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We are all creatures of habit. And maybe the single most important thing you can do that will really change your life is to create good, healthy, positive routines that keep you moving toward success.
But how can you really make lasting changes to your habits? For advice on how to do this, we’ve asked the advice of Cindy Loughran. Cindy is the Founder and CEO of New Leaf Touchstone is a Certified Professional Coach and Change agent. She works with individuals and teams to help them make the changes that have enabled them to be more effective and personally satisfied in all areas of their lives.
What’s a habit? Habits are recurrent, often unconscious patterns of behavior that are acquired through frequent repetition. In fact, we live a good portion of our lives unconscious. It’s estimated that our brain consciously processes less than 1/3 of one percent of the signals that we receive from our senses. That’s a good thing, in some cases, because it allows us to walk and chew gum at the same time. But for those of us who want to do more than that, we need to get conscious and purposefully choose our behaviors rather than having them choose us.
Let’s take a look, in simplistic terms, at why changing habits is so difficult. When you do something often enough, you begin to create a ‘rut’ in the part of your brain called the hippocampus. I liken it to a tire track on a soft dirt road. Each time you do that behavior, (drive over that road), the rut gets deeper. At some point, it gets so deep you can’t drive out of it.
Habits work the same way.
In order to change a behavior, you have to create and practice a new, different and more effective one. You have to create a new rut in the road. And, you have to have a conscious thought or intention about using the behavior before the automatic one takes over.
So, how do we go about replacing old, ineffective habits with new ones?
Here are 8 steps to creating new habits:
1. Notice or be made aware of the ineffective behavior and how it is affecting us. That might happen when we get on the scale, have a car accident, get feedback from our boss or go to see a doctor.
2. Clearly describe the specific behavior you want to start doing and make your new habit. You’ll be far more successful moving toward something than moving away from something. If you want to stop smoking, you have to find something that is pleasurable and healthy that you want to start to do instead. And, the more specific you can be in describing that new behavior, the better.
3. Picture yourself using the replacement behavior. Sit quietly and do a visualization so you can get a clear picture. Notice what you are doing, who you are with and how you are feeling. Embrace that vision with all of your senses.
4. Identify the value/benefit/outcome of using the new behavior. The change isn’t going to be easy so there needs to be a payoff. What’s in it for you? Be sure that the benefit is of value to you and not someone else’s ‘should’.
5. Identify your early warning signals/triggers.
Usually, a bad habit is triggered by some event, feeling or other external cue. For example, many people eat when they feel stressed, or become defensive when someone disagrees with them. Determine what happens in your life that causes you to use the current behavior.
6. Develop physical cues to remind you to replace the old behavior with the new.In the heat of the moment, when you begin to notice the triggers, what can you do to make a conscious choice to behave differently or you can enlist a buddy to help you out by pointing out your old behavior and reminding you to use the new response.
7. Notice and document the outcome of using the preferred behavior. Reinforce your efforts by acknowledging your progress and realizing the benefits.
8. Practice, practice, practice. Over time, the new behavior will have created a new rut in your hippocampus and the old one will be over grown with weeds and impassible.
Then, as your new habit becomes an old habit, check in with yourself and be sure it doesn’t outlive its usefulness.
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