Trigger Healthy Habits

Habits are hard to break and just as hard to make. Habits can become who you are. It has been said it takes 14 days to make a habit stick. Why not try to form some healthy habits? There are some ways, experts say, to trigger habits.

Here are a few examples to test for yourself:

• Want to take a walk each morning?

Put your shoes along side your bed, or where you will see them first thing in the morning.

• Drink more water?

Keep a water bottle or glass on your desk, set an alarm to ring every 2 hours to remind you to fill your glass.

• Exercise with your home equipment?

Put something you need daily right by the piece of equipment.

The idea is to pick a healthy habit to implement and set a trigger to remind you to complete the action. A trigger can be a prompt, like the "string around the finger" idea.

You can set up any kind of trigger, an alarm, note, text message, placement of items; just remember a good trigger is one you will notice and link to the action. You should also time the trigger to coincide with the time you want to take the action.

We all have a few habits we would like to lose; maybe we can replace some with some healthy habits.