thing to do.

 

Change Your Environment, Change Your Habits

You have much control over the five things that influence you the most. Even if you can’t control every aspect of your life, you can still make the best of the available choices no matter what. In many cases, changing your environment can help you build better micro habits. Here are some ideas that can help-

 

Take a walk during lunch—If your co-workers tend to get takeout or go out to eat, shifting your focus during your lunch break can help. Set a micro habit of walking during your lunch break and use the time to be physically active rather than social.

 

Read during television time- Your family may relax and decompress by watching television. You can shift your focus and use the time to read, study self-help, or do something else for your benefit. You don’t have to leave the room; you can use your time differently.

 

Make a salad for dinner- Your family may be the meat and potatoes sort, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make small shifts. Create the micro habit of adding a salad to the dinner table each night. You may be the only one who eats it, but a small environmental shift can make a big difference.

 

Changing your environment can help make adopting micro habits a bit easier. Shifting the focus and reducing the influences of others can make it easier to create new habits that work for you, with or without their support.

 

Shoot for Sustainable Micro Habits- Less is Always More

There are no limits to the micro habits you can create to help you get headed in the right direction. There are unlimited ways to begin doing new things, but remember something important—less is more. Micro habits are just that—micro. They are teeny, tiny actions that, on their own, may seem insignificant, but they are perfect for building lasting change.

 

Keep Your Focus on Sustainability

Micro habits should be geared towards one thing: sustainability. Whatever micro habit you create should become something you can activate, repeat, and eventually internalize so it becomes automatic.

A great example of a micro habit could look like this: If you frequently misplace your keys, you can create the micro habit of hanging them on a hook beside the door every time you enter your home.

Initially, reminding yourself to hang the keys as you walk in will take a conscious effort. If done repeatedly, the action will become automatic, and you won’t have to think about it again consciously. The micro habit eventually becomes automatic; you never waste time or are late because you don’t misplace your keys.

 

Break Your Habit Down to the Barest Minimum

Designing a micro habit requires breaking it down to the barest minimal essence of a task. Think of it like a step-by-step plan towards a goal. If you set a goal to ‘read more,’ you can break the goal down until you create a micro habit that supports the goal and is sustainable for your lifestyle. A few examples of a micro habit to ‘read more’ could be

 

-Carry a book with you in your bag

-Read one page per day

-Read one page before bed

-Read one page before breakfast

 

These micro habits will be easy to adopt and become automatic over time. Carrying a book with you can open up reading opportunities throughout the day. Reading one page per day or before bed can easily lead to reading more each session. Creating the micro habit helps steer you towards the overall goal.

 

Did you know!? The great thing about micro habits is they build on one another. Once a micro habit becomes automatic, it’s a great time to piggyback off of it and add a new micro habit. An example could be piggybacking and reducing screen time by reading more. After mastering a micro habit for reading, you can tag a new one that supports reducing screen time. An example could be

Before scrolling social media, I read a page in a book

When I read before bed, I put my phone down for the night

Adding positive micro habits together increases their value and adds to your overall best practices in life.

 

 

Stop Trying to Change Too Much Too Soon

If you’ve ever gotten the bug to make radical changes and made many sweeping decisions only to wind up confused, overwhelmed, and defeated, you likely tried to change too much too soon. We are creatures of habit, and making too many radical changes can put our brains on tilt. The best way to make lasting changes is to start slowly and intentionally.

While there certainly are people who can stop doing bad habits cold turkey or adopt new habits in one fell swoop, most people need to ease into change for it to last. When we try to change too much too soon, it can confuse us. That’s because there is a time gap between deciding to change and achieving permanency. Along the way, a lot has to happen. Things like-

 

–Learning new skills

-Finding a better understanding of yourself

-Breaking bad habits

-Practising new behaviours

-Developing a different viewpoint

-Developing patience and persistence

 

If you change too many things at once, you may not be able to tell what’s causing problems.

For example- if you try to lose twenty pounds and in your efforts you

-Cut calories

-Join a spin class

-Cut out sweets

-Switch to diet soda

 

While it may seem like a surefire way to lose weight, too many changes open the door to an avalanche of problems. Simply making one of these changes can create stress and, at the very least, require a time of adjustment. Tackling all of them at once can be too much. Instead, focus on one micro shift in behaviour, and once you have adjusted, add another micro change. Here are the benefits-

 

-Micro changes allow for you to adjust to a new habit or stop a bad habit one at a time.

-Micro changes allow time to see what resistance pops up so you can manage it and move on.

-Micro changes help you see your strengths and weaknesses clearly.

-Micro changes reduce the odds of feeling overwhelmed and quitting.

 

Be patient. There’s no reason to race to the finish line when you want to make changes. Be focused and intentional, and list the things you want to change. Find the most appealing behaviour and build a new habit around it. Once you’ve mastered it, add a new behaviour, and so on. Ultimately, you’ll be more likely to adjust to the new routine, and the changes will be sustainable and permanent.

 

In conclusion, incorporating micro habits into our daily routines can profoundly impact our lives. By starting small and focusing on gradual improvements, we can create lasting change that leads to greater success and happiness. These tiny habits may seem insignificant initially, but they add to significant progress over time.

Whether it’s improving our health, productivity, or overall well-being, embracing the power of micro habits can truly transform our lives for the better. So why not start today by implementing just one small positive habit and see where it takes you? Your future self will thank you.