APRIL – WITH ENERGY NOW IN ABUNDANCE ......IT’S THE BEST TIME OF THE YEAR TO CHANGE YOUR HABITS
I recently wrote an article on Facebook, and a supportive follower said:
“What a lovely goal - I think it will be a hard habit to break, but worth the effort.”
CHANGING A HABIT – IT STARTS WITH AWARENESS
Changes can be difficult at first as habit breaking is the tough one, but looking at the pyramid below you’ll now be at the Yellow stage if you want to make a change – this is Awareness and this is great!
Until you have awareness in any situation you don’t know that you even need to change, or you may be in the ‘I haven’t got a clue how to change’ arena, and this is where you have to reach outside yourself and find someone who can help you achieve reaching the blue at the top... just think about learning to drive:
You got behind the wheel the first time, maybe with your dad, thought ‘this is easy’ then tried to do it...
You quickly moved into the yellow stage... and hired a driving instructor
All of your lessons were a tussle between the Yellow & Green stages, I’d hope you were green when you took the test (I barely was!)
And now, you don’t think about driving whilst driving, regular routes become such a habit you can end up at the wrong destination if you’re concentrating on something else
Then life tells you that you have to drive differently.... and that’s when you can get stuck; but maybe if someone moved the gear stick, you’d have to consciously change how you drive, and this is how you change a habit!
HOW TO CHANGE A HABIT
Especially when it’s a treat in a cupboard...
So, how do you change a habit?
You need to employ a mechanism of some kind... who remembers painting bitter almonds on their nails to stop them biting them? Did you stop biting, take the polish off or grow to accept the taste?
Hopefully it was the first one, the second option shows cunning, and the third, well...
So again – HOW DO YOU CHANGE A HABIT?
You put an obstacle in the way that triggers a mental change....
Still this isn’t really that helpful....
SO – HOW DO YOU CHANGE A HABIT?
MOVE YOUR MUG!!
See, you suddenly had to move your eyes to the right, when naturally you read from the left.
All you need to do now is repeat, endlessly, until...
It becomes a habit to go to the new cupboard for your *mug!
*Replace mug analogy with anything you want to change!
Some other good triggers for habit change are:
Move your mug can be applied to the ‘treats’ in the cupboard – lock them in the car, or at least put them out of ‘habitual’ reach.
Bite your tongue as you say something, you know you don’t want to say, i.e. yes, when you mean no. It doesn’t matter if the bite is delayed, the very thought of the bite after a couple of times will make you hesitate until you answer the way you want to
Pop a Smint! I used this one myself, its similar to the bitter almonds scenario, just the thought of the taste becomes enough.
You have to find the right trigger to help you change your habit, and it has to be worked at. On day one you’re already on the 2nd level of the pyramid to change so only 2 more levels to achieve!
Small steps, and every day you stumble, you get back on it straight away, remember a pyramid in Egypt has hundreds of steps to get to the peak, not one just big one!
