Changing the way you move through life by changing your habits starts with changing your mindset. In other words you have to retrain your brain to make any permanent changes to your habits. There is research that has shown that on average it takes two months before a behaviour becomes automatic: 66 days to be exact.
The goal is to trade out bad habits for good habits. Let’s say you want to lose weight. Clearly you cannot stop eating completely and by adopting new habits you can make a trade off and get rid of your old bad eating habits.
Action
Changing your mindset and shedding bad habits is not something you can just hope for. It would be nice if we all could just wish away our bad habits. Life would be so much easier! Unfortunately we cannot, we have to take action.
Change can be hard, and with the right steps you can slowly ease into the changes that you want to make.
Change Your Mind Set
Sometimes it takes a little extra work to retrain the brain. You can get stuck in a rut and use self-speak that is very damaging. The first step in making changes is to remove certain terms and words from your language.
“I can’t”, “I won’t” both have to be removed. It is harmful to not only utter those words out loud but to think them to yourself as well. If you stop using the terms all together your brain will stop following through with the thoughts.
Use a Visual
Put together a visual board and tack positive affirmations to it that can help you see who you want to be. You can also write down your goals and tack that to the board as well. Reading your affirmations and seeing your goals can help you to change bad habits and move closer toward the person you want to be.
One Hour at a Time
Sometimes a habit is so ingrained in us that taking things even one day at a time to change the habit can be too overwhelming especially when it is an addiction type scenario to things like carbohydrates or nicotine. Instead of setting out a long range plan try a short range plan instead. Start off with one hour. Then increase your time to two hours and so on and so forth. This process can help you to achieve success because every little victory gives you the push that you need.
You Can Do It
The research also showed that while it took an average of 66 days to change a habit, it could range anywhere between 18 to 254 days. This depended on the behaviour, the person and their circumstances. To give yourself a really good shot at changing a habit, develop some kind of system that allows you to be consistent. Set a reminder for a particular time of the day to do something if it helps. Don’t worry if you miss a day or two, and don’t be too harsh on yourself if that happens because according to the research it won’t affect the outcome. Reflect on what you want, not on what you don’t want.
‘Automaticity’
It is the ability to do things without occupying the mind with the low-level details required, allowing it to become an automatic response pattern or habit. It is usually the result of learning, repetition, and practice. As a professional coach, I’ve helped my clients change their less than useful habits and develop new more useful ones. By helping them change the way they think at both a conscious as well as unconscious level, by encouraging them to practise their new habit consistently, they are able to develop automaticity. And it’s a wonderful thing.
For more information on changing a specific habit or to get help via coaching, contact us.
NLP & Life Coaching
1 Maidstone Street,
Ponsonby, Auckland 1021
New Zealand
Phone: 021 883 860
Email: [email protected]
