I’m a total geek when it comes to creating healthy habits, so it will be no surprise that I’m a Charles Duhigg fan! Duhigg has a concept called “keystone habits”, which are powerful habits that can have a cascade effect on other habits in your everyday life. These keystone habits can be anything related to what you want to change in life, and they all start with a first step. For example, you could take the first step of researching a good crockpot cabbage recipe to work toward a keystone habit of cooking healthy meals at home 5 nights a week.

Let’s dig in to a few reasons to focus on keystone habits - especially when you are busy and want to make the most of your efforts to life a healthy lifestyle.

They can have a transformative effect without you needing to find a huge amount of extra time

I’ll bet one of your biggest reasons for putting off some of the healthy behaviors you want to be doing is that you just don’t enough time. A lack of time (or the perception of it) can be what stops you from taking up a new fitness routine, trying out new recipes, or even spending more quality time with your loved ones to relax in the evening.

Keystone habits are highly beneficial, in part because they can have a transformative effect without necessarily requiring you to find a huge amount of extra time. In fact, a keystone habit, such as getting to sleep earlier each night, can cause other positive habits to fall into place holistically, while also giving you more energy. Yes!

They can bring your sense of self into better alignment with who you want to be - quickly

Self transformation is mostly a matter of bringing your current self into alignment with your sense of the future self you want to be. The gap between those selves can be made much smaller by setting keystone habits and letting them do their work! Keystone habits can help to bring your sense of self into better alignment with who you want to be, quickly.

According to another one of my favorite habit writers, James Clear, it can be powerful to view each repetition of a habit as a “vote” for a particular identity that you are trying to reinforce within yourself. Each time you do that habit, you give it a place of importance in your brain and that eventually shows your subconscious that it’s important. Think about how automatic it is to brush your teeth. You just do, right? You’ll be setting your keystone habits to auto-pilot by doing them consistently. Soon, getting in your workout or choosing a healthy breakfast will be as much of a no-brainer as brushing your teeth.

They make other positive habits “flow” almost automatically

If you were going to try and specifically focus on implementing 10 new habits in your life at once, you would likely fail due to the exhausting nature of trying to track and consciously maintain that many changes in your life at one time. This is a big hurdle for most of my clients, since you’re go-getter overachievers! In this situation, more isn’t more.

Keystone habits are where you should start when you have more habits you want to set to auto-pilot because they have the power to make other positive habits flow into place almost automatically. For example, taking up a new fitness routine often leads to an increased awareness of important things like nutrition and adequate sleep, more or less by default.

So, pick 1-2 keystone habits that will be the most important parts of your healthy lifestyle. Then, work on getting them in place. The other good stuff will follow - naturally.

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