Are unsure of how to build effective healthy habits? Despite your best efforts, your well-being in a fast-changing world can be a challenge. Studies have actually found that more willpower is not the only determining factor in continuing your habits. Research supports these three easy hacks that allows you to enjoy your healthy habits.

1. Shape Your Daily Life: Your daily life is everything that surrounds you in your life. This includes your location, the people you surround yourself with, the time of day, and even the actions or decisions you make. Just as professional chefs prep their kitchens before cooking, gathering intruments and prepping food to make the cooking process easier, you can organize and reorganize your daily life to make building healthy habits easier. For example, if you want to create a habit of taking a healthy lunch break away from your desk every day, ask a friend or coworker to eat with you and prompt you to leave your desk. Or you could eat at a location that offers healthy food rather than fast food. You might not realize how much your actions are prompted by your surroundings.
2. Be Repetitive: Repeating a behavior increases its accessibility, so that if you’re in the same situation again, that action quickly comes to mind and can be repeated. Thus, a habit will build only if you are consistent. It’s not enough to act out a behavior a few times. In fact, studies suggest it might take six to eight months to build a habit. This means that over time, you may find the habit experience less rewarding. Keep habits for the things you want to experience and to appreciate each time.
3. Reward Yourself: Your daily life will take its shape, and repetition will help build habits, but if you are not rewarding yourself for your efforts along the way, you will not continue a habit effectively. In building a habit, rewards have to be better than what you would normally experience. This is because, in the brain, unexpected rewards release dopamine, which leaves an impact on your memory, and making it more likely that you will repeat the behavior. This forms a habit that excitess you to pursue actions that have positive outcomes and meet your goals. Thus, if you want to exercise more, and you hate going to the gym, you are not going to be consistent unless you add something exciting such as watching TV shows or listening to podcasts while you’re working out.  If it is fun, then it’s more likely to become a habit.

If you find yourself still struggling with forming habits, try combining a new habit with one that you already have. For instance, if you are taking a new medication, try placing your pill next to your toothbrush. That way, when you are going to brush your teeth, a habit that you already practice, you will then remember to take your pill. Another solution is switching out your habits for better ones. For example, if you are trying to cut down on sugar, and you know you buy a soda every day for lunch, try swapping the coke for a bottled water. That way, you will still be in the habit of buying a drink for lunch, but you will have made a healthier decision. Attempt to implement these steps into your daily life, and you will find the results to be rewarding.