Building Better Habits for a Fresh Start

Starting a new habit is hard; it is only natural to get stuck in whatever pattern you currently find yourself in, even if that pattern is painful. The packed schedules that high performers face make it doubly hard to start new habits.

One of the problems with starting a new habit is that our brain likes familiarity, and all our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are interconnected. When you walk to work the same way, sit at the same desk, and have the same coffee order, changing one piece of your day (like going to the gym instead of immediately going home, or tracking billable hours first thing each morning rather than letting it pile up at the end of the month) is a jarring change from the “business as usual” approach that our brain loves.

One way out of this trap is to disrupt this inner sense of sameness. Research on the “Fresh Start Effect” shows that habit formation behaviours, like gym membership subscriptions, spike around landmark dates. Of course, there’s nothing special about January 1st, the first day of a week, or your birthday. But the idea that these dates signify the start of a “new” time in our lives where the slate is wiped clean helps to liberate our mind from the shackles of familiarity.

The next time you want to make a change in your life pick a date you want to start this new behaviour on. Try to pick a date with some meaning, such as the first Monday of the month. Then, get out of your comfort zone and disrupt your routine in simple ways. On that day, take a slightly different walk to work, switch up your coffee order, have your lunch in a different place in the office. Then, try starting your target behaviour. These seemingly trivial changes can help us to show our brain the simple truth—that every moment is an opportunity for a new beginning.