Some people have taken all sorts of steps over the past few months to accustom themselves to different behaviors. In this blog I previously explained how it is possible that people exhibited healthier behaviors in corona time than before. Are you also suddenly exercising more, eating healthier, or otherwise making positive change in your life? Then you'd probably like to know how to maintain that. Below I will explain what it takes to sustain behavioral change for a long time.

Persistence is the art

Once you've started engaging in new behaviors (or unlearning old ones), you naturally want to keep it up. Unfortunately, that's exactly where it often goes wrong. Countless programs have been set up to get people to exercise more, lose weight or quit smoking, or you name it. And although quite often they succeed in producing temporary effects, most behavior change programs ultimately fail because the effects are not lasting. In other words, the trick is not so much to achieve behavior change, but rather to achieve behavior change hold (behavior change maintenance. Kwasnicka et al., 2016). So how do you do that? Psychology offers answers to this question as well.

Your behavior shows who you are

People sustain behavior change more easily if they have good reasons to do so (Kwasnicka et al., 2016). This could be because you get good results, for example, or because you enjoy doing it. Take running as an example. You might suddenly notice after a month of running that you are in better shape, feel more comfortable in your skin, or have lost some pounds. Such positive outcomes can help keep up the behavior. But perhaps an even better way is if the behavior aligns well with who you are (Verplanken & Sui, 2019). In other words, to what extent is this behavior part of your identity and does it align with the important values and ideals you hold? 

Make sure your behavior reflects who you are

If health is important to you, then regular exercise and a healthy diet fit right in. If you are concerned about climate change, then it makes sense to eat less or no animal products, go on vacation close to home instead of taking long plane trips, etc. The better your (new) behavior is a reflection of the things that you find important, and that are therefore truly characteristic of you, the better you succeed in retaining this behavior. This is shown, for example, in research on the relationship between the importance of “health,” and healthy eating behavior. The more important “health” is to people, the more healthy eating habits they have (McCarthy et al., 2017).

By the way, you can use this insight in two ways. First, it seems wise to learn new habits that fit who you are. So if you are a real music lover and you want to exercise a little more, then dancing might be a better match than mountain biking. On the other hand, of course, you can explicitly change your identity to match your new behavior. So maybe you didn't see yourself as athletic before, and you wouldn't describe yourself that way. But if you've been running consistently two or three times a week for the past three months, that's a great opportunity to adjust your image of yourself. Apparently, you are the athletic type, and it helps to start seeing and profiling yourself that way, too. Talk about it with people around you, make it part of your profile description on social media, read about it, watch movies about it, and so on. Express what you do and do what you express.

Monitor your own behavior

A second factor that helps people maintain behavioral change is by properly monitoring and regulating the new behavior. In science, this is also called self-regulation (Kanfer & Karoly, 1972). This involves not only keeping track of how often you exhibit certain behaviors (“running”), but also actively managing your automatic reactions, needs and desires toward other behaviors (“eating chips on the couch”) and overcoming obstacles (“it's raining,” “my running clothes are still in the wash”). However, self-regulation, or willpower, is a difficult factor to influence because it varies greatly from person to person. Some people are simply a lot better at regulating their needs than others (Kwasnicka et al., 2017). A nice example of this is the marshmallow experiment in children, which examined how well children are able to resist temptation. 

If you are one of those people who are blessed with a big bucket of willpower, then you can make nice use of this when learning and retaining new behaviors. But many people could use a little support. These days there are all kinds of technological tools that make monitoring a lot easier. Think fitness watches and apps that track how much you move, signal when it's time to get moving again and allow you to share your progress with others. These handy gadgets can help chart your own behavior and align with your goals. Of course, the availability of technology tools does depend on exactly what kind of behavior you are monitoring. 

From new behavior to established habit

You consciously deploy the two tactics above (making behavior fit who you are and monitoring your behavior). However, this also means that it takes mental strength to use them. In my previous blog, I used the metaphor of the elephant and the rider to explain how the controlled, conscious system (the rider) and the automatic system (the elephant) work together to make the most efficient use of scarce resources such as mental power. Whereas the corona measures suddenly allowed room for conscious goals and ideals to influence behavior (the rider could take over from the elephant) and thereby bring about behavioral change, the task now is to make the new behavior automatic as quickly as possible. Because in many situations, conscious intentions, goals and ideals have relatively little influence on the behavior that is performed (e.g., Best & Papies, 2017, Lally et al., 2013). Thus, if you want to retain change permanently you will have to use the automatic system above all. In other words, design your life so that the elephant can easily and automatically perform the new behavior. 

The power of consistent repetition

Habits have a very powerful influence on behavior. Habits are behaviors (or sets of behaviors) that are automatically triggered and performed in a situation where the same behavior has been performed regularly and consistently (Lally et al., 2013; Verplanken & Wood, 2006). This means that people often perform the same behavior in the same situation. If you regularly have a beer with co-workers at 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, chances are you will do it again next Friday. The more often you repeat this pattern, the stronger this association between this time of day, situation and behavior becomes. And the stronger this association, the less likely alternative behaviors become in this situation (e.g., leaving work without having a drink, or choosing a non-alcoholic drink). So if you repeat this pattern of behavior often enough in a specific setting, its execution eventually becomes automatic and conscious goals and intentions are sidelined. So this offers potential for behaviors you want to embed. The secret is in repeating that specific new behavior as often as possible, in a specific setting. It takes an average of over two months (66 days) to form a new habit (Lally et al., 2013). Therefore, the corona period with strict government measures (such as closed childcare facilities, schools, etc) provided an excellent opportunity to get a good start on internalizing a new habit.  

Use your internal elephant

Okay, but then how do you get yourself to show that new behavior for at least 66 days when measures are slowly easing again? As we know by now, setting up conscious goals and intentions is not enough. What you can do better is set up your environment so that it is full of so-called cues that make your desired behavior as easy as possible. For example, place healthy snacks pontifically in plain sight (a bowl of fruit on the table, a vegetable snacks on the coffee table). In addition, we know from research (Lally et al., 2013) that starting behaviors makes people more likely to complete the whole chain of behaviors. So clearly put your exercise clothes ready on the couch. If you make the start (changing clothes), then you are more likely to actually do the rest of the behaviors (getting on your bike to the gym and exercising). So make it as easy as possible for yourself to make a start and do the rest of the behaviors on autopilot as much as possible.

The other side of the coin is to cues that evoke unwanted behavior from your environment. Try to identify which things in the environment remind you of the behavior you want to prevent and try to remove or bypass these things whenever possible. On your way home, do you always pass that one snack bar where you get something unhealthy to snack on? Then take a different route where you don't pass it. Do you often empty a bag of chips on the couch at night? Then consider storing the chips in a hard-to-reach place (in the attic, in the shed) - or better yet, don't buy it at all. Would you rather do something other than watch TV? Put your TV remote in a pile of sports clothes. Don't want to have the extended drinks with colleagues on Fridays anymore? Then consider working from home on Fridays for a few weeks. To stay in elephant-rider terminology: create a straight road, without obstacles and turns, where the elephant can stay on the right course as easily as possible.

Provide support

Behavior change is difficult, and sustaining it is the most difficult of all. Support from others helps well with this (Kwasnicka et al., 2017). People are very sensitive to their social environment and care what others think about them. And yes, so does this apply to you! Make smart use of this tendency in yourself: involve others in your change process in a positive way. Tell your colleagues that you want to drink less alcohol and ask them to offer you alcohol-free beer at Friday afternoon drinks. Discuss with your partner that you want to eat healthier and how your partner can help. Share your results and progress with people who support your change. For example, use an app where you can share results on social media, or send a message to someone who applauds your new behavior. Read responses from other people who are learning similar behaviors. Join a (sports) club of like-minded people. 

Moreover, people are sensitive not only to what other people think about them, but also about how their own behavior is perceived in society as a whole. Therefore, new behavior that is in line with the social or political movement in society is much more likely to succeed (Kwasnicka et al., 2017). Knowing that your behavior is widely supported in society helps in retaining a new habit. So if you notice that there is a lot of talk and writing about the positive aspects of eating less meat, that is a great opportunity to start taking steps in that direction. If, on the other hand, you are a forerunner and would like to teach a behavior for which there is not yet widespread support, then you can actively seek out groups that propagate and support your new behavior. In short, make sure you can benefit from the positive effects of social support. 

You can do it!

If you have deviated from your established routine and improved your behavior over the past few months, you are on the right track! There are several ways to maintain behavioral change for a long time. Two tips have to do with your conscious system (the rider): make sure your new behavior fits who you are as a person and monitor the behavior carefully. 

However, the greatest potential is in your automatic system (the elephant). Repeat the desired behavior frequently in the same situation. Place cues in your environment to trigger the new behavior and remove cues (or environments) that trigger old behavior. Last but not least, share your progress with people who support your behavior change. In this way, you can firmly anchor your new behavior in your life.

Resources

Best, M., & Papies, E. K. (2017). Right here, right now: Situated interventions to change consumer habits.  Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.1086/695443 

Kanfer, F. H., & Karoly, P. (1972). Self-control: A behavioristic excursion into the lion's den. Behavior Therapy, 3(3), 398-416. doi:10.1016/s0005-7894(72)80140-0 

Kwasnicka, D., Dombrowski, S. U., White, M., & Sniehotta, F. (2016). Theoretical explanations for maintenance of behavior change: a systematic review of behavior theories, Health Psychology Review, 10(3), 277-296, DOI: 10.1080/17437199.2016.1151372 

Lally, P., & Gardner, B. (2013). Promoting habit formation. Health Psychology Review, 7, S137-S158. doi:10.1080/17437199.2011.603640 

McCarthy, M. B., Collins, A. M., Flaherty, S. J., & McCarthy, S. N. (2017). Healthy eating habit: A role for goals, identity, and self-control? Psychology & Marketing, 34(8), 772-785. doi:10.1002/mar.21021

Verplanken, B. & Sui, J. (2019). Habit and identity: Behavioral, Cognitive, Affective, and Motivational Facets of an Integrated Self. Frontiers in Psychology, 10 (1504), DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01504