Unleash Your Potential #5 - Habits

Douglas: Welcome to the Unleash Your Potential Blog, what question can I answer for you today?

GoalGuardian: What techniques can help me build better habits? 

Douglas: I am so glad you asked. The truth about habits is that we are building them every day. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a habit is a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up. So almost everything we do is some form of habit. If when you wake up, you stretch, go to the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, read the paper, etc., that is a habit.

The fact that you asked how to build better habits, suggests to me that you have some habits that you are not happy with. Most, if not all of us, have habits that we wish we didn’t have. I have a habit of snacking when I am watching TV. Somewhere in my past, I learned to do that and it became a habit. I do it without thinking now. This is part of my weight loss journey challenges. The first technique I am going to suggest to you is that you have to identify which habits are leading you to think you need better ones. You can’t build better habits if you don’t know what you are trying to change.

In my experience, the best way to get a better habit is to replace the ones that aren’t serving you. The challenge is that if we get rid of a habit we don’t want, it leaves a void. This is why sometimes smokers will replace smoking with gum chewing. The gum chewing fills the void left by not smoking. So I would suggest that once you have identified a habit that isn’t serving you, you consider what habit would serve you better. Then you can replace the old habit with the new one.

The process of change is hard. Breaking a habit and forming a new one is difficult work. There is a common saying that it takes 30 days to form a habit and even longer to break one. I am not sure this is always true. Habit formation takes as long as it takes so that a behavior becomes automatic. The key is repetition. The more times you do the new habit and don’t do the old one, the quicker you will make the change.

Finally, start small. Changing a small habit can be easier than trying to change a massive, long-practiced habit. Pick a thing you want to change and make a small change in the programming, When I was trying to stop nail biting, I focused on not nail biting for 24 hours. When I made it 24 hours, I celebrated and then set the goal for another 24 hours. Eventually, after several 24-hour blocks I missed, I bit my nails. I reset the clock and said, “Okay, from here I will make it 24 hours.” After a few setbacks, eventually, the streaks got longer and longer until today, when I generally don’t bite my nails. I slip up sometimes, but it is much easier to go back to the new habit when I slip. Eventually, I expect I will not think about nail biting at all.

So, the technique I can offer is this:

1.      Identify the habit(s) that are not serving you

2.      Figure out a new habit to replace them with that will serve you better

3.      Start small

4.      And repetition is key.

I hope my answer sheds some light on your challenge. If you want to dig into this concept further, I encourage you to reach out and set up a conversation. In the meantime, check back tomorrow for the next question in the Unleash Your Potential Series!

Be Well!

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