I used to find it hard to eat healthy and keep my portions modest. Once I started going to the gym, this part of my life suddenly became a lot easier. Without knowing, I had created a keystone habit that caused a ripple effect, improving other areas in my life.
These keystone habits are a powerful tool to transform your life. Let’s explore what they are and how you can create them yourself.
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What Are Keystone Habits?
Keystone habits are habits that have the power to trigger a domino effect of positive changes in other areas of your life. This makes them a powerful tool for personal growth and improving your life. This concept was coined by Charless Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit.
A great example of a keystone habit is going to the gym. When I’ve worked out, I want to eat healthy to secure the gains of my efforts that day. It simply feels wrong to go eat a bucket of ice cream after all the sweat and pain of my workout.
Another benefit is that going to the gym helps me sleep better, which in turn makes me more focused and productive during the day. This improves my performance, increasing the odds of (financial) success.
This example shows how one keystone habit can have a big positive impact on other areas of your life. If I’d stop working out, my eating patterns, sleep, and performance are likely to suffer from it.
The Ripple Effect of Keystone Habits
The power of keystone habits lies in the ripple effect it produces. This ripple effect means that one keystone habit will trigger many new good habits and other positive changes in your life.
For example: the habit of journaling will give you emotional clarity, which in turn improves your decision-making and relationships with others. Another habit, meal planning, saves you time, which allows you to relax more, reducing stress.
How to Use Keystone Habits to Transform Your Life
Now that we’ve a clear understanding of what keystone habits are, it’s time for action. There are several steps to transform your life with keystone habits.
Step 1: Identify Your Goals
Before you start implementing anything, you first need to know your direction. So what are your goals? What would you like to improve? This can be anything from your body weight to reducing stress.
Step 2: Analyze Your Current Habits
What do you current habits look like? By analyzing them, you get a clear picture of your current situation, and which habits are harming or helping you. This way, you can also identify gaps. Focus your analysis on the goals you’ve identified in step 1.
Step 3: Find Your Keystone Habits
Once you’ve identified your goals and analyzed your current habits, it should be clear to what extent your current habits reflect the life you want to have. The likely answer is that there are gaps between the life you want and the life you have.
Identify keystone habits that fill these gaps. For example: if your goal is to lose weight, and your analysis of your habits revealed that you currently don’t have any habits involving exercise or food, that’s a clear gap. A great keystone habit to fill this gap would be some form of exercise, like going to the gym or playing tennis.
Step 4: Implement Your New Keystone Habit
This is the hardest part: actually implementing your new habit. We’ve written extensively on how you can best build good habits, so be sure to check out these other resources on this site.
In a nutshell:
- Make it obvious by creating visible cues in your environment and by making your new keystone habit part of a greater routine.
- Make it attractive through temptation bundling and surrounding yourself with others who perform the same habit.
- Make it easy by using the two minute rule and eliminating obstacles in your environment.
- Make it satisfying through habit tracking, rewarding yourself, and using accountability partners.
Examples of Powerful Keystone Habits
If you struggle with finding good keystone habits to improve your life, here are several examples to get you started:
- Exercise: Boosts your physical and mental health, builds discipline, and inspires better life choices (like what you eat and drink).
- Healthy Eating: Creates energy for your daily activities and supports a healthy body. This makes you more productive and sharp.
- Mindfulness Practices: Improves your emotional regulation and reduces stress. This can influence other parts of your life, like your relationships with others.
- Consistent Sleep Schedule: Increases your productivity and overall well-being. Others will also be thankful that you’re less groggy.
- Daily Planning or Journaling: Clarifies your goals, tracks progress, and enhances focus. Without planning, it’s hard to work effectively.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
There are several challenges that people face when implementing new keystone habits. Luckily, they all have solutions.
The most common one is a feeling of overwhelm: there are so many areas where you want to improve, that you end up with many habits you want to implement. Ironically, this can cause you to not implement any at all. It’s much better to focus on just one keystone habit at a time.
I also often see people implementing new habits enthusiastically, only to abandon them rather quickly because of a lack of motivation. I always recommend to write down your new habit and very specifically state your “why”. Why are you choosing this habit? What are the benefits you will enjoy? Be sure to vividly visualize these benefits, and bring this picture back in your mind when you feel like slacking.
Finally, another common challenge is that people stop their keystone habit when they’re faced with a setback, like a lack of immediate results. This is all part of the valley of disappointment, so it’s simply part of the process. Keep going, and you will see the results of your actions after a while.
Conclusion: Take the First Step Today
Keystone habits are one of the best tools to improve your life. Not only is the habit itself a positive force in your life, it will also cause a ripple effect that triggers many new good habits and other positive changes.
I encourage you to start today by taking action: simply start with step 1 (identify your goals) and create the life you want to live. One habit can change the course of your entire life!
