Many people start out with good intentions and a strong desire to develop healthy habits only to slip back into their old, bad-habit ways. Studies have identified several factors that contribute to forming and keeping a lifestyle with healthy habits. Let’s take each in turn.

Habit researchers have found time and again that in order to create new habits, we should NOT focus on the behavior but rather focus on the cue.5

We spend so much time and effort on creating or eliminating the behavior itself, when instead we should really be dedicating our willpower to consciously creating and/or reorganizing the cues in our environment that trigger those habits.

Let’s say you want to start working out on a regular basis. Instead of just focusing on developing the habit of “working out,” focus on developing a routine around initiating a workout. This may seem like a subtle difference, but it’s actually huge.

An easy way to do this is to choose a cue that already occurs regularly in your daily life, such as getting home from work. Then, during the early stages of developing your workout habit, focus your effort on going straight to your room after you get home and changing into your workout clothes. Then go fill up your water bottle and head straight to the gym or hit the running trail or whatever.

You want to develop the habit of putting yourself in the position to work out regularly, which makes it more likely that you’ll work out regularly.

After a while, you’ll start to notice that when you get home from work (environmental cue/trigger), it takes little to no effort to go to your room, throw on your workout clothes, and head to the gym (habitual response).

You’ll even start to look forward to it, and maybe even feel like something in your life is off when you don’t work out. And that’s the power of habit.

To reinforce the habit, use the “reward” component of the habit equation. With our exercise example, you might get done working out and treat yourself to a (healthy) snack or maybe schedule a post-workout rest session by watching an episode of your favorite TV show.

Some people derive enough reward from the exercise itself (e.g., “runner’s high”), which acts as a powerful reinforcement for their habit. Whatever you do, be sure to incorporate a healthy reward into your habit routine.

The next factor is relatively straightforward: just knowing the basics about how habits are formed and how they work can significantly increase your chances of forming and keeping healthy habits (and maybe even get rid of a few bad ones).6

So, educating yourself by reading something like this gives you a leg up on establishing healthy habits in your life. You’re already on your way.

Another big factor is how you perceive the habit you want to build. If the habit seems impossible, then it will feel harder. If it seems easier, then it will be easier. That sounds stupid, but it has serious consequences.

For example, if you want to lose weight and you decide that you want to do it by working out for 90 minutes per day, six days per week, that is going to feel like a gigantic and daunting task. Because it feels gigantic and daunting, you’re far more likely to give up.

Whereas if you decide to lose weight by walking for 20 minutes after dinner each night (note: the dinner is your cue), then it feels very easy to accomplish, and therefore it is.

The beautiful thing is that once you’ve adopted the “easy mode” version of your desired habit, you can always ramp it up afterward. For example, if you walk for 20 minutes after dinner each night for a month, then it won’t sound so bad when you decide, “Hey, I’ll walk for 45 minutes now.” Then you can try out a little bit of running. Then you can add calisthenics and plyometrics, and before you know it, you’re working out for 90 minutes per day, six days per week.

Leo Babauta has a saying when starting a new habit: “Start so easy you can’t say no.”

Want to go on a jog 5 times a week? Start with putting on your shorts and lacing up your shoes the first day. That’s it. You can’t say no to that! Then maybe go outside after you gear up the next day. Can’t say no to that either. Then maybe walk one block the next day. C’mon, you can walk for a block!

Pretty soon, you’ll realize you’ve done everything you need to start a jogging habit and it won’t seem like much work at all to just… jog.

Want to floss every day? Start with flossing one tooth. Seriously. A couple of days later, add a second tooth. Then add a third, fourth, fifth… before too long, it will start to seem incredibly dumb that you’re not just flossing all of your teeth, and so you’ll “just do it.”

The key is to start small. Set the bar low. If you suffer from chronic low self-efficacy and low self-esteem, you have to start where you are. Don’t expect the quantum leap, at least not at first.

I know someone who lost a lot of weight (almost 80 lbs) over a 2-year period. He was running marathons by the time he was in shape, but you know how he started out? Four minutes a day on the exercise bike. That’s all he could do at first, but he did it every single day and increased his workout as he lost more weight and gained more confidence.

Once he knew he could do a few minutes on the bike, he figured he could do a few more, then he figured he could go for a run, then he believed he could run competitively, then he set a goal to run a marathon and did it.

He didn’t say, “OK, I’m ridiculously overweight so I should run a marathon.” He instead started where he was, which was in his basement on an exercise bike for four minutes a day. This kept him engaged and he didn’t feel too overwhelmed while he was working to create a healthier lifestyle.

At first, your aim in creating any new habit should simply be to create a new habit. I know that sounds stupid and circular and like I’m talking to you like a child, but it’s incredibly important: Focus your energy on just showing up.

If you want to go to the gym regularly, focus on going to the gym regularly and that’s it. You just have to go, you don’t have to worry about what exercise you do while you’re there. Hell, you don’t have to worry about doing anything at all other than just going to the gym! Just show up and walk around.

The thing is, if you focus on just getting to the gym, once you’re there, you’re much more likely to say to yourself, “Well, I’m here, may as well do something…” And that takes very little extra effort once you’re there. But getting to the gym takes the most effort at first. So focus on that.

What you’re doing is focusing on the behaviors that enable your desired habit. If you put yourself in situations where you’re more likely to succeed—you guessed it—you’ll be more likely to succeed.

Another strategy that increases the chances of making a habit stick is having a plan for when things go wrong—and they will go wrong at some point.7

For example, let’s say you’ve decided your diet really sucks and want to eat healthier. Good for you. Now, if you’re like most people (including me), you know it’s hard to eat a healthy diet consistently. When your willpower is drained, you cave to temptation pretty easily.

So you know ahead of time that you will be faced with temptations and that it’s highly likely you’ll give in to said temptations from time to time. Simply making a plan ahead of time to head off these temptations will greatly increase the likelihood that you do just that. In this case, I’d recommend allowing yourself a “cheat day” for one or two meals a week where you get to pig out on some not-so-healthy food.

On your non-cheat days, when you’re tempted with unhealthy food, make a conscious effort to remind yourself that you’ll get to indulge soon enough and think about how proud you’ll be of yourself for practicing a little self-discipline.

This strategy has a one-two punch: you get to regularly replenish your willpower while building your healthy eating habit (by having a cheat day) and you can more easily deal with temptation along the way (by having a plan ahead of time).

You might need to change your strategies as you learn more about the way you react to various hurdles and temptations that arise. But the point is to anticipate the problems you’re likely to run into and have a plan to deal with them ahead of time.

You know yourself better than anyone else, so be honest, set realistic expectations, and find a way that works for you.

While consistency is key, research has shown that missing one or a handful of opportunities to practice a desired habit will not ruin your chances at establishing that habit in the long run.8

The goal isn’t to be perfect. Those who develop solid habits do so not because they are 100% perfect in their execution, it’s because they’re able to consistently correct their course when they get off track.

It’s okay if you missed a workout. Try not to miss two in a row. It’s alright if you ate that sleeve of Oreos yesterday. Focus on not eating that jar of Nutella today.

But even if you missed two or three or nine workouts in a row or you ate six pints of Ben and Jerry’s in an hour—that’s not an excuse to give up. You’re not broken, you’re not stupid, you’re not weak. You’re just early in the process.

And that’s the point: it’s a process. 

Acknowledge your missteps as just part of the process and get back to your routine as soon as you can.

People don’t develop and acquire habits at the same rate—everyone is different.

There are a lot of products and advice out there that promise a goal within a definitive time frame: 60 Days to Rock-Hard Abs; Read 7 Times Faster in 2 Weeks; Retire 6 Months From Today… it’s all bullshit.

Set goals for yourself and know your limitations and weaknesses, then work to eliminate them at your own pace.