Most of our decisions throughout the day are automatically made because of our habits. I often realize that I don’t consciously remember choosing to initiate or complete a task, but I got it done anyway because I have a habit around it. 

Since our habits control so much of our day, it’s important we intentionally curate habits that help us improve our health and reach our goals. Habit stacking is one strategy we can use to do this.

In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about the idea of habit stacking, which is attaching a new habit to one you already have. 

This method helps us create habits that stick because it’s easier to attach a new habit to a current one that already has strong neural pathways formed around instead of trying to create a new habit altogether.

An example of a healthy habit stack could look like this: before I have my first sip of coffee, I will drink eight ounces of water. If you’re a coffee drinker, you probably have a routine around your coffee that is automatic. This is the perfect place to stack a new habit because you know you’re going to have coffee every day. 

While adding in water may be challenging for a while, it won’t take too long to become a habit if it’s attached to a habit you already have.

I recently needed to create a new habit of drinking a powdered supplement in the morning. Instead of trying to add a new step to my routine, I placed the box of supplements next to my electrolytes, which I already drink each morning. Stacking my new supplement with my habit of drinking electrolytes made the transition fairly easy.

While creating and stacking habits is a great way to move toward our health goals, we cannot expect them to stay the same forever. 

The whole reason we’re stacking our habits now is because we need to change our current ones or add in new ones, so we must accept that change to our habits will be a lifelong process. 

For example, if my supplement routine changed, I’d need to find a new way to remember to take them, and that would be okay because it would be what’s best for my health.

As we change and move through different seasons of our lives, our habits will need to change too. This is why we must master not only the creation and stacking of new habits, but also the reflection and evolution of them. 

In order to move smoothly from one habit to another, we must actively reflect on how they are working right now, how they make us feel, if they are making our lives easier or more stressful, and how we can tweak and evolve them into a habit that moves us closer to our current goals. 

I believe our habits are most beneficial to us when we understand that those we implement right now can help us take the next step toward our ultimate goal, and may not get us all the way to the finish line. If we aim to create habits today that will work forever, we will repeatedly come face to face with frustration and disappointment. 

Our habits should be able to evolve and change as we change. We will never find the perfect answer and we must always be willing to adapt. 

Once we can accept that our habits are not permanent and yet dive fully into them as if they were, then we will see the results we are looking for.