Did you resolve to eat more vegetables, run daily or knock off the sugar? It's the season for News Year's Resolutions. It's crazy that we make them in the first place. To be honest, they never stick.  Don't feel alone.  For that matter, never feel alone, as there are more people like you than not.  Statistically, more than 90% of New Years resolutions makers never feel the finish line, and 25% never make it past the first week of the year.  

It has nothing to do with your discipline and more about your physiology.  In his book, the Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg, explores the triggers that reinforce our behaviors and how to strengthen or overcome them.  Check out the video above.  Making a habit is not much more complicated than training a dog. It's a 3 step process:  cue (the trigger for the behavior), routine (the behavior itself) and reward (gives the incentive to latch on to the behavior).  The cues and rewards and critical.  It's reported that 40 to 45% of what we do each day is habit or an automatic behavior all having cues or rewards.  It's the reward that causes the habit to become automatic.  

So, let's say you want to start running. Start a cue.  It can be just putting on your running shoes and taking them off, that's it.  No running, just the shoes.  Duhigg calls this an "implementation intention".  It's the first step in starting a routine. Later, put on your running clothes to just walk around the block. Chances are that once you're in your running clothes and out on the street, you'll decide to continue.  Keep the shoes by your bed and they will "cue" you to run.  

Now the reward. According to Duhigg the reward is the most important part.  That's why we do a behavior--to get the reward.   Think of a treat, like a piece of organic, fair trade chocolate, a (short) warm shower or your favorite smoothie made with dollop of cashew butter and half a banana. When you finish your run, treat yourself.  The reward needs to be done right away in order to link the action with the reward, like you're tricking the brain into thinking the running and chocolate are related.  Win-win!

In order to create new habits or change old ones it's important to figure out the cue and reward.  As Duhigg illustrates in the video, you can play around with both to see what combination of the cue and reward elicit the desired behavior.  So, it's not about willpower.  It's about understanding how the brain has wired together your behaviors with the rewards.  

I can see the cue and reward with my yoga practice.  Like Duhigg during his coffee break, I get a secondary gain by the social component of going to a yoga class. My reward, besides the practice itself, is seeing my friends and hopefully sharing a cup of coffee or a beer after class.  There's my reward.  Can you find the rewards with your behavior and maybe start some new habits?