Small Hinges Swing Big Doors: Keystone Habits

What’s That One Thing That Will Affect Everything Else

Exercise

When people start habitually exercising, they start changing other unrelated patterns in their lives. People who exercise start eating better because they want to fuel their body with nutritious food after breaking down muscle, they are thirsty for more water so drink more, they become more productive at work, sleep better, smoke less, show more patience with colleagues and family because they feel less stressed. Exercise is one of the best tools to complete the stress response cycle and is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.

Eating Dinner Together as a Family

Studies have shown that families who habitually eat dinner together seem to raise children with better homework skills, higher grades, better cardiovascular health, and lower risk of substance abuse, depression, teen pregnancy, and obesity, greater emotional control and higher self esteem.

Making Your Bed

William H. McRaven, retired Navy four-star admiral and former chancellor of The University of Texas, wrote a book about the key mental health benefits of making your bed called “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe the World.”  In the book, McRaven argues that making your bed in the morning sets you up for success; just by making your bed, you’ve accomplished at least that one thing, a small win, which will encourage many more small successes throughout the day.

Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being, and stronger skills at sticking with a budget.

It’s not a family meal or a tidy bed that causes better grades, or more responsible spending, but somehow these small shifts start chain reactions that help other good habits follow.

Keystone habits cause widespread shifts, small wins. They help cultivate other habits by creating structures. Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favour another small win. Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are possible.

Keystone habits help people develop grit – the tendency to work strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years, despite failure, adversity and plateaus in progress. As you strengthen your willpower muscle in one part of your life, in the gym for example, that strength will spill over into how hard you work, or what you eat after the gym. When willpower becomes stronger, it impacts everything.

I have a daily habit stack of Sweat, Smoothie, Supplements. This sets a foundational framework and no matter what stressors I’m faced with that day, I feel more equipped to take them on.

Do you do these keystone habits?