Quick Skills: Building New Habits

In this quick skills episode, learn about some simple steps that you can take in order to develop and maintain new, healthy habits. 

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PsychBytes with CCS is a weekly podcast hosted by Student Life's Counseling and Consultation Service. This show is dedicated to discussing a wide range of topics pertaining to mental health commonly experienced in the college setting. It is important to note that this podcast is not a substitute for therapy. All of the topics on this show, while discussed by professionals, are strictly psychoeducational and meant to inform listeners on available resources, skills, and support. Topics on this show can be sensitive in nature, and should you find yourself needing additional support or resources, please visit ccs.osu.edu or call us at six one four two nine two five seven six six six six six six six. With that in mind, enjoy the show. What is up everyone and welcome to PsychBytes with CCS. My name is Josh and I am back again today with another quick skills episode. And today's quick skill is building new habits. Habits. We all have them. We have good ones, we have bad ones, and we have those that we wish we possessed. So let's talk about how to develop new habits. First things first, we need to differentiate between goals and habits. Goals are the outcomes, such as I want to get straight A's this semester. Habits are the actions that we take to achieve the goal, such as I am going to study proactively one hour every day of the week. So when it comes to developing a new habit, we need to start with small changes. So we need to make incremental changes towards the behavior that we want and then work our way up from there. So if my habit that I want to have is studying for one hour every day, I might not be able to hit that off just outright. So maybe I want to start off studying 15 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day, and then I build up from there as I get more and more comfortable with the new habit. The next thing that we're going to want to take into consideration is updating our environment. So if I like to study at my dorm or my apartment or my home, I might struggle because all of my creature comforts are there, my roommates are there, my friends are around. There's lots of distractions that are going to pull me away from the new habit. So maybe I need to consider that my habit will take place somewhere else, perhaps the library or a quiet place on campus where I'm not going to be as prone to distraction and it's going to put my brain in a working state because this is not my comfortable space. The next thing we want to do is tie these new habits to other activities. So make a plan using the format after blank, I will blank. So after my last class each day, I will go to the library and study for X amount of time. This is just an easy way to remember your habit every day and it encourages consistency. Next, I want you to remember that some practice is better than no practice. Even if you don't have a lot of time or energy, do something towards building your habit. So if you're just too tired or you have too much extracurricular stuff going on where you can't go to the library for an hour, maybe set aside just five or 10 minutes that you can utilize towards studying just to keep encouraging and building the habit. Consistency is key here. Next, consider telling someone that you're starting the new habit. It creates accountability, it creates obligation. So it makes it difficult to back out of the commitment because people know that I'm doing it. Also, once others know that you're working towards a goal, they may offer encouragement and support. Next, it can be really important to track your habit. Keep a journal, put it on your calendar, keep a spreadsheet, keep a log of it on your phone, and just put a note every time you practice your new habit. It can be really satisfying to record your behavior and look back and see all the hard work that you put in. Plus, it can be incredibly motivating to keep a habit streak alive. Think about your socials and your social streaks that you try to maintain with friends and people in your life. You can do the same thing with a habit. It ties into the same cognitive mindset. And finally, celebrate your successes. You know, healthy habits tend to have long-term benefits that can take a little bit of time to kick in. So while you're waiting for these, give yourself immediate, small rewards to sustain the motivation. Just make sure that it's not contradicting your goals. So if it's like, oh, I went the entire week and I studied every day, so I'm not going to study at all for the next few days. That's going to be a little contradictory to what you're trying to do. But maybe instead of saying I'm not going to study at all, it's instead after my last day of studying this week, I'm going to go out and I'm going to hang out with friends or I'm going to do something nice for myself. All of these little tips and tricks can go a very, very long way to developing and maintaining new habits. So I encourage you, if there's a habit that you've been wanting to develop for yourself, take some of these tips, use them as a blueprint, and go out there and see if you can't develop some consistency and work towards a bigger goal for yourself. And that's going to do it for today's Quick Skills episode. Keep your eyes peeled for future episodes. And until then, I'm Josh, and this is Psych Bytes with CCS.