by KMiller | Dec 2, 2018 | Habit formation
Sometimes, getting a new habit to take hold is like trying to walk on ice without falling on your butt.
A few years ago determined to find out why a new habit can get thrown off course, I read everything I could find about behavior change. I came across lots of great information that all basically came to similar conclusions.
- Don’t take on more than one new habit at a time.
- Sandwich the new habit, i.e., anchor it to something you already do (like one pushup after using the bathroom and before washing your hands.)
- Create “baby steps” for your habit. Instead of 10 pushups, just do 1 to get yourself started.
- Congratulate yourself for every successful completion of your new habit.
- Plan for setbacks. (This is HUGE!)
- Avoid self-criticism when you’re not meeting your target.
- Surround yourself with people who are supportive of your change.
- Change your environment to better support your new habit.
- Learn about your new habit. Become fascinated with it. (I believe this increases your sense of competence for what you’re doing. I didn’t read this anywhere, necessarily, but it’s my approach based on the Self-Determination Theory of Motivation.)
Each one of these could be another post, so let’s just focus on “plan for setbacks” for now.
The easiest example is establishing a new exercise routine. What will you do if you get sick and can’t work out? What if you have a bad head cold, or the flu? What if you have a migraine?
Each type of temporary illness needs a plan of attack for getting back into your routine. (Yes, migraines are temporary. Generally, a migraine incident doesn’t last forever. I don’t recommend trying to work out while having one, though. I know I certainly don’t.)
Not having a plan is exactly what threw my exercise habit off course a few years ago. And I’d been doing it for nearly a year!
The fix was simple: If I can’t work out, I can at least walk around my house – either inside or out – for five to ten minutes. If I can’t complete my upper limit for pushups, I can complete my lower limit (depending on how sick I am that limit might revert all the way back to one versus 100.) And when I’m back to 100% better, then I pick up where I left off before getting sick.
It’s not going to be easy to get back into your new habit, but if it’s important to you, then you’ll make it happen.
A plan is arguably the most important part of making a new habit stick.
References
Self-Determination Theory (2018) Retrieved December 2, 2018 from http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/
by KMiller | Dec 1, 2018 | Habit formation, Meaning and Purpose
“Begin each day as if it were on purpose.” – Alex Hitchens, Hitch
Google “morning routines” and you’ll get about 83,500,000 results. That’s crazy! Why are so many of us so interested in this one topic?
Because it matters.
How we start our day sets us up for a positive, neutral, or negative experience. And who really wants to spend their life being neutral or negative?
In Michael Steger’s Ted Talk, “What makes life meaningful,” he said, “Life is short. It’s easy to waste and hard to use.” If we aren’t active participants in our lives, why should anyone else be?
If you haven’t committed to establishing your morning routine, then you’re basically letting everyone else do it for you. That’s living in the neutral zone.
If your day starts with a negative, what are the odds that it’ll be that way all or most of the day? Steger also said, “they’re also all those other people right who litter all of our collective landscapes with these tragically misspent moments, these destructive ticking time bombs of a life not considered.”
Are you that “ticking time bomb?”
Let’s pinky swear right now that none of us will ever be that.
But where should we begin?
A logical place to start making changes is with how we begin our day. There are a few important ideas to keep in mind as you tackle this new habit.
- You need to get up at a specific, consistent time every day. (Google “Why do I need to get up at the same time every day?” You’ll get about 245,000,000 results if you want to know why or Search Google Scholar for “the importance of consistent sleep habits.”)
- Get physical! Get your heart pumping a little bit.
- Spend some time with your thoughts. (Mindfulness activities like meditation — I like Sun Salutations in the morning, breathing, and body scanning all are good mental check-ins.)
- Plan your day. I love my Panda Planner! Be sure to identify your passion project and big rocks for the day. Anything related to those need to happen before you go to bed.
- Delegate whatever can be delegated. You don’t need to do everything all of the time.
- If you’re the primary caregiver, then you’ll probably need to get up a little earlier so you can have the “me time” necessary to calibrate your day. (I call my morning routine calibration and my evening routine re-calibration.)
- Accept that there will be times when things don’t go according to plan. That’s okay! Pick up where you left off, and just “keep swimming!” (By now you should know I make a lot of move references. Dory is awesome.)
Living our lives on purpose every, single, day means engaging with ourselves. After we do that, then we’re better able to be of service to others. And honestly, that’s what helps our lives have meaning.
I started with a movie quote, so I should end with one.
“I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” – Frank Costello, The Departed
Having never seen the movie, I feel I need to add, “In a positive, pro-social, pro-active, loving way that allows us to be of service to others.”
References
Steger, M. (2018). What makes life meaningful? Retrieved December 1, 2018 from http://www.michaelfsteger.com/
Steger, M. Current and past research. Retrieved December 1, 2018 from https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=T7nZ93UAAAAJ&hl=en
by KMiller | Nov 30, 2018 | Habit formation
Changing or replacing a bad habit is hard, time-consuming work that might not pan out. Right? You’ve tried to do it before so you already know that by the third or fourth week, or maybe two months from now, you’ll be back to square one.
But will you, really? The process of changing a habit certainly creates new neural pathways in our brains. Each time we successfully move toward the new habit and away from the old one, those paths get stronger.
The problem is that it doesn’t happen as fast as we’d like. We become impatient because we want the change to happen now. We forget that in all likelihood the bad habit (though easier to pick up perhaps) still took time to take root.
A habit is something we basically do without effort or much thought. It’s like driving your car, riding a bike, getting dressed or any other behavior that we repeatedly do. It takes time for the habit to become second nature, and for some habits, it takes upwards of five years (Pro-Change, 2018).
Patient, steady persistence will get you where you want to go with your new habit. Will it be easy? Nope. But nothing worth having or changing is typically easy to have or do.
You will stumble. You will get tired. And then you’ll pick yourself back up, remember why you want to change that bad habit, and in the immortal words of Walt Disney, “keep moving forward.”
References:
Pro-Change (2018). The Transtheoretical Model. Retrieved from https://www.prochange.com/transtheoretical-model-of-behavior-change November 30, 2018.
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 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.
