by KMiller | Nov 29, 2018 | Habit formation
A quick Google search for “how long does it take to establish a new habit” will get you a variety of answers. So who’s right? That was my frustration when I began studying habit formation several years ago.
As I learned more about the topic I started using myself as a guinea pig. You, too? Well, after one of my so-called established habits fell apart, I set out to learn why.
Not every habit we want to take on is the same. And it’s easier to replace a bad habit with a healthful one than to try to break the bad one. Knowing this I sought the counsel of a few experts on motivation from Ball State (that’s where I’m earning my master’s degree,) Stanford and the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Most of us know that we need to reward ourselves, but did you know that the reward can be something as simple as “I did it!” said aloud in front of no one? Think about it. When you do something well, and another person acknowledges you for it, how do you feel? What if you became that other person for yourself?
Praising the process is more important than praising the product (Research supports this, but if you want a quick, concise read, check out Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck.) So, every effort you make with your habit deserves a bit of mental high-fiving.”
We don’t need to bribe ourselves with rewards, especially if what we’re really trying to do is build intrinsic motivation for a task (more on this another time.)
But extrinsic carrots can help us along our journey to healthful, more productive habits. For my exercise habit, I use a checkmark on a calendar that I see every day.
No checkmark = no reward (mental high-five) = no sense of accomplishment for that task.
How long does it really take to establish a new habit? It depends, but you might be interested in learning more about the Transtheoretical Model of Change (aka Change Theory; Stages of Change) as a jumping off point.
The oft-quoted 21 or 30-days isn’t necessarily accurate for every healthy habit you’d like to implement. (The bad habits seem to be sticky much more easily, am I right?) In fact, sometimes it can take up to five years!
Bottom line? Be patient with yourself as you try to create healthful, productive habits. Have a little fun with the process, and don’t get too caught up in the product. You’ll get there. Healthy habit formation is a journey.
References:
LaMorte, W. W. (2018). The Transtheoretical Model (Stages of change). Retrieved from http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/BehavioralChangeTheories6.html
Dweck, C. (2007) Growth Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.
by KMiller | Nov 28, 2018 | Personal Development
You’ve been following your new diet for a month or so, but you’re not seeing the results you expected. You’ve been following your “dream” project for six months with little success. Should you quit?
The answer is, “it depends.”
When the goal or objective is personal, not professional, then you might want to consider whether you’re still “all in.” If you can be honest with yourself and the answer is “no,” then it’s time to let it go (I feel like I’m channeling Elsa, right now.)
Is that an easy thing to do? Nope.
Why? Because chances are we’re mentally and physically invested. We’ve spent so much time on it. Other people expect us to do it. Oi! You can’t possibly quit, now!
Our hesitance or resistance sometimes comes down to one simple word — Fear. Before I give you my definition of fear, though, let’s talk about why “to persist or not” isn’t necessarily the question we should be asking.
What if what you need to do is adjust?
Maybe you “reshape” what you’re doing and keep going after “it.” Here’s a great question to ask yourself, “Is it still serving a purpose for you?” Or, how about this, “Is your energy better spent elsewhere?” What about this, “Do you need to table it for the moment?” Or even this, “Does your idea need to marinate a little longer?” (Some people might prefer “percolate.” Yeah, that works, too.)
The point is that figuring out whether you persist in order to achieve a goal isn’t a simple answer. It takes a bit of contemplation time. And that’s time worth spending when something matters to you.
Back to how I define fear — It really means “fabulous effort absolutely required.” And anything worth our time to persist doing is going to probably scare us just a little bit.
by KMiller | Nov 27, 2018 | Habit formation, Personal Development
It’s New Year’s Eve and for some reason you’ve decided to make a few (don’t lie, several) resolutions. You’re going to lose the muffin top, stop drinking so much, kick the nic habit, spend more time doing/being/etc. … but then you don’t stick with any of them for longer than a month or so.
What happened?
Was it a lack of motivation? You thought you had that on lock.
Was it a lack of willpower? Yeah, maybe, but how do you get more of that? You read somewhere it’s like a “muscle,” but what does that really mean?
If you’re like me, all you want to know is how to develop a habit in any area of your life and make it “sticky.”
You’ve probably read or heard about The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (Great read, by the way, if you haven’t indulged.) Maybe you’ve even looked into other habit books (there are a few.) And as much as you love them (me. too) something isn’t clicking.
For me, the realization happened when I’d established (I thought) an exercise habit for nearly a year, but when I became ill it became harder and harder to start my routine again. This nagged at me until I finally called BJ Fogg (the Tiny Habit guru.)
From our conversation, I realized that one thing I failed to do was PLAN for being ill, or PLAN for being unable to meet my goal. This might seem basic to you, but it was a revelation for me.
If you want to have indestructible habits one thing you need to do is plan for the times you can’t achieve the goal. Why? Because it can take much longer than you realize to establish a habit.
Remember, a habit, in its most basic form, is something you do without thinking. Some take root so easily your head spins. Others, not so much.
Step one: Make a plan.
by KMiller | Nov 26, 2018 | Personal Development
How many times have you failed? Sometimes we have a skewed view of this either because we’re listening to others (and allowing them into our heads,) or we have high standards for ourselves (that might be a bit unrealistic.)
But is all failure bad?
What can we learn from the experience?
The number one thing is resilience. But what is that? The American Psychological Association defines it as, “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means “bouncing back” from difficult experiences” (APA, 2018).
It’s not the same as persistence.
But what if we’re not all that great at “bouncing back?” What if you really suck at it? Here’s the upside …
Resilience, aka grit, has been studied for at least twenty years and there are several actions we can take to make ourselves stronger.
Here are a few of the high points:
- Build healthy relationships
- Accept that change is gonna happen
- Keep an eye on your prize (goals)
- Take care of you, boo.
- Be decisive and ACT.
Check out the reference section for a link to a more detailed list from the APA. Seriously, they know their stuff. And if you’re interested in how to apply it to children/teens, also check out the information from Harvard.
Bottom line? We all can become more resilient, gritty people with a little deliberate practice.
References:
American Psychological Association (2018). The road to resilience. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
Center on the Developing Child (2018). Supportive relationships and active skill-building strengthen the foundations of resilience. Retrieved from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/supportive-relationships-and-active-skill-building-strengthen-the-foundations-of-resilience/
by KMiller | Nov 25, 2018 | Personal Development
“This is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Although Fight Club isn’t among my favorite movies, this particular quote is great. Within it, you can feel the urgency of choice. Every day, every minute and every second is filled with them. The realization of this can be paralyzing.
But it shouldn’t be.
Once you make a choice, you’ll either prosper or wallow because of it, but at the end of that day, minute, or second, you will have freed your mind of the worry that comes with making a choice. It’s the worry that creates the churning in your stomach, the ache in your chest, or that pain in your neck.
You might regret a choice you’ve made, but in the next moment you have the option to correct it. Sometimes the choice you make leads to a tragic result. But you still are the narrator of your story. You still are the one who decides how to live with your choice.
Prosper or self-pity. Learn or become stagnant. This is our challenge.
It seems fitting that I should end this with another movie quote, and this time it’s from one of my all time favorites!
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” – Andy Dufresne, Shawshank Redemption
by KMiller | Nov 24, 2018 | Personal Development
Have you ever set a goal for yourself, and been completely excited to do it, but then your excitement fizzled? Me, too. It usually happens when the goal is more long-term, right?
In Plan or Fail, Your Choice, I mentioned my pushup challenge. It’s one of those physically and mentally challenging long-term goals (for me, maybe not someone who’s super fit) that is really easy to drop. But, I haven’t.
My family friend you met in that earlier post wanted to know the “why” behind my pushups. Simon Sinek is famous for posing this question as it applies to work and leaders, and I think it’s just as useful when applied to building a habit.
What keeps a person pushing to the end goal? What’s the “why?” Yes, it’s true that we’re all different, but here’s where some of us are the same: persistence, tenacity, endurance — whatever you want to call it — some of us have a lot more of it than other people. It’s considered a personality trait and is associated with conscientiousness (De Fruyt, Van De Wiele, & Van Heeringen, 2000).
Let me be clear — persistence from a psychology perspective is “voluntary continuation of a goal-directed action in spite of obstacles, difficulties, or discouragement” (Dean, 2018). It’s not the same as resilience (we’ll talk about that another time.)
So if it’s a personality trait, can we become more persistent? If so, how? Dean (2018) offers several ideas, among them, are finishing what you start, but doing it ahead of schedule; and, set a goal and create a plan to stick to it. Easy, right? Nope. But you already knew that. It’s probably gonna hurt a little.
Like pushups.
But, once your body gets used to doing wall pushups, you can move to knees-on-floor pushups, and before you know it, you’ll be doing military pushups. Each position becomes easier. You begin to celebrate the small successes. When you do that, you’re encouraged to “keep moving forward” (Gotta love Walt Disney.)
This is how you build persistence. It’s one bite-size step at a time + celebrating successes along the way.
References:
- Cloninger, C.R.; Svrakic, DM; Przybeck, TR (December 1993). “A psychobiological model of temperament and character”. Archives of General Psychiatry. 50 (12): 975-90.
- doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1993.01820240059008. PMID 8250684.
- De Fruyt, F; Van De Wiele, L; Van Heeringen, C (2000). “Cloninger’s Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character and the Five-Factor Model of Personality”. Personality and Individual Differences. 29 (3): 441–452. doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00204-4. ISSN 0191-8869.
- Dean, B. “Persistence.” Retrieved from https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletters/authentichappinesscoaching/persistence
by KMiller | Nov 23, 2018 | Personal Development
Recently, during a holiday get-together, I was asked why I do so many push-ups. “What’s the point?” she asked. “Is there some health benefit to doing so many?”
Let me back up a beat …
About a month ago I decided to challenge myself to complete 1000 push-ups in a single day. The idea didn’t come out of thin air. I’d finished listening to a book whose author had accomplished this in a single month of training with a former Navy Seal. I’d become bored with my workout routine and needed a new challenge. This seemed perfect!
But then it wasn’t.
I was being pretty lazy about increasing my daily count. Why? I have no idea. Letting it slide just felt okay. After all, no one was holding me accountable for reaching my goal — not even me apparently! My daily minimum was set at 25 pushups even though I’d been doing 100 regularly for months and in as fast a time as possible no less! Hmmm. What’s going on? Why wasn’t I committed to my new goal?
Have you ever forgotten to actually create a plan for accomplishing your goals? Me, too. And that’s what happened here. A plan guides our thoughts and actions. The idea of doing 1000 pushups in a single day was overwhelming. I needed to break it down into bite-size chunks. So, that’s what I did. My minimum every day is 100 pushups and I add 25 to that each day. But here’s the kicker — okay, there’s two — if I can’t increase by 25 on a given day, then I don’t worry about it, the next day, I just pick up where I left off. I also set a top goal. This is the number I can’t EXCEED each day. Here’s how this played out the day after Thanksgiving: On the holiday, I completed 375 pushups. That was my top target. Even though I reached it by early afternoon and could have done more, I didn’t. This meant that the day after my top target was 400. I finished those by around 5 p.m. Could I have done more? Yes. Did I? Nope.
Burnout is a real thing. How many times have you announced you’re going to start a new exercise habit, attacked it with gusto, and then petered out a month or two later? Me, too. Setting boundaries for new goals help reduce the risk of giving up entirely.
I should mention that I did a calculation to figure out how long it might take me to complete 1000 pushups in a day. It turns out, I can realistically hit my target by mid-Decemberish. We shall see …
Lesson #1: PLAN
Next time we’ll talk about “the why” of persisting. It ain’t always easy, but it sure is worth the effort! (Which is what I explained to my family friend who’d asked all those questions about my crazy pushup challenge!)
Kori D. Miller is an author, facilitator, and coach who loves salted white popcorn, NY-style pizza, and exceeding her self-imposed limits.
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