Good Habits Need to be Beckoned
By Mrs. Freud
Welcome to a brand new year! As always in the first issue of the year, I write about a means to help you with your New Year´s resolutions. Hope is in the air, and rightfully so. Years ago, I made it my profession to help people create amazing and successful lives. Habits are the unsung heroes in making or breaking it. Anything you place on your New Year´s resolutions list is a habit. Habits are my favorite topic, and I could talk about it for extended periods of time (I actually give an hour long presentation about it on request, in case you need a fun topic for your club meeting). Here is why habits matter: They are unconscious, automatic and emotionless.
All these parts are great, because once we have adopted a healthy habit that initially was unlikable, complex and over powering, it steps into the background, and brings us all the benefits, which is why we chose to do it in the first place. Habits help us to streamline tasks and they make up the sum of our lives. That is why this is my favorite topic; anyone can change one habit (as opposed to changing everything). Add one habit to another good habit and continue with it; the natural result is an awesome life.
All it takes is some attention to habits. I recommend you focus on one habit at a time (no more long New Year´s resolution lists, rather, pursue a year of one at a time). Habits can support or sabotage any area of our lives: our health, career, finances, social life and happiness. There is even such a thing as habitual thoughts, which again, influence our lives with big impact.
These are common myths about habits: Habit change requires will power. Some people have lots of will power, others don´t. Healthy habits are no fun. If you want to change your life you need to change your whole life. Change needs to happen quickly. Change happens as planned. If I can´t feel or see the effect now, it is not working.
Many of these false beliefs come from an approach to life with a certain way of thinking, kind of like a child that wants to get away with things and hopes that his/her parents won´t notice. Also, we rarely get taught much about how to go about developing successful habit changes or a life design.
The following tactics are important for habit formation: connect a habit to a new situation (e.g. instead of trying to eat less, decide not to eat in front of the TV). It takes an average of 21 days to form a new habit (less complex habits can be changed quicker than complex habits). Before changing a habit, get real with yourself and rate from one (not at all) to 10 (very much), how committed you are to this habit change. A number quickly comes to mind. Anything below seven is not worth the effort. It will most likely not succeed. Anything from seven to 10 has very good chances of success. This step is extremely important. Because we don´t waste time with things that we are not strongly standing behind. After all, we are the ones who need to do the work. Not wanting to change a habit is okay, too. It is your life!
Check in again sometime later, maybe the number has changed. You could also hire a life coach to help figure out why there is this contradiction in wanting to change a habit, but not backing it up, or to get help with the habit change itself. Finally, I find being honest with ourselves and our commitments are the two most important ingredients for successful habit change. Everything else will follow along with considerable ease. For more on habit change, go to my blog. I would love it if you chose to become a follower.
I hope your start into the New Year is fun, strong and honest. Happy 2015!
Author Sabine Starr is a psychologist licensed in Vienna, Austria, currently living and working in Mission Hills. She has written numerous articles for professional psychology journals. For further information, visit www.starrcoaching.com and follow her blog at www.HealthwithTaste.blogspot.com; and a new social media offering is www.facebook.com/StarrCoaching.
Category: Health & Fitness, Local News
