Most people think of habits as things they do often. In psychology, we define a ‘habit’ as an action that is performed automatically when someone encounters a certain context or cue. There are different types of cues — some are internal, like thoughts and feelings, and some are external, things that happen in the environment.
An example of a healthy habit is eating a piece of fruit at lunchtime. In this case, the action is eating the piece of fruit and the cue is lunchtime. If this was a new behaviour someone wanted to start, then the first time it was performed it would require a bit of planning (getting a piece of fruit) and attention to remember to eat it at lunchtime.
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