What You're REALLY Working
On When You Start A New Habit...
You're Not Doing What You Think You're Doing
When you're building a new habit, you're not working on what you think you're working on. You're not working on things like running, meditating, or studying when you start a habit. At this phase of habit building, the real work you're doing is moving an action from the place where you are "deciding to do it" to the place where you are "automatically doing it". That's a LOT of work!
Example:
Let's say I want to build a habit of running 45 minutes, 3x/week and that I'm currently running 0 minutes a week. (That last part is true).
What do most of us do? We wait until we're excited/ motivated enough to start, then we begin with running 30-40 minutes a day right now! How does that typically end? After 2 or 3 weeks (maybe a little more or less), this new habit dies. Just like the plant in our video, our new habit won't survive without the space it needs to get "rooted".
How do you start if you want to work on creating that space so your habit lasts? If you're not running at all right now, you start with running 1 minute, 3x/week. Do you hate that idea? It doesn't feel like enough, does it? Let's be honest, this kind of start lacks a little sparkle. But there's a reason I recommend that you start here...
You want this action to be so small that you can't NOT DO IT.
Why? Because You're NOT working on running yet!
You're working on making decisions like these:
- When will I run?
- How often will I run?
- How will I remember to run?
- What kind of reward/pay off makes running worth it to me?
- What will I do if it's raining?
- How will I prepare my environment to make going for the run easier?
You're working on repeating that super-tiny action of running 1 minute so many times that it feels a little weird NOT doing it!
Once that's true, adding more time will be easy (and your habit is MUCH more likely to stick).
What Habits Do YOU Want?
No matter which new habit you want to build, starting small will make it easier for it to stick.
- If your goal is to study 1 hour a day (and you're studying 0 now), start with 5 minutes.
- If you want to spend 30 minutes meditating (and you're meditating 0 minutes now), start with 30 seconds.
- If you plan to spend 30 minutes every day checking your emails (and you rarely check them now), start with 1-5 minutes a day.
Allow yourself to create the space for your new habit, and you'll build a habit that lasts!
Want More Habit Help?
USE CODE: EMBRACE
YOUR FIRST MONTH IS $1!
0 Comments