Create a Habit: Modify the Physical Environment
We act out of habit when the circumstances are the same. One such element of the context is our physical environment: the room we are in, the things we see around us.
We can help ourselves creating a new habit by consciously modifying our physical environment.
Examples of Habits
- wash our hands right after entering our home
- use hand santizier when we enter into our car
How can we use our physical environment to help us form our habit?
If the habit we are trying to form a habit, which always takes place in a specific physical environment, we can modify that physical environment to help remind us of how we want to act.
Concrete examples:
- to wash our hands right after entering our home: we hang up a poster (let kids draw) or an image (someting with water on it) that we cannot avoid seeing
- to santize our hands when we enter our car: place the sanitizer in the console right next to the ignition
How to get started with creating a new Habit yourself?
Now that you have read about how modifying your physical environment can help you form your desired habit, you can take different paths foreward. You could use our app, that guides you with practical suggestions and checks in with you like a friend, until you fly free (no longer need the app). You could explore this website, specificall the growing Habit Information Hub in which you find similar posts like this one. And if you wish to dive deeper into the scientific research and how the physical environment influences habit formation, have a look at the References and Recommended Readings below.
References & Recommended Reading
- Carden L, Wood W: Habit formation and change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 2018, 20:117-122 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.12.009
- Wood W, Neal D: A New Look at Habits and the Habit-Goal Interface. Psychological Review 2007, 114(4):843-863 https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843