My “Change Your Habits, Change Your Life Class” through the Princeton Adult School will start remotely on March 4, 2021. Habits truly are important for all aspects of our lives.
In honor of my class, here is an article about habits from a couple of years ago.
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Why don’t we do what we want to do or do what we know is in our best interest?
I really am fascinated by this.
It sounds easy yet most of us don’t do _____________. Even when we say we are going to do _____________. Even when we REALLY DO want to do ___________. ______________ may be working out, eating well, getting to bed at a decent time, being neater, being more organized, getting out of debt, not drinking as much…
The list goes on and is different for each of us but most “resolutions” fall into the same main categories:
- Health – food, exercise, sleep
- Organization and Neatness
- Money
- Relationships
Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions this year? If so, how is it going?
Most of our New Year’s Resolutions fail because they are WISHES. They are declaring something that we “Want To BE.” They focus on BEING instead of DOING. It is a top down approach. You have this big ideal for how you want to be (better) at some aspect of your life. It is good to have an end goal and an intention but our brains do not work well with vagueness.
The BEING different often follows rather than precedes deliberate action. The key is to choose a small specific action that will help you move a little bit towards that ideal for how you want to be.
You see and hear about how the vast majority of us do not keep our new year’s resolutions. I have read 88% do not succeed. Part of the reason is what I described above. The resolutions are about “being” healthier, neater, getting out of debt, etc. They are not specific enough OR they are too big a change for our brain to handle.
Each of us has a limited amount of self-control and decision-making that we can utilize and depend on each day. These resources do get reset to some extent each night with sleep. The bigger the change we are trying to make, the more our brain, body and whole system resist it.
So, how do you make a change?
The first part is to think of the area where you would most like to make a change.
Then think of one small, really tiny action that you could take to help you move toward “being” the way you want to be. For example, if I want to “be neater” and want to focus on putting my clothes away every day, this is too big and too vague a change. Does this mean all your clothes? Where do all your clothes go? How do you define clothes? Only clean clothes? What about dirty clothes? Break it down to something much smaller and something that you think is so easy that it may sound too easy. You want to succeed with this.
So, going with the clothes example above there are many choices:
- Always put dirty clothes in the hamper
- Always hang up my coat
- Always fold and put away clean laundry before going to bed (notice how specific you have to be)
- No clothes or towels are allowed on the floor
- As soon as I take an item of clothing off, I must put it where it belongs – hamper, drawer, hang-up, etc.
Then it is a personal decision for which small action will have the greatest impact for you. You want this to be so easy and “doable” that you will be successful. You want to be able to see a difference.
What are habits and why they are so important?
Your assignment (if you choose to accept it) for the week is to think of a small, doable action that you would like to start doing in an area of your life that you would like to make better.
If interested, please join my class on Habits and we will dive into this topic together and create a good habit that will be part of your life forever.
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