You have a goal?
You want to achieve it, but like every year, when you take a resolution, after January, your resolution falls?
Tell me what is your goalt?
Sleep better Move more Less stress Get in shapeme? Lose weight smart and healthy? Learn something new?
Whatever your goal, the goal is never the problem. The mystery enters the way to reach it. The best way to get there and maintain it isto integrate a new habit in your daily life.
What is a habit?
Sometimes you ask yourself the question: But what would I have as a snack this afternoon A habit, in this case the la healthy snack, Avoid asking these questions and taking the path you don't want to take (this path may be a bag of crisps, a bowl of ice cream or a chocolate bar!). Habit is therefore a brain shortcut, a discipline, which gets us around the decision part of the action. It is to anchor GOOD behavior in his days, without necessary reflection.
By transforming a behavior into a habit, you free yourself from mental load to have to make a decision!
The power of habit
A well-established habit will take you much further in your results than an action, regardless of the scale of importance of the action. The multiplication actions will be the winning element here!
I give you an example.
A person gets into the habit of walking quickly, 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. This person burns about 150 calories per day.
The other person has a goal: to do a 5 km Color Race, extremely fun races, we get along. His run allowed him to burn a minimum of 265 calories.
In the end, the person who will have walked 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, will have burned 39,000 calories in his year.
We can assume that the one who signed up for the color race trained a bit during the year, but in the end, the person who has an anchored habit will have been physically active more often than the one who did his race.
Here we compare an accomplishment to a lifestyle. The lifestyle will have a much greater IMPACT in the end than the accomplishment, because it lasts over time.
How to form a habit?
To integrate a new habit into our daily lives, it is not enough to focus on action. But rather on theWHY we want to integrate this habit into our life. What are the benefits we will get from it?
Scientifically speaking, integrating a new behavior into our daily lives takes an average of 66 repetitions, so a little over two months. According to Jean-François Villeneuve, psychologist specializing in lifestyle modification, setting a goal of 21 days can be a good source of motivation and it has the advantage of giving time to realize the benefits that the new behavior can bring you, but is generally not sufficient to establish a habit. Rather, he thinks it takes 6 months of hard work.
So what does it take?
On the one hand, a why, a reason why you want to adopt a new behavior. And if this reason fits with your values, you will have even more chance of success. Then it takes a plan and some effort.s.
The acronym SMART is a motivational tool often used in management. With this tool, we make sure that our objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound with a fixed deadline..
Specific : define an objective, an action, simple.
Measurable : you have to be able to measure the achievement of the objective.
Attainable : Better to set small achievable goals, which you can divide into different steps, to better achieve them.
Realistic : Do you have the means Have you chosen an unattainable goal?e?
Temporal : You have to set a measure in time.
Then, it's fine to have set the goal in a SMART way. But, for my part, I was thinking that there was a little something missing to start the loop of the habit and I found thisi…
A book has been written on the subject, by James Clear:A nothing can change everything. The author invites us to develop good habits by making small changes, slowly and gradually. In a simplified way, there are 4 steps to go:
- The signal : the trigger, usually external (e.g. an alarm)
- Desire (insatiable) : the feeling set up to WANT to do the action.
- The answer : the action!
- The reward : something positive, either physical or mental, which rewards you, for having accomplished your action.
But he ESPECIALLY invites us to give up the habit blatant, attractive, easy to perform and pleasant ». Here is THE preparation that will ensure that you turn all your little changes into a habit, one by one.
The 4 laws of behavior change
Flagrant
It's through the blatant » that we define the SMART. We write on a piece of paper what we are currently doing in our current schedule, our schedule. You can remove what is superfluous there. Then you add your new habit to your schedule at a specific time. And just below, you reserve space for your reward. And you need to adjust your surroundings according to your new purpose.
For example: You want to start doing some yoga every day! You can move into a yoga space in your space, a cozy place to put your mat, perhaps with an essential oil diffuser.
You need to determine what time you will do it. The morning before work So, we get up earlier, we eat, we start at such and such a time, and afterwards, we make a good hot shower, with a good nourishing snack in the morning. If it's later, we put a reminder on our phone so we don't forget..
Attractive
Take action attractive» is often the most complex end, but the most rewarding. You can link an action you are already doing to your new action. It all has to come together. After lunch, yoga! Then you can join a group of people for whom it's a way of life to make it even more enjoyable, maybe sign up for a class. And create a motivational ritual for yourself, do something really motivatingt just before to get into action. A square of dark chocolate motivates you all the time Why not savor your square every time you take out your carpets? »
Easy to do
To make your habits easy to make », you just have to make them easy to do. If every time you want to do your yoga session you have to change the configuration of your living room, you will not create a habit of it because it will be tedious to start it. Make it all simple and automatic.
Pleasant
And finally, you have to give it back joking ». You have to learn to reward yourself healthily immediately after your action, and keep track of your weekly habits. It can be as simple as an X on the calendar or a follow-up in your planner. There will be times when you miss a day, and that's okay. Relapses are normal (hummm we know the cheat day), it will happen, it's written in the sky! You just don't have to break the chain twice in a row.ée.
After 2 months, you should have taken on a new routine!
So what is your goal?
References:
- https://www.sciencepresse.qc.ca/actualite/detecteur-rumeurs/2017/01/25/21-jours-pour-changer-habitude-faux#:~:text=Le%20temps%20n%C3%A9cessaire % 20for% 20change, behavior% 20and% 20no% 20three% 20week.
- Clear, James, Nothing can change everything! : micro-actions, mega-impact ...: tiny changes will transform your life, Éditions Larousse, 2019.
Article written by Audrée Hogue