I’ve been choosing everyday to take work on Tiny Habits, and it’s been so encouraging. I have taken steps to understand how to change my unhelpful habit loop.
3 TINY HABITS HOW TO
I didn’t want to continue to let procrastination or fear win, so in the last few months I’ve been learning more about how to get rid of both. Fear – whether conscious or unconscious – causes you to procrastinate and stops you from achieving your goals. I’ve had to consciously work toward getting out of this destructive habit loop. My negative habit loop has gone something like this: my writing isn’t good enough nobody will read my books maybe I should quit now, I’ll most likely fail anyway…. I’ve worked hard to push past resistance that showed up in the form of my inner critic. Since that time(many years ago), I’ve literally struggled and battled everyday to get words on the page.
I believed and accepted his words to be truth. I had a elementary school teacher who told me that my writing was like chicken scratchings, and since he was the teacher I respected his opinion. Most of the time we have these fears and don’t know how to get out of it, which has definitely been my struggle. These fears have become a unconscious pattern that repeats itself over and over again. In other words, chances are very high that the fears holding you back from achieving your goals are possibly 10, 20 or even 30 years in the making. From a neuroscience perspective this is called a Habit Loop. Each trigger in your brain results in a behavior and every behavior results in a reward. Many of our habits get triggered by things outside of us(smell, sounds, etc.). Left unchecked, fear can become a unconscious loop that goes round and round in our heads. Here’s what I’ve been learning and have come to realize about myself: Fear can be a habit. I felt like I was in Psychology 101 again, but this time I was Pavlov’s dog stuck in a repeating habit pattern. I’ve needed to get out of what has seemed like a pattern of fear and procrastination. Let me share with you what I’ve been learning… 3 Steps to Start Tiny Habits… In his inspiring TEDx talk – Forget Big Change, Start With One Tiny Habit – BJ Fogg shares tips on how you can change your behavior for good. Like floss one tooth, do two pushups or drink one sip of water. BJ Fogg – a Behavioral Scientist and originator of the term – says that a Tiny Habit is when you do something very, very small. But the habit needs to start small, in order to one day grow.When you start Tiny Habits in your writing life, it helps you reach your goals faster. And reward yourself for the success even if that one tooth is all you floss! If you happen to do more, then awesome. Just put on your shoes, you don’t have to go for a walk, just put on your walking shoes. When starting a new habit, make it as easy as you possibly can - just floss one tooth. But those roots don’t grow all at once, but cell by cell, tiny tiny little increments. The plant analogy makes sense to me - a plant (new behavior) grows best when it starts small and grows roots (habits) that support it before it gets big and tall and leafy (how complicated and complex that behavior becomes with time), or it will just blow over and die. But now I’ve been married for 15 years and our family and friends think we are crazy with how much we do for the environment! Small things that you can actually do, day after day, year after year, really add up in a way that big dramatic changes that are unsustainable just can’t compete with! I like to encourage patients not to try to lose weight for their wedding or for the summer, but for the rest of their life - and so to take their time doing it, finding things that really work in their day to day life. From switching from disposable to fabric napkins, to committing to only buy fair trade coffee, one little change per year doesn’t seem like much at the time. Something my family has done since I first got married is change 1 small thing about how we live to be more environmentally friendly every year. Read along! It’s available at the local public library! I'm reading Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg and sharing my thoughts with you weekly.
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