36 Lessons I've Learned About Habits-3

36 Lessons I've Learned About Habits-3

Watch your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves. It's just not always obvious, because the self-talk happens in the back of our heads, unnoticed most of the time. That's normal, but when the self-talk is negative, it can absolutely ruin a habit change. If your self-talk is a series of things like, "This is too hard, I can't do this, why am I making myself suffer, it's OK to cheat, it's OK to quit, this is too hard, I hate this" . you need to either catch it, or you'll likely fail. You have to become aware of what you're saying to yourself, and recognize that it's not true. Then tell yourself things that are positive. This is a key habit skill.

Get good at watching but not acting on urges. When you see the urge to smoke, or eat a whole bag of Doritos, or not meditate, or procrastinate, or not go on your morning run . you can pause and watch it but not act on that urge. The urge usually goes unnoticed, and you just act on it. But you can watch it, and not act. You can give yourself a choice. At the moment you're watching, dig deep and remember your powerful motivations.

Have powerful motivations. It's easy to say, "Sure, I'd love to learn to program!" It sounds nice. But something that sounds nice isn't going to stick when things get a little hard. You need to have a very strong motivation - wanting to have better health so you won't suffer as much, wanting to create a good life for your kids, wanting to help people in need. Looking good is not a good motivator, but feeling strong and empowered is. Write your motivation down. Remind yourself of it when things get hard.

Use accountability to engineer positive negative feedback loops. Feedback loops help steer you to doing a habit long enough for it to be ingrained as a habit . or they help steer you away from a habit. Sugar and drugs have feedback loops that are good for forming habits (you get pleasure from doing the habit, suffer if you don't), while exercise often has the wrong feedback loops (it's hard to do the habit, enjoyable to watch TV and skip the habit). However, we can re-engineer the feedback loops, and accountability is one of the best ways of doing that. If you're going to meet a friend at 6am to go on a run, you'd feel really bad if you missed the run, and feel good about going on the run with your friend and enjoying the conversation. Boom. New feedback loop. Same thing when you blog about your habit to an audience, or join an accountability team.

Challenges work really well. Short-term challenges of 2-6 weeks can be really motivating. Maybe it's a challenge between two people (you and a friend), or a group challenge. It's a form of accountability that's fun and, again, revises the feedback loop in a good way. Examples of challenges: no sugar for a month, work out every day for 21 days, stick to a diet for 6 weeks, etc.

Exceptions lead to more exceptions. It's really easy to justify not doing your new habit (or doing an old habit you're trying to quit) by saying, "Just one time won't hurt." Except that it will, because now you think it's OK to make exceptions. And now you don't really trust yourself to stick to your promise to yourself. It's much more effective to not make exceptions - catch yourself if you're thinking about it and trying to justify it, and remember your motivations. When I quit smoking, I told myself Not One Puff Ever (NOPE).

The habit is the reward - it's not a chore. Adding external rewards can be a useful way to have good feedback for doing the habit, but the best possible reward is internal. The reward is doing the habit. Then you get the reward immediately, not later. For example, if you think exercise sucks, you're getting bad feedback as you do the habit - you won't stick to it for long. But if you can find ways to enjoy the exercise (do it with a friend, see the enjoyable aspects of exercise, play a sport that you love, go on a hike with awesome views, etc.) then you're getting positive feedback as you do the habit. Change your thinking - the habit is lovely, a reward in and of itself, a way to care for yourself. Do not think of it as a chore you need to get done, or you'll avoid it.
Lots of habits at once means you'll probably fail. Go ahead and try an experiment: do 5 new habits at once. See how many you're successful with. Then try one habit only, and see how long you stick to that. In my experiments, one habit is much more successful than two at a time, and exponentially more successful than 5-10 habits at once.

Recognize when you're getting distracted. In the beginning, we can get very focused on a new habit, and have lots of energy to put into it. But other things can come up and we might find a new shiny toy to get excited about . and soon the old habit change is falling to the wayside. This has happened to me many times. Now, I'm not saying a habit needs to take up all your mind space and free time. That's not healthy either. But you should be able to focus on it for a small amount of time each day, and still enjoy it and look forward to it. If that's falling away, re-examine your motivation and priorities, and either drop the habit or re-focus.
A blog is an amazing tool. As I said, accountability makes a huge difference in your habit's feedback loops. Blogging is a great way to get accountability. And as you're sharing what you've been doing and what you're learning, you are forced to reflect on your habit, which makes what you learn about the habit and yourself a much deeper experience.

Om Namah Shivay