I know that most of us don’t even think about the impact that our daily habits have on our lives. Things that we do every day without even thinking about it help to keep us healthy and alive. From washing our bodies to brushing our teeth to eating our breakfast. We don’t even think about doing these things often they just happen. That is because they are habits that we have formed that we complete every day about the same time each day and we are in a sense on auto pilot.
What is difficult though is breaking habits or starting new ones especially if you are older and are set in your ways. For instance adding in exercise and stretching to your daily habits may seem very difficult at least at first. According to BJ Fogg in his book Tiny Habits, the most important thing about making new habits or breaking old ones is looking at our motivation to complete them as well as our ability to achieve them. If we make goals and habits too hard and we don’t have the motivation to complete them they most likely will not become habits. For example if you decide all of the sudden you are going to work out super hard every morning at 5:30, but you hate mornings and hate exercise you probably are not going to be motivated to get up and work your heart out So a better way would be to either do you exercise at a time when you are more motivated or do a smaller amount of exercise at least to begin with. Even starting with getting out of bed and doing 10 to 15 minutes of stretching is a good start. In this example you may not be motivated to get out of bed but the task that you have at hand is simple and easy to achieve So you are more likely to do it. As you get used to that routine of getting out of bed and doing 10 to 15 minutes of stretching you can gradually add 5-10 minutes to the time Until you reach your desired goal.
On the other hand if you want to break a bad habit like eating crappy food it is best to make it harder to get. So for example you are very motivated to eat all of the Oreo cookies in your cabinet when you get home from a stressful day of work. In order to stop this bad habit you need to make it harder to get those Oreo cookies. So don’t buy them or have them at home available for you to eat.
Something that I really liked about Fogg’s book was that he said you shouldn’t blame yourself. Instead of beating yourself up over messing up because you couldn’t do the crazy exercise in the morning or stop yourself from eating the Oreos you need to look at why it’s happening and the motivation and ease of the habit. The problem is the process and not you. You are just naturally doing what is the easiest for you.
One other important key factor with forming habits is you need to have prompts. So if you want to start a new habit you should do it directly after or during a task that you are already doing daily. That task is a prompt for you to start the new habit. On the other hand if you want to stop a bad habit you need to take away the prompts. He gives the example of wanting to stop scrolling on your phone right when you get up in the morning. Instead of the alarm on your phone being the prompt to pick up the phone and start looking at Facebook, put your phone outside of the room. Get an old fashion alarm clock that does not have your phone attached to it :-) problem solved!
So I challenge you to think about one habit that you want to start and one you want to stop. Now look at the motivation and ability behind each and tweak each to make it happen or stop it. I also suggest reading the book Tiny Habits. As a bonus he puts in simple habits for different areas of your life. Like motivating and uplifting yourself by giving a fist pump and saying “yes” to yourself. Makes me smile every time I think of it. Good Luck!!
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