Give Your Habits a Spring Cleaning

The onset of spring and warm weather may signal that it’s time to swap out the sweaters and snow boots in your closet for shorts and sandals. But spring cleaning doesn’t have to just be about getting your house and wardrobe in order: The season of renewal can also be a great time to dump bad habits and teach yourself new ones.

Habit Shift Mindset, a program now offered by the University of Maryland Extension, is a free one-time session that uses long-established principles of neuroscience and behavioral psychology to get participants thinking about how they can set and achieve goals in a way that works best for their personality. The program is geared toward creating action-oriented plans that focus on tangible steps people can take to make changes in their lives.

“We saw this glaring need in the community, where we were consistently doing community education programs that taught what to do—eat more fruits and vegetables, or make a budget,” said Dhruti Patel, senior extension agent in family and consumer sciences, who leads Habit Shift Mindset with extension Agent Carrie Sorenson. “But we weren’t providing a lot of how to do.”

Here, Patel and Sorenson offer tips on how to set goals this spring—and actually make them happen.

Make approachable changes. Say you want to walk more. Creating an initial goal of hitting 10,000 steps every day might be setting yourself up for failure. Instead, “start with a five-minute walk,” said Sorenson. “Something very small, very manageable that helps you meet the goal.” Once you’re consistently hitting that milestone, stretch it to 10 or 15 minutes, and continue from there.

Reduce or increase friction—or obstacles—as needed. If your goal is to go to the gym more often, keep your sneakers and a gym bag by your bed. That lessens the challenge of getting yourself ready in the morning. You can bump up friction for a different purpose. If you roll over after your alarm goes off every morning, keep your phone out of reach so that you have to climb out of bed to turn off the ringer.

Anticipate barriers. Think about the factors that might get in the way of the change you’re trying to make. If you want to take a walk every evening after work, consider what consequences that might have on yourself and your household, like a later dinner time. “Neurobiologically speaking, when you start anticipating a barrier, you already automatically start to try to find solutions for it,” said Patel. To counteract that later dinner time, maybe you prep a pot of soup or a casserole early in the week for something easy to warm up for supper.

Play to your strengths. “Everyone has fluctuations in their energy levels throughout the day,” said Sorenson. “Identify the time of day when you feel most ready to handle a new thing.” So don’t tell yourself you’re going to work on your monthly budget after work if you know your brain turns to oatmeal after 4 p.m.

Be patient. “A huge part of it is working through the information and strategies so that people get a true understanding of how difficult it can be to change a long-term, ingrained habit,” said Sorenson. It can take as much as a year to reliably incorporate a new habit, so don’t criticize yourself for not making huge changes quickly.