This is part two of my series on routine, habits and being grounded. In the first part I introduced us to activities that ground me, namely: writing, walking and meditation. The goal of this post is to explain how to modify existing routine and habits I shouldn't force myself into new structures, but start with well-planned and thought outs gameplan.
To remind myself of the summary of the Tiny Habits book: motivation doesn't do shit, if you count on motivation to succeed, you're counting on failing. What's important is habits, and the way habits are created is by associating positive thoughts with them, and 'anchoring' them to other activities that one does during the course of the day. As a corollary, if you want to get rid of a bad habit, associate negative emotions, make them hard to do, and just have less-than-ideal considerations when dealing with them.
Right, so the solution to my 'oh no my routine changed, how do I get new one' is this: I make a list of the things I want to do, in order. Then I anchor all of them upon either each other or existing habits. Then I do a 'quick' practice run, that is I do the smallest version of the activity, at the quickest possible time. If possible I do it a few more times. I remind myself that it's great, that I love and respect myself, and that it's going to be great when I do it regularly. Associate positive feelings with the new habit. And feel good every time I think about doing it. And then start doing it. Emotions are important, there needs to be a positive relation. And anchors are important because they need to be related to either existing activity, or an alarm clock or some sort.
That's the path to a new timetable and a new way of life. It's going to be such a hassle to do it the first few times, but this is how one becomes and adult, this is the slightly painful part of adulthood, no avoiding really. So let's going at the earliest we can, to be able to be prepared for real life!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me what you think. I'll read, promise.