How to Set Up Your Environment for New Healthy Routines

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Research says that people with higher self-control spend less time in tempting situations.

Yeah, thanks for nothing, science! I don’t think we needed your help for that one. Of course, it is easier to control your impulses if you stay away from them.

But there’s a subtle implication many forget about this research:

It is simpler to avoid tempting situations than trying to control them.

Those who have an addiction know this well. It happens every day that people stay away from their addiction for years. And then, as they approach it again, they relapse and lose all the progress.

Healthy routines work the same. If you want to build one, keep it in your daily environment. At the same time, you must also avoid the unhealthy habits you built on your way.

So you must take care of the environment you live in. Otherwise, you won’t succeed only with self-control.

The environment you live in has a tremendous influence on your mind and growth. Many social studies show how the place you are born in affects your future. And that might be a positive or negative influence.

Yet, you can’t control where you were born. Deal with it. But there are many other things you will control. So, let’s focus on those.

In your life, you can control your environment through two zones of influence.

1. The Social Zone is the influence your network has passively on you. And you can control it by picking people that align with your goals and mindset.
2. The Private Zone is the influence your home has on you. You will have more productive and focused days if you set up a distraction-free environment.

The private zone of influence is the most powerful because it is much closer to you than anything else. So, let’s focus on that for now.

Now, how do you set up your environment to build healthy routines?

Usually, we tend to do obvious things in plain sight. So, design your environment according to that.

• Take a look at your environment at home and make a list of everything that may distract you from your goals.
• Include digital devices like smartphones if you don’t use them for your routines.
• Don’t make excuses. If you think you need your phone to track your time or anything like that, you can find an analogic solution.
• Proceed to remove all distractions and addictions from the room. Hide them somewhere else and forget about them until you finish.

You can create many more good habits if you make them evident. You just need to take your time to do that.

Let’s say you want to exercise more, for example. Who doesn’t want to exercise more, right?

You could use your motivation to pick up your workout mat and place it somewhere, and you will probably fail. Or, you can put it beside your bed and keep it there.

• Find a hook for any healthy routine you want to build.
• Place the hook in your environment somewhere you can see it every day.
• Notice if there are any connections between routines. If there are, one routine can become the hook for the second.

I’m not a fan of reward systems since I used them for a while, and they only build new addictions.

However, I still support them in the beginning. When you start with a new routine or habit, you don’t have the willpower to think about the long-term reward.

Can you attach any rewards to your habits to make them more appealing?

• Think about the reward you may attach to each routine you are trying to build.
• Gamify the process if possible. For example, you can think of different reward milestones based on the streaks. If you succeed, for one week, you access the first milestone.

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