Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?
Most likely not. Few people seem to make New Year’s resolutions anymore. The conventional wisdom is that it is no use to make New Year’s resolutions, because 90% of them are broken within three weeks anyway.
The fact of the matter is that changing ourselves can be hard. So this month’s post is on Four Easy Steps to New Habits.
We all have things we want to change in our lives, whether it is the New Year or not. How would it be for you if you had a simple, four-step process that could help you make the changes in your life and establish the habits you want for yourself?
You might finally spend the time you want with your kids or spouse. You might get the exercise you want. You might get the sleep you want. You might be on time consistently. Or maybe it’s a small thing, like flossing your teeth regularly. What new practice or habit do you want to add to your life?
Let’s look at how you could establish this new habit in four easy steps.
1. The first step is to Check Your Pain Level. How long have you been doing without the thing you want or doing it in a way that is uncomfortable to you? How deep is your desire to make it different? If you answer, “It would be nice, if…,” that isn’t going to cut it. You need to want to make the change badly enough that you really have the incentive to change your old way of doing things.
For example, I decided I wanted to get more sleep. I found I was dragging around afternoons, irritable at times, and sometimes not sharp with my work. Yet when I got enough sleep, I felt ALIVE! Measuring my pain of not getting enough sleep, I decided I was going to do something about it.
Basically, this first step is about commitment. You’ve got to be committed to the change you want to make. Being very dissatisfied with how things are is a great motivator and can stick your commitment to make a change.
2. The second step is Set Your Target. What is it exactly that you want to do? You need to define your new habit precisely so that you know when you’ve got it and when you don’t.
For instance, I set my target for sleep at 8 hours per night. I also specified a bedtime of 11:05 pm. (I’ll leave it for another article as to why I set it at 11:05 instead of 11:00 pm.) I would know each night precisely whether I had hit my target or not.
So, for example, a goal of “reading more for pleasure,” is not a precise enough target. How would you know if you hit the target? You would need to decide how much time you want to set aside for reading and when.
3. The third step is Track It. This means write down your goal on a piece of paper or add it to a habit tracker on your phone and note every day whether you did your new action or not. Of course, with some actions, you will be tracking it less frequently because your new action is something you want to do less often than daily—for example, going to a religious service each week. You can create a grid with dates in one column and in a second column enter the word “Yes” when you do the action and “No” when you don’t. For my sleep goal, I also added a third column of hours of sleep each night.
Tracking It is a simple step, and it has great benefits. It gives us feedback on how we are doing. Our progress doesn’t get lost in the rest of our busy lives if we have something to look at that shows how we are doing. Also, there is the intrinsic reward we get when we put down a “Yes” for doing our new habit. Finally, Tracking It sets you up for step 4, which I will speak about in a minute.
As you track your new habit, though, look out for a couple of things.
First, allow yourself some time to adjust. Even though you are committed to the new action, you may find that you’ll need to find strategies to achieve it that you had not thought about ahead of time. In my example of getting to bed by a certain time, I found that it took me a while to know how far ahead of the bedtime to start getting myself ready, given my bedtime routine.
Secondly, go for progress, not perfection. You will find that sometimes you will hit your target and sometimes you will miss. Forgive yourself when you miss. There is no point in beating up on yourself when you don’t hit the target. It is not about brow beating yourself to do the new habit. Stay positive and simply recommit to doing it next time.
Also, notice how much more often you are doing your new habit than you were before you started your campaign. It can be rewarding to realize that you are a lot better off than you were before, even if you’re not doing your new habit every time.
4. The fourth and final step is Get Support. This means enlist a friend or family member and let them know on a set schedule how you are doing. You can use your record from the third step to do this. The person you enlist should be supportive, not judgemental or give you advice on how to do your new habit. This other person is sometimes called a “buddy,” if they are also trying to make the same change in their life.
Getting support is a step that most of us fail to do when we try to make changes. We find it embarrassing to tell others what we are trying to do. Or we think we can do it ourselves and somehow that’s better. However, having a support person or buddy adds accountability to our efforts. We are far more likely to do what we say we’re going to do if we have committed to tell another person how it turns out.
So that’s it. Whether you have a New Year’s resolution to stay on track with or you find you want to establish a new habit at another time of year, try this easy, four-step formula:
1. Check Your Pain Level
2. Set Your Target
3. Track It
4. Get Support
This is Glenn Stevenson with Self Sense Counseling and Coaching. Contact me if you want help with changes in your life!