Habit Formation

Have your partner write down their current habits, and discuss where and when you want the new habit. If your partner has an existing routine, it may work best to anchor the new habit to a set of existing habits, an approach called habit stacking. If not, tie habits to a change of place. For example, your partner may do yoga when they get home from work.

At the beginning, keep the habit small. When starting the habit, it should take less than two minutes to do. For example, if your partner is going to do yoga, start by doing some very simple stretches on the yoga mat. After the habit is established, use habit shaping to grow the habit into something greater.

Rehearse the activity with your partner and design the environment for the habit. Make sure that they have all the tools they need to perform the habit, i.e. if you want them to do yoga, make sure they have a yoga mat in the room.

If your partner is motivated by rewards, you can set up a point system for executing the habit and have prizes that are handed out at various milestones. Don’t underestimate the motivational power of a cupcake with a sparkler in it.

For some habits, your partner may want you to be the accountability partner. This means that your partner will be asking you to act like a coach, keep track of their habit, and hold them accountable to their commitment.

Once you have the habit planned out, create a commitment statement that encapsulates when and where your partner will execute the habit. This statement is slightly different depending on whether it is tied to habit stacking or not.

Technically you can make commitment statements for later in the week, but I think they should be spoken and committed to on the day.

For example, if your partner is going to start yoga, do it after they get out of the shower.

If it is not tied to an existing habit, it’s an implementation intention.

If your partner is using implementation intentions tied to time, make it as general as possible, i.e. do yoga in the morning before work. The more specific, more brittle.

You can work implementation intentions and habit stacking into your suggestions where appropriate, but you can be explicit about how you want them to experience the habit. Work suggestions around the four stages of a habit:

You should think carefully when crafting suggestions to make them fit this format. Describe the trigger, and then go into the craving that the response would satisfy, and the anticipation of the reward.

In the yoga example, the cue for the behavior is getting out of the shower. The craving is the feeling of being stiff and inflexible and the desire to stretch and bend. The response is the actual act of yoga. And the reward is the feeling of accomplishment and happy body feelings.

In addition, if you are tracking with a point system and they have a milestone to look forward to, you can have them focus on accumulating additional points and have them look forward to how good that cupcake will taste.

Once the habit is set up, your partner should commit to the habit in some way, ideally on the day the habit is executed.

Commitment is a personal statement of intention. It needs to come from within, and your partner has to mean it. Your partner may want to make the commitment part of an existing routine in habit stacking. For example, your partner may put up a "When I get out of the shower, I will do yoga" post-it on the bathroom mirror, and repeat the commitment statement out loud while showering. This will reinforce the post hypnotic suggestion and "prime" your partner for the habit.

If your partner is caught up in something, they may want to use an early reminder or location reminder that will remind them of their commitment once they get close to the time or place. This is not ideal as it can create a dependency on the phone, but it’s better than missing it. This reminder should remind them of their commitment, not replace commitment altogether. If your partner relies on reminders, it supports repetition but hinders habit development.

Once the habit has been executed, your partner will track it by marking it down somewhere.

Using an analog journal or calendar as a habit tracker can be effective, but using a phone is also fine.

Apple’s built in Reminders app works well for simple habit tracking. It works best with the title set to a short name and the commitment statement in the notes. Your partner can set repeat on a reminder, and the reminder will show up on future days even when the current reminder is completed. I recommend setting the reminder early as a prompt to remind your partner of the commitment, rather than as a cue to immediately execute the habit. The nice thing about Reminders is that it also shows up in the Apple calendar application, although it is limited — you cannot filter for a particular list, for example. Reminders also has a shared list feature that your partner can use to share tracking with you.

You may want to turn off notifications on the list, as it will notify all devices every time a habit is added or completed.

Reminders is a good ad-hoc system, but it is not explicitly a habit tracker. It does not present skipped or completed habits very well in review, although Calendar does let you see the whole week at once. It also does not provide a way to backfill habits from the previous day as being completed — if the habit was done but it wasn’t clicked on the day, you have to add the reminder in explicitly.

Unfortunately, most habit tracking applications are not great. There’s a number of habit formation features that are still not implemented by habit trackers.

The best habit tracking app for partners that I’ve found is Obedience, which has shared goals for partner based relationships and a built-in point based reward system. However, it’s specifically focused on BDSM relationships and refers to "dominant" and "submissive" roles inside the application, which may not be your style.

If you have a regular check-in for timeboxed post hypnotic suggestions, you can discuss any changes you need to make to habit formation suggestions. Your partner may be driving this conversation and want to expand the two minute yoga session to five minutes, or move to a more advanced practice. Your partner may want to make changes to the suggestions, or even want to remove post hypnotic suggestions from the habit altogether if they feel hypnosis is not a good fit for them.

You should identify issues that slow down or block your partner’s habit and think about developing workarounds. For example, if your partner is trying to do yoga and the cats are fighting, feed the cats while yoga is happening. If your partner is having unhelpful thoughts that interfere with the habit, change the suggestion to deal with those thoughts. Review is also important to help your partner organize and process their feelings about the habit. If your partner is struggling and dislikes the new habit more and more, it may not be a good fit for them, and they may want to try similar habits that play more to their strengths.

You may be acting as an accountability partner and reviewing your partner’s habit. If your partner has missed some days, this can be an uncomfortable conversation. The goal here is to be a supportive coach for your partner, not a judge or parent.

Once you’re done, hypnotize your partner and reinforce or modify their suggestions as necessary.

It can take months for a habit to grow into a routine and become automatic. During that time, you and your partner will want to involve yourself more in the particulars of the habit. Once your partner has grown the habit out to the point where the basics are taken care of and you are optimizing the processes around the routine, your partner should join a community organized around the routine and introduce themself. This helps your partner identify more with the new activity.

Involvement with a community not only helps identify with the activity, but can also provide its own rewards in social recognition and acknowledgement. This can be as simple as joining a yoga discord server or subreddit, or going to a yoga class once a week.

The first way to break the habit is to reduce or eliminate the cue which prompts the habit.

If the cue is a place, your partner can avoid going to the place. If it’s food, your parter can avoid buying the food. If your partner is involved in a community that encourages around the habit, your partner can find a different community that may be a better fit.

Breaking the craving involves making it unattractive. This doesn’t mean associating a bad habit with them with negative feelings, but satisfying the craving with a substitute habit that is not compatible with the bad habit. Most bad habits are associated with stress or boredom.

Talk to your partner about picking new habits that can solve for stress or boredom that have more positive outcomes. For example, instead of stress eating, your partner can get a fidget spinner. Instead of checking TikTok on their phone, they can carry a Kindle around.

Also, have your partner talk about all the parts of the habit that they hate, and record it on video. When they get the craving, they can watch the video to reduce their motivation as they remember all the negative aspects of the bad habit.

Part of what makes a bad habit easy is that the environment is set up such that executing the habit is easy. Increase friction. If the cue is checking the phone, your partnet can leave the phone in an inconvenient place. If there are computer games, they can keep them on a removable hard drive. This is called precommitment.

Your partner can also use a commitment device. If there’s a website or social media that your partner checks, your partner can install software that can block or limit interaction with the site. If your ISP offers parental management, your partner can put their devices on a limited profile.

Finally, simply being there and acting as an accountability partner is very helpful for your partner. Explaining the bad habit on review is bad enough, but when there’s a contract involved, there may be a cost involved.

Obedience has a punishment feature that has the option of removing points earned, so that points earned by good activities are removed by bad activities. I don’t recommend this for habit formation, as it implies that habits are fungible.

Also, while I’m on the fence about missing good habits leading to punishment, I don’t think bad habits should lead to punishment, especially if applied by another person outside of a kink context. I think that punishment changes the punisher as much as it changes the punished, and it tends not to produce solutions.

I especially do not like the idea of spending money on an anti-charity or sending gifts or donations to causes your partner is against as part of a habit contract. If it’s really not working, put money into a fund to see a certified professional and spend the money there.

When creating suggestions, incorporate all of these elements: avoiding the cue, finding another habit more appealing, how tiresome it would be to work against the friction, how it would feel being held accountable for it.