We’ve nearly reached January’s halfway point, and unless you have superhuman willpower, you might find your motivation flagging when it comes to those new year’s resolutions you set with the best of intentions only a few weeks ago.

There’s no point in berating yourself if you’ve been groggily reaching for the snooze button rather than leaping out of bed at 6am and smashing out a 5k run or if you’ve found yourself scrolling Twitter before bed rather than reading the book on your nightstand. Forming new habits can be seriously difficult.

So, if you’re finding that your initially steely resolve has melted away over the past few days, it’s worth taking a closer look at the way we adopt new behaviours. Why does it feel so hard? And how can we overcome those barriers?

According to Jordan Vyas-Lee, psychotherapist and co-founder of mental health care clinic Kove, habit formation is the process by which we turn behaviour and choices – often ones which take serious effort to make – into patterns of behaviour that are “less resisted”.

Forming new habits is seriously tricky – here’s how you can make them stick, according to an expert