Now for the post you
have been waiting for (all twenty of you). I am going to give you ten hints
that will help you make and maintain habits. These habits will o help you achieve results. You are going to make
resolutions, to create habits, which will lead to your goals.
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| Not My Belly |
1. Know Your Destination
If you don't know where
you are going, you can't know how to get there. The first thing we need to do
is to create a set of destinations. Start with a high level abstract outline of
the results you want to achieve. I want you to think out into the future and
think about what type of life you want to lead and what type of person you want
to be. Keep it vague. I want to be healthy. I want to be financial secure. I
want people to view me as competent.
2. Lay Out Your Path
In tip two we are going
to lay out the practical milestones to get us to those destinations. The paths
are specific goals along the path not the actual steps to reach those goals.
Look at the vague destinations you laid out in tip 1 and make specific milestones
that will help you reach those destinations. We are talking very specific
goals. I want to be 170 pounds by Jun 1st. I want to be able to run a 5k by May
1st. I want to have zero credit card debt by Jan 1 2017 etc.
3. Pick Your Habits
Now you want to make a
list of habits that will help you walk down the paths to your destinations.
These habits will become you resolutions over the coming year. A habit is a
reoccurring activity that you will make into an ingrained pattern of behavior.
I will bring my lunch to work. I will work out five days a week at 7 am. I will wake up
at 6:30.. etc. Don't worry about practicality right now. Just make a long
list of all the specific actions you want to take to reach your goals.
4. Limit Number of Changes
Now we are going to start
applying the things we learned from the second post in this series. One of the
main reasons your New Year Resolutions fail is that you try to make too many
changes at once. Also they probably aren't particularly well thought out. You
only have a certain amount of will power. You can only resist temptation so
many times. The plan is to make changes habits so they no longer require as
much energy. Since we can only work so hard on changes we are going to limit
them to a couple/few/maybe one at a time.
5. Choose Complimentary not Contradictory Habits
If you are going to try
and build more than one habit at a time, it is very important that you choose
habits that compliment each other. Two habits that contradict each other will
quickly use up your willpower reserve and most likely lead to failure. Don't
try and quit smoking and lose weight a the same time. Do try and wake up
earlier and go to bed earlier.
6. Know Yourself
This may take some time
to figure out. You need to learn yourself and what can help you build habits.
Let me give an example. Two people have decided to make the same habits: wake
up early and work out a few days a week. Person A needs a reason to get up
early. So they decide to wake up early and then work out. Person B is discouraged
by the prospect of having to both put out the effort to wake up early and then
put themselves through a workout. Person B plans their workout for later in the
day.
7. Be Fine With Failure
You are going to mess
up. You are going to eat over your calorie goal or miss a workout for a lamereason. You are going to blow your budget. Don't
take it to heart. Come back at the next opportunity and do the resolution.
People have a tendency once they blow a goal to completely go off the rails.
If they go over the budget by ten dollars, they then go and blow a couple
hundred. Just let it go if you mess up.
8. Establish the Habit
A commonly repeated
refrain is that it takes a month to make a habit. This is not completely true.
The length of time and effort it takes to build a habit depends on the habit
being formed and the individual. Some take as little as a week to become
ingrained, others can take months and months. So what I recommend you do is to
pick two complimentary habits. Then spend a month concentrating on
building those two habits. After a month move onto working on two more habits.
The habits from the previous months should continue without a whole lot of
effort.
9. Re-enforce the Habit
As you go on working on
new habits some of the old ones might flag. It can be necessary to go
back and work on an old habit. If you find yourself failing at a previous habit
I recommend taking a week and concentrating on re-enforcing that habit that you’ve
been blowing. For example, I was failing badly at a new habit recently when I
realized that I had eaten out for lunch three times in a week breaking one of
my old habits. I shelved the failing new habit and spent a couple of
weeks working on my lunch habit.
10. Know that the Hard Things are Hard
Some life changes are
extra difficult. Anything that involves an addiction, whether physical or
mental, will take more than just effort and habits to change. These things are
completely different animals than just wanting to walk 10000 steps a day. If
you have an addiction you are going to need much more and perhaps professional
help than can be provided on a blog post.
More To Come
Tomorrow
New Years Day, I am going to be posting a more personal post looking back at
last year and looking forward to what I hope to accomplish in 2016. I’ll link
to it here when the post is live. Check it out to see these tips being put into
action.
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