Have you ever felt exhausted by trying to change a habit? Have you eventually found yourself giving in, to your old pattern of behavior, to whatever is easier? If so, you’re definitely not alone. When we try to change habits, by constantly reminding ourselves to do something in a new and different way, we expend energy to pay close attention to what we are doing. The energy used by focusing on each of the decisions that we are making — about not reaching for a Diet Coke or grabbing a handful of Peanut M&M’s as you walk through your office’s lounge or kitchen — wears us down. And once we’re worn down, we’ll revert to the tried and true, the comfortable behaviors.

So, how can you support yourself to successfully change your habits? Make whatever changes you can to your environment to support the new habits you are trying to instill. Here are a few examples…

Want to be less distracted at work?

• Set your email so it only downloads onto your computer when you manually prompt it to. Set specific times during the day when you will check your email. Other than those times, keep your email program closed.
• Leave your Blackberry at your desk when you head into a meeting.
• Change the settings for your text messages, so that there is no sound alert when you receive a text.

Want to start eating more healthy food?

• Get your office manager to store any sugary snacks inside closed cupboards rather than out in the open in the office kitchen. Brian Wansink, the head of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, and the author of Mindless Eating has found that each time we are confronted by a decision of whether or not to eat something, it wears down our will.
• Designate one refrigerator for bottled water only, and keep all the sugary and diet drinks in another and only open the refrigerator with the bottled water. Better yet, bring a glass to work and just refill it with water every time you feel thirsty. Speaking of thirst, you have probably heard people say that it’s good to drink 8 glasses of water per day. The better rule of thumb is to drink half your bodyweight in ounces per day (e.g. a 180lb person should drink 90oz of water per day). Water is absorbed into the body by the colon, and it is best absorbed if it is introduced slowly throughout the day. Drink 4oz of water every half hour instead of chugging a full glass of water, and you’ll increase your water absorption and be better hydrated.
• Get rid of any white sugar, white flour, or processed foods you have in your pantry at home and just stop buying them. If you don’t have them in your home, you won’t have to work to avoid the temptation of eating them!

Want to eat less?

• Get smaller plates. Or just use the salad plates you have instead of the dinner plates. Use teaspoons instead of soup spoons. Research studies have shown that “the bigger the plate is, the more people serve” – as much as 28% more!
• When you are eating a snack food, take as much as you want to eat out of the container and put it into a serving bowl. Put the rest of the snack food back in the cupboard before you begin eating.

For whatever habit you want to create, think about how you can change your environment to support the new habit. By doing that, you’ll find that the new behavior will become a habit more quickly and easily.