Habit Building 1-0-1 - How to build good habits for your health

Welcome to ‘Habit Building 1-0-1’, where you’re going to get to grips with habits and intention setting, the core parts of your stress resilience journey.

First things first, let’s debunk some habit myths.

Originally, people thought that it took 21 days to build a habit. Alas, this is not true.

Did you know that forming a new habit can take anything from 18 to 254 days? And, it can vary from person to person, as well as from habit to habit. This means that depending on whether or not you fall into the category of being habit-resistant, or if you’re trying to enforce a big change in your life that may take longer to set in, habits, on average, take two months to develop into an auto-pilot-like behavior.

But, don’t let that overwhelm you. According to studies, habit-building isn’t about doing it perfectly every single time. In fact, missing a single day doesn’t stop you from building new habits at all. 

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What do guts and habits have to do with building stress resilience?

Daily habits determine how we tackle the day and the challenges life throws at us. From the habits we have when we wake up to when we hit the sack, it all matters. This is because each one has a knock-on effect on our stress levels. Stress, independently and alongside other factors like diet and mood, can influence which gut microbes thrive. 

The gut and the brain are essentially BFFs — they literally tell each other everything. For example, when you’re stressed, or nervous, you may find you need to run to the loo pretty sharpish. This is one of the ways the gut-brain-axis works together.

When your biome is at its healthiest, it can change the way you respond to stress by reshaping your gut bacteria. Essentially, having good gut health means you can respond to stressful situations in a better way. And, that’s where our probiotic comes in — but more on that later. 

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So, how does all this fit into stress resilience and habits?

By making small and meaningful adjustments to our habits, we can begin to improve our stress responses and recovery time. Remember, we don’t want to get rid of stress because, in small amounts at the right time, it can be beneficial. Take eustress, for example. A kind of stress that encourages motivation, performance and positively enhances emotional well-being. 

What we’re doing is helping you manage your response to distress, (the one that makes everything feel terrible), by building habits that strengthen your gut health and help you build resilience. 

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Okay, so how do I build my new habit?

Habits are built by doing. Which means that you are going to start doing small things that will amount to big changes. Listen, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a healthy gut biome. But, we’re going to help you every step of the way, brick by brick. 

Every time you open the app, we’re going to get you to do two things. First off, we’re going to ask you to log your probiotic. Then, we’re going to ask you to set an intention. By doing these two things daily you’ll begin to approach stress, handle it and recover from it in a better way.

It’ll take about two months to build these new habits, in the meantime, your gut biome will begin to flourish with all the good stuff it needs to help you handle stress, all while you master your intentions.

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Why do I need to make intention setting my new habit?

Before we get too caught up in intention setting, let’s first get the basics down. 

Intention setting is a way for you to decide how you would like to handle a stressful situation. For example, perhaps you know that on Wednesday at 2 o’clock, you have a big scary meeting. You might set an intention to feel confident during this meeting. Now, you may not feel confident right away, but this will help you get into the mindset of confidence and slowly but surely, confident is what you’ll become.