A person's character is a set of actions or inactions, the way a person looks at familiar things, the things he does or does not do. By the age of seven, a person develops a basic pool of habits, and then we only add new patterns of behavior to those we already have.
We do more than 95% of the things we do on a daily basis by automaticity. We wake up, eat, get happy, get angry, brush our teeth, exercise, send mail, work out, or smoke a cigarette. Even the way we towel ourselves after a shower is just a set of sequential actions we perform. We don't think about whether to wipe our left foot or our right foot every time, do we? There is an ingenious phrase that says that everything we have in our lives we have because of our habits, and vice versa.
Talking about changing habits is very relevant at this time, but you have to realize that our brain doesn't really need it. Laziness. All it needs is to bring all processes to automatism, thus simplifying the energy expenditure.
If you're happy with your life, there's no need to change anything, so go on. But if something doesn't suit you, it's worth thinking about which habits hinder you, and which, on the contrary, you would like to develop in yourself. For example, some people have the habit of rearranging the alarm clock. In my opinion, it is very unproductive, because you get used to triggering the "procrastination" procedure from early in the morning. Then you postpone exercise classes, English classes, then you postpone weight loss until the new year, and so on.
There's another important aspect when considering the difficult issue of building habits - look at the results. Why? To see what's really important to you right now. Only results (and no words, social media posts, much less dreams). Your actions are a direct indication of what is important to you. If you're not doing something right now, don't kid yourself - it's not important to you at this point in your life.
This is especially evident in the current situation of forced self-isolation and quarantine. If we used to have excuses - I have a difficult daily routine, the road to work, come up with your own option, now everything is different - by the way, and the excuses are different too.
Admitting to yourself that this is not important to you is not a drama or a tragedy, it's just an honest internal conversation with yourself at the level of "important - not important. This is the first step in working with habits.
The second step is to decide what "matters to me. There are categories such as "should," "want," and "should." "Want" are just thoughts that make you feel positive, you think: how great it would be to lose weight, not watch late-night soap operas, quit smoking. Desire is usually not correlated with our actions. No one can determine what you need and what you don't need - it's just your internal choice. And certainly no one can tell you what you should and shouldn't do. Consider your interaction with your habits on an "important/unimportant" plane. If you're reading this article now, it's important to you, if you wake up at a certain time, it's important to you, if you go for a walk with your dog, it's important to you, too.
We come to the third step: How do you work with your habits?
Start by making a list with two columns. In one of them, you enter what you would like to add to your life, and in the other column, enter what you would like to give up. Then, from these two columns, you have to choose a maximum of three items on which you will work.
Important: We usually live in three states:
"I'm Getting Started." It usually encompasses moments when you start something, you're emotionally uplifted - think back to when you started some new project, bought a dog, enthusiastically walk it and train it.
"I'm finishing." You can internally clearly say that you're ending something - "I'm getting a divorce," "I'm quitting this job," "I'm stopping learning English." These two states are accompanied by two very different emotions. You have to be in one of these two states if you want to live a productive life.
The worst one is the middle one, which we can conventionally label "we'll see how it goes. Right now, many people in quarantine are in that state. There is no clear timetable in mind and no internal decision on that timetable. First and foremost, the important thing is to decide what you start, end, and most importantly, get out of this list of habits to "see how it goes."
Step four: now set a specific goal for one habit - what we're getting rid of and what we're creating. For example, I'm getting rid of excess weight and creating the habit of exercising. I set a goal of doing exercise for 30 days for 10 minutes. I download a program of gymnastics, prescribe what I will do. The next step is visual reinforcement. I place this printout or workout schedule with the exercise system on my fridge.
The fifth important step in the process of changing habits is making an external decision. It is necessary to declare the intention to create a new habit in yourself to at least one person - this is a category of promise. With ourselves, we can very easily "overdecide" when our self-imposed deadline comes up. When you declare your goal to someone in your environment, it becomes much harder to escape. Make a public announcement to at least one person, or better yet, find a partner who also promises something of their own, and you'll support each other. Write a post about it.
If he won't agree to participate in your challange - then just let him know that you plan to start exercising little by little, and you need his support, you will report back to him. The chance that you'll flip automatically decreases if you've been able to find a partner.
Next, be sure to make a checklist - a visual one, for 30 days. All you have to do is not miss a single day. You need to fill in the information every day, and when you have done the gymnastics and ticked off the checklist - be sure to praise yourself.
The sixth step is to assign yourself a bonus at the end of the game. "I will do 30 days of exercise and in 30 days I will buy myself a new phone as a reward." Then make your intention known on social media. Be prepared that many people will support you. There will be some who expect you to screw up, but trust me, there will be fewer of those. Plus, you'll have a social obligation.
Any habit has to be repeated regularly. Focus on a short period of time. Two weeks is enough. Don't get too hung up on the whole "I'm going to quit smoking for life" thing. We brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes, not once a week for an hour.
Set a goal to turn your new behavior pattern into a recurring habit every day. The slogan is "regularly instead of intensely." It's important to remember that a habit is developed by frequency of repetition.
So, make a list for yourself of planned life changes, make an internal decision about your willingness to follow the plan you have made, tell your friends about it, and make small but regular steps. Don't forget to check the boxes on your checklists, praise yourself for the results and get a nice bonus - an increase in dopamine levels in the body.
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