Creating positive habits

We’ve received many requests for some tips on how to create positive habits. Some people want to get their exercise, eating and health strategies in place, some people want to improve their work-life balance, others want to find out how to avoid slipping back into old habits. So over the next couple of weeks we’ll explore this challenge and give you some of practical tips to try.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”William James

One of the most important things to understand about habits is that they start in your brain. When you repeat a behaviour regularly, you reinforce the neuron connections associated with that behaviour in your brain. The stronger those connections become, the more automatic that behaviour becomes. This is your brain’s learning process and it explains why “practice makes perfect”.

So creating a new habit should be relatively straight forward. But for most of us the real challenge is breaking a habitso that we can replace it with the positive new habit. If you are trying to build an exercise habit, you are probably trying to overcome a procrastination habit!  If you are trying to spend more quality time with family, you are probably trying to resist the urge to check your emails.

Because the old habit has been strengthened in your brain until it is automatic, it can feel very difficult to change. This clip on You Tube explains why habits get so ingrained. So to get you started, identify what positive habits you want to start and what habit is in the way. Put it in a statement like these examples:

• “I want to do at least 20 minutes of exercise daily and to do this I must stop coming up with excuses for putting it off!”
• “I want to spend more time enjoying the family when I get home from work and to do this I need to switch off from work.”
• “I want to be on time for my engagements and to do this I need to be more realistic about how long it will take to get ready.”

Step 1: Imagination + Will

The way that you think and talk about the things you want to achieve in your life will help or hinder your success. Your actions follow your thoughts, so if you want to change your behaviour and start a new habit, your must enlist your brain to help you.
“Change your thoughts and you change your world” Norman Vincent Peale
Our first action for Creating Positive Habits is to create your habits vision board. A vision board is a powerful tool for shifting your brain into the right mode for success because it:

• Engages your imagination and creates a picture that you can work towards.
• Tests your commitment by making sure you are clear about what you want to achieve.
• Acts as a reminder when your momentum is flagging, keeping you on track.

My example is shown below and hopefully gives you some inspiration to create your own motivating habits vision board.  Here are some tips about how to create a good vision board:

• Use present-oriented language eg. “I am” rather than “I will”.
• Focus on what you are moving toward, not what you are moving away from eg. “I am getting out of bed” rather than “I am not sleeping in”.
• Use pictures that represent what it will look like when you are regularly practicing your new positive habit.
• Use colour, images and words that are meaningful to you.

When you have created your vision board, do the following with it:

1. Put it somewhere you will see it every day.
2. Share it with a family member or friend and enlist their support to help you stay on track.

We’ll give you 24 hours to work on your vision board, then we’ll move on to the next action for creating positive habits!  Have fun and be creative. Send us any questions if you would like some guidance.

Step 2: Visualize + Buddy-Up

Visualizing something triggers the same activity in your brain as if you are actually doing it.  This is why it is so important to have a clear picture of the new habit you are creating and what it looks like when you do it. You prepare the brain’s neural pathways by regularly looking at your Vision Board so use it often.
Another important strategy for staying on track is having a great buddy who helps you along the way. Your buddy might be someone who is trying to develop the same habit eg. you exercise together, or someone you talk to when you need motivation, it can be someone you know who already practices that habit and can give you advice, or it can be a group of people who you share ideas with and who inspire you.  So find a buddy and we’ll get started!

Step 3: Daily practice + Intent

We’re working towards Creating Positive Habits in this series of blogs and this is step 3.
The power of visualisation is often underestimated. Even just creating your Vision Board can be enough to change your behaviour immediately, as we have heard from a couple of people working on their habits on our Facebook page.  But visualisation is a practice that needs to be repeated regularly if you want your new habit to stick.
While every action might take a different amount of time to learn and become automatic, let’s say that about 1 month of practice is a good guide for how long you need to repeat something before you feel that it has become a habit. This has more to do with how long it takes to strengthen your neural connections than it does to learn the physical action itself, so remember that visualisation is an important tool that can help you reach your goal faster.
So starting tonight, when you are lying in bed, imagine yourself being the person with your new positive habit.  How does it feel, what are you doing, what are the results?  When you wake, look at your Vision Board and set your intent for the day eg. “Family are my top priority today”.
Repeat this visualisation practice and set your intent EVERY DAY for the coming month and see what happens!

Step 4: Excuses + Just Do It!

It’s Friday and your commitment to your new positive habit may already be waning!  Energy in = energy out, so when you are just getting started, energy needs to be put in again and again to get you on a roll.
Excuses are the mind’s way of justifying why you should slip back into the comfort zone. This morning I justified missing my yoga class by saying to myself “I need to finish this work before 9am so I’ll use the extra time to get it done.” The mind is very clever at coming up with seemingly valid reasons why you shouldn’t do something new and different, so be watchful for these little traps.
Your challenge over the weekend is to notice how often you come up with excuses, not just for the habit you are working on, but for anything.  Ask yourself honestly whether the excuse is really a justification for choosing your comfort zone rather than the new positive habit.  And at least 2 times this weekend, when you are faced with a choice of doing something that is consistent with your new positive habit, don’t think about it, just do it!  Don’t put it off till next pay day, don’t miss something just to get your ironing done, don’t stay in just because it’s a little cold or rainy, and don’t listen to your mind’s clever little excuses!
These actions reinforce in your brain that the new neural pathways are important, and they starting breaking down the old neural pathways that are getting in the way. So stay focused and aware over the weekend and you’ll be proud of the results.

Step 5: Positive Ratio

We hope everyone made it through the weekend with some focus on the positive habit they would like to create.
Did you notice any excuses that pop up in your mind?  Maybe you even challenged them and worked out why they were arising? I found out that I can easily come up with the excuse of sleeping in by thinking “a bit more sleep will be good for me” but what my brain was really saying was “it’s too cold, stay in this warm bed!”  My sneaky mind used something that sounds sensible and logical, but the truth was I had a decent 8 hour sleep and did not need more. That’s a clear sign it was just an excuse.
The next step is to “Just Do It”.  Surprisingly easy if you stop thinking and simply act.  It’s just a little hard to stop thinking…!
The action for today is something that might help you “just do it”.  Try this action all week. It’s called positive ratio and this is the challenge:
Do 2 actions that move you towards your goal for every 1 action that does not.
Consider these examples that show it may not be as simple as counting 2:1. There are other ways to apply the positive ratio:

• If your goal is to create a positive habit of spending quality time with your kids, for each time that you recognise you are not really listening to them or giving them your full attention, double the quality of your attention for the next 24 hours.
• If your goal is to create a positive habit of regular exercise, for each time that you skip it, do 2 things over the next 24 hours that are good for your body eg. do some stretches to make you more body-aware.

The positive ratio will help you to turn a situation in which you could be negative about your actions into something positive. Give it a go and see how much progress you make this week.

Step 6: Positive Reinforcement

How is your positive ratio going today?  When you evaluate your success, do you focus on the two positive things you achieved or the one “slip up” you made?  A common mindset trap for changing habits is the tendency to focus on what went wrong instead of what you successfully achieved.
Thoughts that fill our mind tend to transform themselves into action.  In other words, what you focus on is what you get and also what grows.  If we focus on the things that haven’t gone well for us in our habit changing then it is likely we will get more of those things occuring.
As you continue your positive ratio this week, keep your focus on celebrating the two things that were positive and letting go of that one “slip up”.
Watch how those positives grow and transform themselves into a new habit before you know it!

Step 7: Celebrate + Reward

When you are creating a new positive habit it is important to associate it with positive experiences. By rewarding yourself when you do actions that are consistent with your new habit, you are reinforcing in your brain that this is something you want to do more.
Your reward should be something consistent with your new habit, and something that helps you form more positive mindsets about it. I’m buying myself some new yoga clothes (which I have not done for a very long time) because that will make me feel more committed and that I really am now a yoga practitioner.  If you are saving money, how about a pretty money box in which to save your coins.  Or maybe a bunch of flowers for yourself as a reward to taking the first step towards your habit.
Celebrations and rewards can be very motivating, but beware the celebration that undermines your new positive habit like a glass of wine, block of chocolate, or a sleep in!!

Step 8: Repetition

Creating positive habits needs imagination, will and perserverence!
You’ve pictured your new positive habit in your life, you’ve created a vision board, and you’ve tried a few things to reinforce the importance of the new habit in your brain. Now it’s time for perserverence.
Repetition is one of the important things for embedding new habits and breaking old ones. By repeating things over and over, you train your brain for the new mindset that supports the new behaviours. Until you have repeated it enough times to make it your default response, it will not become a habit. At least 1 month is the suggested minimum length of time recommended for this phase of repetition, although it will vary from person to person and habit to habit. Sometimes your old habits have a strong hold and can draw you back!
So start your repetition commitment now and move your positive habit forward in leaps and bounds! This week keep alert for every opportunity for repetition and Just Do It!

Resource:http://www.mindgardener.com/blog/