“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Will Durant
The April essays will be a lifestyle reset that focuses on developing lasting healthy habits. There are five core healthy habits: regular physical activity, a balanced nutritional diet, adequate sleep, stress management, and socialization. These are the basics of what you need to achieve wellness and well-being.
If learning to make or break habits is the solution, what problems are you trying to solve? You start by defining why you need to develop a new habit or break an old one. The issues you might be trying to solve could be stagnation or lack of progress. Learning to make or break habits is not about working on immediate problems but about lasting changes.
We want to address issues in our lives that are holding us back, such as unhealthy behaviors, inconsistency, and lack of focus and clarity. The problem you’re trying to solve often revolves around patterns of behavior that are either unproductive, harmful, or misaligned with personal goals or values. Habit formation and breaking address what habits you want to change. Who do you want to be?
What exactly is a habit? We perform routines and behaviors without thinking, which can be triggered by external or internal cues. We repeatedly imprint our actions into our daily lives through consistent practice and reinforcement. Psychologists suggest habits serve a crucial purpose by creating automated behaviors that help us conserve our mental resources. Giving us space to focus our attention on more pressing matters.
As we move through the April blogs, we will use a design thinking model as a framework for working on our habits. The design thinking formula is self-reflection, goal setting, experimentation, rough draft or prototype, and evaluation by testing and adjusting.
- Self-Discovery (Who are you today)
- Define your goals and challenges (What are your goals, and what are the gaps you need to fill to reach your ideal self)
- Experimentation. Generate ideas (Wildest idea – Free flow thinking)
- Lifestyle change prototype (rough draft of who you want to be tomorrow)
- Test and adjust (Are your actions leading to the desired outcome?)
The Science of Habit Formation
Habits are routines or rituals that are automatic or unconscious, so they work behind the scenes with little thought on our part. This is one reason they are hard to change; we are not always aware of our habits. Our brains recognize a pattern, a connection between our actions and the outcomes.
The habit loop or cycle is a neurological model that explains habit formation and maintenance. It comprises three elements.
Cue: A cue triggers a habit. Cues are powerful responses to external stimuli in the environment.
Routine: The routine is the behavior or habit itself.
Reward: The reward makes you repeat actions because you desire particular outcomes. It is a positive outcome or satisfaction you feel after completing the routine.
A cue could be any environmental stimulus, like the time of day, a smell, or a ringing phone. The routine is the behavior, and the reward is a positive outcome or satisfaction you feel after completing the routine. To change and build healthy habits, we must take control and become aware of our current habits. The good news is we can rewire our brains to change our habits.
Neuroplasticity is our brain’s ability to change and reorganize synaptic connections through growth and awareness. In developing a new habit, we teach or rewire our brains to follow a new routine. We can self-direct neuroplasticity by taking an active role and intentionally changing or rewiring our brains to create these new habits.
Habit stacking involves connecting behaviors by choosing an existing habit and stacking a new behavior on top of it. Habit stacking is taking advantage of our automatic habits by attaching a new habit to the one you already consistently do. By tagging onto an established habit, that habit becomes the cue or trigger for the new habit. You may already use this technique but are just not aware of it. When I do one task, I follow an exact routine by setting off a round of other tasks. It is almost ritualistic; I don’t think about it. It is just the sequence that I follow. It makes my life easier; I do not have to stop and think or decide about what to do; it is an ingrained habit performed on autopilot.
Consistency is the key to habit formation; small, consistent actions performed daily lead to noteworthy progress. Practicing skills, saving money, or building relationships becomes easier with consistent habits, even when motivation is low.
Just as habit formation involves rewiring our brains through consistent routines and conscious effort, design thinking thrives on trial, error, and experimentation. Both frameworks emphasize self-awareness and deliberate action as critical factors in driving change. By integrating the science of habits with the creative problem-solving approach of design thinking, we can design a life that aligns with our values and goals.
Applying Design Thinking
We are using Design Thinking as a Personal Growth Framework. Check out the blog Redesigning You: Applying Design Thinking to Your Life, posted on March 28, 2025. Throughout April, we will use this framework to change our habits.
Step 1: Who are you today? Embrace self-discovery to identify your core desires and challenges. What are your weaknesses and strengths? Self-discovery is partly about thinking about your own thinking. This is how we gain insights into patterns, assumptions, and tendencies that shape our perceptions and decisions. Awareness of our thinking allows us to explore who we are more deeply.
Self-discovery is the process of reflection, which encourages us to confront the truth about ourselves. Some of these truths are well-defined already, and others, we tend to look the other way. Truths about yourself that you might have overlooked or avoided. My term is facing my demons, what I dislike about myself. Adding a design thinking framework to habit formation will help you transform your identity and perspectives. What do you feel is a true representation of who you are today and who you want to be tomorrow?
Step 2: Define your goals and challenges. Write them down so that you can develop a clear vision. Include personal and professional goals. What do you want to achieve in the next month, year, or five years, and what obstacles are in your way?
Thinking about thinking, or metacognition, is deeply intertwined with self-discovery. When you reflect on your thought process, you gain insight into patterns, assumptions, and tendencies that shape your perceptions and decisions. Awareness of this is a starting point, allowing you to explore who you are on a deeper level. Through metacognition, you can uncover the why behind your actions, questions, and assumptions you have made for years. The more you can define your identity, the more you can find your authentic self. And that’s the place where we start defining our goals and challenges. You must define who you are today, determine who you want to be tomorrow, and identify the gaps between now and the metaphorical tomorrow.
Step 3: Experimentation and ideating solutions for generating ideas. Think about brainstorming and developing multiple ideas, a creative and free-flowing way of thinking. Get out of your comfort zone; tap into your creativity to overcome obstacles or to create better habits.
In the experimentation phase, we want to use the insights from our self-discovery to guide our experimentation. For example, if you’ve identified a value or strength during reflection, use that as a starting point for ideating solutions. Clearly define your goals, ensuring they are specific and measurable to serve as a focal point for your experimentation.
Step 4: Iteration design thinking thrives on a trial-and-error frame. Each experiment is a prototype test for different solutions and refinement based on feedback or results. Think of this step as creating a rough draft of who you want to be tomorrow. You will create a draft, and revise and refine it until it is the solution to your problem.
Step 5: Track your progress by establishing regular times to reflect on how the experimentation aligns with your goals and challenges. You can use journaling and visual tools like vision boards or mind mapping. I often use spreadsheets to track progress and to keep myself organized enough to focus on my goals and progress.
Knowing *why* you’re doing something helps you figure out *how* to do it. Why do you want to change your habits, and how do you plan to make those changes?
The Role of Habits in Reaching Your Goal
The 90-day rule is one popular method to build habits. It is called the 21/90 rule. The rule states that if you commit to a goal for 21 days. After three weeks, pursuing that goal should have become a habit, then continue the habit for another 90 days. Theoretically, this will make it a permanent lifestyle change. Sliding into old habits is easy, so if you slip, remind yourself of your NEW HABIT. Don’t give up.
Consistency is the cornerstone of habit formation. Healthy habits, once established, automate progress by becoming routines that require minimal effort and willpower. Goals are not attained through a burst of effort but through a steady routine. We want to build healthy habits as a part of our daily rituals, brushing our teeth, exercising, or reading books every day.
Not all habits are equal; while some move us toward our objectives, others function as obstacles, hindering our progress. It is critical to identify and nurture habits that align with our goals. According to James Clear Atomic Habits, true behavior change is identity change. What you do indicates the type of person you believe you are, either consciously or unconsciously. You can define your identity through your habits.
Automatic actions can decrease your stress of making decisions every day. When we perform habitual behaviors, we often experience less intense emotions. What should I eat? How should my day be arranged to increase my potential for success? Rituals and routines built through habits can eliminate micro-decisions, freeing your mind for more significant challenges.
Continuous Improvement, incrementally; small, consistent actions add up. Habits create momentum, propelling you closer to your goals with each step. By creating daily habits aligned with our objectives, we make steady progress. You see yourself as someone who takes action and follows through.
Small habits, compounded over time, build lasting results. The 1% rule is all you need to make a new habit stick. The daily 1% improvements, the extra pages read, the additional minutes of practice, and the accumulation of progressive direction help us reach our ideal identity.
While building habits may seem like a mysterious process, they require intentional action and commitment. It takes dedication, patience, and a willingness to experiment. What is one habit you could change today to bring you closer to your goals?
Conclusion
Every habit’s core lies in a simple neurological loop: cue, routine, reward. The cue triggers the habit, the routine is the behavior itself, and the reward is the positive reinforcement that reinforces the habit loop. Understanding this loop is essential for both breaking negative habits and establishing positive ones.
Follow me this month as we look deeper into building healthy habits.
Recommended Reading
Atomic Habits, by James Clear
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg
What Does It Really Take to Build a New Habit, by Kristi DePaul, Harvard Business Review
Citations
“Image created by Microsoft Copilot AI, based on user-provided description.” Heart healthy.
Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash
“Image created by Microsoft Copilot AI, based on user-provided description.” Design thinking.