Top 8 Tips for Habit Change (Habit Series 7/7)

The previous blogs in this series have covered various topics relating to how habits work and how we can make them work better.  This blog will offer several tips to further optimize your habit changes.

1. Have Systems, not Goals.  Scott Adams, in his book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” says when you are trying to make changes, it is better to have systems versus goals.  He states how goals can be vague, such as I want to lose 10 pounds, but systems - what you will eat, how you will exercise, what research you will put into your plan, how consistent you will be - will determine the results you want.  Sports coaches understand this distinction, you may have the goal of winning a championship, but it is a system of how you recruit players, run practices, and manage assistant coaches to get you to that result.  Goals are about one moment, such as cleaning my house, but that’s temporary if you do not have a system in place of immediately putting things where they belong.  It is essential to have both –set a goal so you know the direction you are going in and build the system to support your journey.

2. Get a partner.   Sometimes when we are thinking of making changes, it can be easy to talk about it but hard to live.  We are all human with weaknesses and willpower lapses and cannot always do it alone.  Enlisting help, whether a supportive partner or a coach, can help us make sustainable changes.  It is the reason why many people work with personal trainers.  If all we needed were more information on diet and exercise, we would all be walking around super fit, but when we partner with an expert, we are held accountable and can feel more motivated to do the work.

No matter how disciplined you are, you can go further when you go together.  Marshall Goldsmith is one of the top coaches in the business and even he has somebody that he calls every night so he knows he’s doing his ideal behaviors and can be held accountable.  You can make it a two-way street and find a success buddy who wants to devote time to habit changes as there’s nothing more powerful than walking arm in arm with someone to go after your objectives.  If it is the same goal like exercising more, you can take walks and workout classes together and even introduce a little competition to rev the engines.  An accountability buddy allows you to report your goals, share your plans to get there, and help each other with information, connections, and motivation. 

3. Recover from your mistakes.  Let’s say you put in the most incredible systems, but somehow you get pulled off track.  One crazy day in a busy week slams you and you are unable to do your exercise routines.   It’s fine, you are human, the key is to return to the path.  Because some people try to be perfect, when they break their chain, it stays broken, and the next thing you know you have been off your exercise routine for two weeks and now you do not know if you can resume.  The answer is that you can always return at any moment.   Be mindful to prevent a slip from turning into a downward spiral… first, you stop exercising, you feel sluggish, you have low energy at work, are unproductive with your assignments, feel irritable, don’t spend time with your family, and so on. Be patient with yourself, if you fall off the wagon, brush yourself off, and keep going.  Try another strategy, reinforce your commitment, and press on. You got this!

Another reason why people get pulled off track is because they get to a certain level of success and then get too comfortable.  We stop doing what we did to get us there and we slowly degrade like frogs in boiling water, warming so incrementally that they do not realize they are getting cooked.

5. Be quick to eliminate bad habits. A good way to think about habits is to think about cultivating a garden. There will be a variety of flowers, trees, and plants, which are the good habits you will want to nurture and then there will be the weeds, the unwanted habits, which should be ripped out before they grow too large. As Ben Franklin warned, it’s easier to prevent bad habits than to break them. Warren Buffet would agree as he adds “The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” Taking a preventative approach can save you tremendous energy.

6. Permit yourself to break your routine. Routine and consistency are good, but sometimes the things that used to energize us can lose their effects.  In that case, it is helpful to shake things up and interrupt your routines.  Instead of going for a run every day, maybe you take a bike ride.   When you deliberately take a break or challenge yourself with a new activity, it can reenergize your commitment.  Travel is the ultimate activity because it forces you to do so many new things– figuring out how to navigate a city, where to explore, what to eat, who to meet, and so on.

7. Check-in with your habits. It is also important to recognize that sometimes habits have their seasons. Maybe you were intentional about eating oranges every day for 6 months but it is no longer serving you, so you can introduce another habit for another season in your life. Just because you decide to take one thing on, does not mean it is the thing you will do for the entirety of your life. Periodically check in with your habits to make sure it is the right match for where you are in life.

8. Reflect & celebrate.  Evaluate your habits, what is going well, what is not, and what might need to change?  Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously review your behaviors and beliefs so you know you are spending time on the right things based on where you are.  Comedian Chris Rock will test 100 jokes and record which bits went well in his notebook so he can repeat that specific behavior.

Reflections can happen at multiple levels - daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reviews so you can track your most important habits and measure your progress. Here is one way to reflect… on an excel spreadsheet, in the first vertical column, write a list of important things in your life, such as family, friends, and virtues you are cultivating.  Across the top, list the days of the week. At the end of each day, complete the column by writing a simple yes or no.  At the end of the week, review your scores. If you say your family is your top priority but they do not appear in your busy calendar and you have not checked their boxes, that’s valuable data for you to act on. It is only this reflection time that will allow you to discover the inconsistencies.

Don’t forget to stop and take the time to celebrate.  Give yourself new rewards daily, weekly, or monthly.  Read something fun, go for a hike, book a massage, eat the best icecream, or do any preferable activity that will add the benefit of disrupting your routine.

Some change is hard, but when we can create systems, enlist help, reflect, and celebrate our wins, we can make the process a little less difficult.  And if it is still hard despite our best efforts, do them anyway, it will be a road you can travel to success.

Quotes of the day: “All our life is but a mass of habits.”  -William James 

Q: When was the last time you enlisted help to enact positive change in your life?  What worked? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

What’s your favorite tip for habit change?

Consistency is the secret to changing habits (Habit Series 6/7)

The best way for your habit change to take root is to be consistent with your behaviors.  Even when you cannot see the benefits, big dividends will be eventually paid when you put a system in place to follow. 

When you make the slightest adjustments to your daily routine, it can alter your life.  Let’s say you want to exercise more, and you start with 10 minutes a day, it does not sound like a lot, but it adds up.  Jerry Seinfeld, one of the most successful comedians of all time, brought a level of consistency to his daily work that most of us would envy. He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes, and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.  He used a wall calendar that had a whole year on one page hung in a prominent spot.  For each day he writes, he puts a big red X over the day.  After a few days, he would have a chain that would keep growing, the goal is not to break the chain. This method of daily tracking is hugely beneficial for many, but it doesn’t work for all because if you find yourself staring at blank spots that you missed, you can begin to feel bad about your inability to follow a plan and start to get demoralized and give up. Decide if tracking works for you.

Consistency is a competitive advantage.  None of us get where we want to overnight, it is a disciplined process, over time of small intentional steps.  Jim Rohn says, “what simple to do is also simple not to do.”  Successful people are willing to do what others are not.  They schedule time in their calendar every day for their habits.  Practice allows you to rewire your brain and create new mental maps on how to think and behave.  As Tony Robbins says, “Knowledge is not power… it’s potential power.  Execution will trump knowledge any day.”  It is like a light switch, we have to turn it on to enjoy the effects.

Here are two tips to help with consistency:

1. Control your mornings and evenings.  An excellent way to have more control over your day is to have a non-negotiable morning and evening routine so your most important habits are done at the beginning or end of the day, depending on the time that matches your best energy.  A million things can spring up during the day that you may have to react to, but designing the beginning or the end of your day will allow for that protected habit time and fewer if any interruptions.

2. Log your progress. The most effective form of motivation for habit change is progress.  Each small win feeds your desire, and even if the results take longer to see, you can visualize the work you put in. At age 20, Ben Franklin carried a small booklet and used it to track 13 personal virtues and goals such as avoiding wasting time and trifling conversation and would open his book and record his progress.  Following the habit creates a satisfying feeling and a desire to repeat the behavior.  Research shows that those who kept a daily food log were twice as likely to lose weight. It keeps us honest because sometimes we have a distorted view of what we do until we see the paper that puts things into a more realistic light.  The key is to focus on the process and the progress of whom you are becoming as you move toward your destination.  Measurement is useful when it guides you and adds context to a larger picture, not when it consumes you and stresses you out.

Progress leads to momentum,  one of the most influential and enigmatic forces of success.  Newton’s first law states that objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless impacted by an outside force and objects in motion stay in motion unless something stops the momentum.  It’s why couch potatoes can feel like they are in a rut for a while and why the rich get richer, and the happy people get happier.

These steps will lead to the compound effect.  When you are consistent, control your time, and log your progress, you ignite the miracle of the compound effect.  In the book by the same title, Darren Hardy defines the compound effect as “Changes that seem small and unimportant at first, but will compound into remarkable results if you are willing to stick with them for years.”

Even when you do not see the changes, the benefits are delayed.  James Clear offers a striking ice cube metaphor.  He says, “Imagine an ice cube as a room heats up in 1-degree increments. 26... 27...28... to 31 and still nothing has happened. Then at 32, the ice begins to melt.  A 1-degree shift, seemingly no different from the previous ones, but this one unlocked a huge shift.”  The hard work you do is never being wasted, just stored. It’s natural to get frustrated with running for a month and not seeing results, but like all things, you need to give it time and the amount of time can vary from one person to the next.

Habits can compound for or against you.  When you are consistently doing your disciplines and tracking your progress, you will be on a growth path, even if it is not noticeable at first, it will yield massive long-term results.  If you choose the status quo or feed negative behaviors, you will accrue a deficit.  It’s a multiplying effect in whichever direction - and, you get to choose.

Quotes of the day: “ I will win, not immediately but definitely.” -Anonymous 

“The secret to success is found in your daily routine.” -Author John Maxwell

Q:  How do you support your best habits?  How do you log your progress?   Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog 7/7 will focus on maintaining systems for habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you track your progress on habit change?

Your Personality Wiring is Impacting Your Habits (Habit Series 3/7)

The key to setting habits is to know yourself so you can customize your plan for change.  Not everybody is the same, what makes sense for some may not work for others, what seems like a hill to you may look like a mountain to me, so it is essential to experiment and find the approach that works best for you. 

One thing you can do is cast a wide net to get exposed to many ideas and then drill down on what you want to implement.  For example, you may spend time exploring all of your worst habits, then pick 1-3 to do some deeper reflection and double down on changes you want to make with those.  It is like deciding you want to be a better listener, you may briefly explore 10 books, but choose 2-3 to learn everything from and extrapolate main points, drown out the rest, and be intentional about applying those insights.

Before you jump into implementing habit changes, it could be helpful to explore your natural dispositions.  Here are a few variables to consider: 

1. Factor in your personality style.  Some people may have specific traits that are more conducive to particular approaches.  For example, you may be high in openness, and can more easily experiment with changes to satisfy your curiosity.   You may be high in consciousnesses and may want to follow the habit with a rigid structure instead of a more flexible approach. Are you somebody that can make the change by yourself, or would you do much better with a partner?  For example, we all know we should work out, but some choose to pay a personal trainer because we are more inclined to follow through when there is somebody else holding us accountable.

Beware of the information-action fallacy, which is the assumption that new information will lead to new action. You can read all the books on weight loss, but it does not mean you will enact any of the learnings, we are all human and need help, and some of us find it essential to the process. Executive Coach Marshall Goldsmith knows just how hard it is to change, that is why he checks in with his accountable buddy at the end of every day to reflect on his intentions.

2. Consider different approaches.  Some people prefer a phased approach v. an absolute approach.  With the former, you decide you want to give up coffee so, initially, you have coffee some days and decaf others, then after a while, you will have decaf coffee, and then decaf green tea until you break your coffee connection.  With the latter, you may think it is better to stop cold turkey. 

Indeed, not everybody is wired the same way.  Some people think it is helpful to change a lot of big habits all at once.  In his book Reverse Heart Disease, Cardiologist Dean Ornish shares a study that shows what can happen with dramatic lifestyle changes.  Some of his patients found it easier to say goodbye to all of their bad habits and embrace new ones and, in less than a month, they saw dramatic health benefits.  This is more the exception. Other research shows that when people tried one new behavior in one area, many of them were more successful than the people who tried to change a few new behaviors in many areas. This is especially true when it relates to what Charles Dughigg labels a keystone habit, that one thing you change which has a ripple effect on so many other things, which become easier to change. What approach compliments your personality?

3. Understand your response to change.  When you are first thinking about going for a run, it can cause nervousness, but after a while, you get used to it, and it becomes quite familiar.  Changes can be painful and uncomfortable initially, but eventually enjoyable.  The discomfort is only temporary because humans are incredible at adapting.  How well do you know your comfort level with the cycle of change? What’s your approach to dealing with change?

We all have natural dispositions that we can tap into to help with lasting behavior change.  When we consider our personality styles, strategic approaches, and comfort level with the change cycle, we can chart the best course of action that works for us.

Quote of the day: “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.”  -F.M. Alexander

Q:  What are your best and worst habits?  How do you maintain the good ones and how might you experiment with discarding the bad ones? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you! 

[The next blog in this series 4/7 will focus on the impact of the environment on habit change]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

How does your personality influence your decisions

When it Comes to Habit Changes, Start with Self-Awareness (Habit Series 2/7)

How aware are you of your habits?  Which ones are the good ones, which ones are the bad ones?   If you could change one habit, which one would it be?  What’s been the main obstacle to achieving the change thus far? What do you need to finally succeed? To alter our behavior, it’s helpful to begin with self-awareness.

Many of our performance failures can be attributed to a lack of self-awareness.  Once we start tracking our habits and making them apparent, we can take meaningful action.  Practicing mindfulness – a consistent and focused awareness will help to identify the initial cue that ignites the habit loop so we are better informed to disrupt the process.  Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”  For example, you may be working on not giving unsolicited advice, yet you realize you mostly do it when one direct report asks you what you think.  That is your cue.  Or maybe you notice that in the late afternoon after completing a big task and feeling a little bored, you go for the dessert in the break room or in your kitchen.  Those slower moments can be your trigger for sweets. 

Here are some steps to take to be more aware of your habits:

1. Make a list.  When you are thinking about creating or breaking habits, it is first helpful to make a list and organize them into two columns – good and bad.  It is insufficient to only have the items in your mind, writing them down and seeing your words reflected back to you will help start the process of awareness because we cannot address that which goes unnoticed or is not fully captured.  As Peter Drucker would say, “your biggest challenge is defining what your work is.”  What is the landscape of your habits, and where is the work that needs to be done?  Once you have clarity, you can take the next step.

2. Assess your habits.  If you are unsure if a practice is a bad one – for example, you feel like you watch the right amount of tv, you will want to track your behavior for a couple of weeks to gain an accurate picture.  You may think it is the right amount because you watch it after dinner for about 1 hour but failed to factor in the 15 mins. in the morning while getting ready, the 15 mins. during lunchtime, and the occasional times you need a break in the late afternoon.  Surprise… it is closer to an hour and fifteen minutes a day, which adds up to more than you may want to dedicate.  Do you know how many hours you devote to nonessential work like Facebook or reading gossip or trivial news? These numbers are important to know because as Author James Redfield shares, “where intention goes, energy flows.” 

3. Decide to add or subtract.  You can choose a habit you would like to add to your life, like eating vegetables every day, or you can select a pattern to stop, like giving up candy.  Montel Williams followed the Add-In Principle, he says, it’s not what you take out of your diet, it’s what you put in.  A simple reframe – “Today, I’m going to have a salad, steamed vegetables, and fresh figs” allows him to keep his attention on the things he can do, instead of focusing on what he has to sacrifice.  Some research on neuroplasticity shows that the brain is continuously creating new wiring, so when you lay the trackwork for a new behavior by practicing it, it becomes more robust over time.  When we stop giving attention to the bad habit, the connection in our minds becomes much weaker. 

Be sure to choose carefully.  Most people waste effort on things that are not going to change, they may say they want to work less, but it is clear that their drive for financial success is more potent than their desire for balance.  Choose the habits that you are ready to tackle and are eager to move the needle on because we only have scarce resources.  When you laser focus on one thing at a time, small changes can equate to giant leaps forward. 

4. Make it a part of your identity.  According to James Clear, the first step in thinking about habits is to create identity-based habits.  He offers a concentric circle with 3 rungs, the inner is your identity, the middle is the process, and the outer is the outcome.  Most people set habits because they start with the outside and move inside. 

For example:

·      Outside-In: I want to lose 10 pounds (outcome), so I will exercise a few times per week (process), and then I will be skinny (identity).

·      Inside-Out: I want to be an active, fit person (identity), so I will exercise daily (process), and this will lead to weight loss (outcome). 

·      Outside-In: I want to improve my relationship (outcome), so I’ll say positive things every day (process), and I will be somebody who is in a good relationship (identity).

·      Inside-Out: I want to be a great partner (identity), so I’m going to say positive things every day, leading to an improved relationship (outcome).

If you set goals to change habits that do not align with your identity, it can cause tension.  In an article in SUCCESS, Daniel Hardy notes, “Psychologists tell us that nothing creates more internal stress and trauma than what you’re doing on the outside (actions & behaviors) is incongruent with your values on the inside.”  If you set specific financial goals but that takes you away from your #1 value of family, that will cause strife.  The best way to change who you are is to decide the type of person you want to be and then set the behaviors that serve your vision and prove it to yourself with small wins and consistency. That’s living in alignment and it is a freeing experience.

5. Set an implementation intention.  To build a new habit, establish an implementation intention or a premeditated plan.  For example:

·      When I get asked for advice at a meeting, I will get my team involved before I weigh in by saying: “I’d love to hear what the rest of the team thinks before I share my thoughts.”

·      When I feel bored, I will get up, move around, drink some water, and then grab carrots instead of dessert to snack on. 

·      It is a specific plan of action instead of a foggy idea like I want to be better at not giving unsolicited advice or cutting out desserts.  If you are going to start a meditation practice, instead of saying, I will meditate more or I will meditate every morning, you can get even more specific by saying I will meditate for three minutes every morning in my living room after I brush my teeth.

6. Habit Stack. One of the best ways to build a new habit is to identify the habits that you already do and then stack a new behavior on top.  For example:

·      After my run (current behavior), I will do 5 pushups (new habit). 

·      After I eat lunch (current behavior), I will have a piece of fruit (new habit). 

·      After I sit down for dinner, I will say one thing I am grateful for before eating. 

·      After I get into bed, I will kiss my partner and share words of appreciation.

You can also add the desired behavior to something you already do that will enhance the fun. I discovered this when I started listening to audiobooks several years ago during my boring commute, and suddenly, I started looking forward to the activity because I knew I would have quality learning time.   The same is true for when I go for runs, I listen to podcasts and love the time I spend soaking up information. 

The journey of behavior change begins with understanding yourself.  When you have a clearer picture of your habits, you can decide which ones you would like to change so you can make them a part of your identity.  Setting an implementation intention and habit stacking can make that change process easier.

Quote of the day: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”  Historian Will Durant in distilling Aristotle’s sentiment on the topic.

Q: Who do you want to be?  What habits do you want to help you get there?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you. 

[The next blog in this series 3/7 will focus on the role your personality plays in habit formation]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

What are your Identity-based Habits?

A Closer Look at Habits (Habit Series 1/7)

The quality of our habits makes up the richness of our lives.  Habits are rituals or behaviors that we perform automatically.  The good ones, such as daily flossing, exercise, and mindful eating, contribute to a healthier life.  In contrast, the less envious ones like consuming junk food, binging on Netflix, and skipping workouts can detract from our potential. 

These vital mental shortcuts allow us to glide more efficiently throughout our day.  A lot of what we do is mindless; we are constantly reacting to situations without having the time to conduct elaborate mental trials.  One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40% of the actions people performed each day were not actual decisions, but habits.  Without them, we would be overwhelmed and simply nonfunctional at times because we are bombarded with millions of bits of information and lack the time and cognitive resources to decipher all of the data.  By not thinking about routine actions such as how we are going to brush our teeth, what breakfast we will have, and how we will commute to work, allows us to conserve energy on recurring events so we can use our thinking power for more significant decisions.  

How long does it take to change a habit?

The research on this question is varied.  In the preface to his 1960 book Psycho-cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist, wrote: “It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image.”  According to recent research by Phillippa Lally, the typical average is about 66 days.  But in that study, the range was wide, anywhere from 18-254 days because it depended on the kind of habit.  Drinking 8 glasses of water each day is much easier than going for a daily run, which could take closer to 7-8 months to cement for some people.  In reality, habit work never stops because if we do not maintain them, we lose the routine and the benefit.

Other variables can impact the timeline, such as how long the habit has been ingrained in our mind, how compelling the reason for the change, how big the payoff will be, how dire the consequences if we stick with the status quo, how positive the emotions connected to the behavior change, and the surrounding circumstances.   For example, if we have witnessed a friend die of lung cancer, that may prompt us to quit smoking immediately. If we feel incredible going for a daily walk and we start to notice progress shortly thereafter, we are more likely to implant that habit into our lives.

How do habits work?

In two common frameworks, Charles Duhigg in “The Power of Habit,” describes a habit loop consisting of 3 elements, while James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” explains 4 steps in the process by subdividing the second step. 

Here is how they explain it:

1. Cue.  A trigger that initiates the behavior because you are conditioned to notice the reward.

2. Routine.  The behavior you use in response to the cue.  James Clear subdivides the routine into the craving (the motivational force behind the habit) and the response (the actual practice you perform).

3. Reward.  The satisfying feeling you get when you address the cue.

When putting it together, it looks like this:  You wake up (cue), you want to feel alert (craving), you drink coffee (response), you satisfy your craving of feeling alert (reward).  Therefore, drinking coffee becomes associated with waking up.

Habit loops are important because our brains would shut down due to the overwhelm of the everyday minutiae without them.  When we break a habit into its parts, we can understand them better and zoom in to a specific area to triage. 

Knowing our habits can improve the quality of our lives.  Instead of running on autopilot and accruing behaviors that may not serve us, we can be more deliberate.  When we build good habits, we create freedom for the things that we want to do the most.   

Quote of the day:  “For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits.  For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.”  -Hindu Saying  [This was reportedly a favorite of Steve Jobs who sent it out to friends on invitations to his 30th birthday party].

Q:  What cue or trigger starts one of your habits?   What can you do to interrupt the loop?  Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you!

[The next blog in this series 2/7 will focus on increasing your awareness to change your habits better]

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with people to cultivate habits that serve them, contact me to explore this topic further.

When was the last time you examined your habits?