Habits often have a bad reputation
…but some habits can be helpful and healthy. Stop and think about your talents for a moment.
Like mine right now is “I am officially on vacation for 2 weeks!” and believe me this is a habit that I am not a Champion at.
What are you not doing that would help you enjoy your Champion talents more, get more done or be more effective?
It might be a practice that worked well for you in the past but that you stopped doing for some reason…or it could be a new activity that you’d like to try. It’s possible to turn helpful or healthy practices into new habits….and actually stick!
Here’s a step by step guide:
1. Identify a practice that you’d like to become an automatic part of your life.
Perhaps you want to spend regular time honing your craft. Maybe you want to complete a particular amount of creative work each week. Or meditate regularly. Participate in a regular weekly gym, aerobic, yoga or pilates classes. Complete an open water/marathon swim or an ironman or Olympic distance triathlon. What practices would you like to turn into habits? Select one of these habits as your target habit. (It’s helpful to focus on one at a time).
2. Be specific and concrete.
Instead of saying ’swim more’, ‘eat less’, ’smoke less’, run/gym more’; identify exactly how much you want to swim/eat/smoke/gym/run/bike. “I want to swim one workout a day, at least three days a week, every week.” OR “I want to spend at least an hour a day writing/planning/preparing/ at least three days a week, every week.” The more specific the practice, the likelier it will become a habit.
3. Ask yourself: why?
Identify the benefits of starting this habit. For example, if I practice my piano/guitar at least an hour a day, I’ll become a better musician; I’ll increase my repertoire; I’ll do better in auditions; I’ll feel so much better. If I participate in gym/yoga/swim workouts at least an hour a day, I’ll become a better husband/wife, increase my fitness levels, decrease my stress levels, increase my productivity in my work day, be a better person to live with and increase desire to eat healthier foods.
Write down as many reasons as possible to start your new habits and practices and keep them handy. Review your list at least daily.
4. Breakdown your intended habit into reasonable, bite-size douable baby steps.
If your target habit is to compose a new song every day, for example, then you might begin the process by committing to write a song a week (assuming that sounds realistic for you). After that becomes second nature, aim for two songs a week. When, eventually, that practice seems like old hat, go for three a week…until eventually you are writing a song every day.
5. Start small.
Your beginning practice should be so easy it’s laughable. Guarantee your success. Returning to the last example, if writing a song a week is easy as pie, that’s a great place to start. If, however, the notion of writing a song a week puts you in a sweat, then choose something smaller and easier. Aim for a viable chorus or verse instead. Still shaking? Aim for a musical idea or a cool phrase that might become a lyric someday.
Rest assured, wherever you start is fine. AVOID JUDGING yourself or being too hard on yourself. Pick a practice that’s really, truly easy.
For example, let’s say your target habit is to paint for at least an hour a day. You might start with the practice of painting for at least five minutes a day, at least four days a week. “Five minutes? I can’t get anything done in five minutes,” you are apt to wail. Yes you can. You can gesso a canvas. You can sketch out a figure. You can apply paint.
“But five minutes a day isn’t going to accomplish anything!” You’d be surprised what you can get done in five focused, undistracted minutes, dedicated to a specific task.
Another example, let’s say your goal is to swim the English Channel or a solo Rottnest Channel Swim or completing a triathlon. And you are not a competent swimmer … that is you were not in a squad/club/collegiate team at school then you might start by getting stroke correction with a coach and then practice swimming for at least ten minutes a day, at least four days a week. Fifteen minutes? Once again you may think you can’t get anything done in ten minutes. You will be surprised how much your brain will hurt from focusing on a particular stroke drill. Yes you can achieve a lot in just ten minutes.
The truth is, if you aim for minutes, you may well do more. What matters is that you do AT LEAST five/ten minutes, at least four times a week.
Let me repeat that: The important thing here is to ESTABLISH THE HABIT. The amount of time doesn’t matter. What you’re actually doing doesn’t matter. What you get done doesn’t matter. As long as you are taking steps towards your intended target habit, you are on track. That’s why it’s helpful to start with easy practices. The easier the initial practice, the more likely you’ll cultivate the new habit you desire.
At the beginning of the Rottnest Channel swim squad season I spend alot of time at least half of the time in the water for the first month focusing on technique. Once a habit, good or bad, is set, it is hard to break! especially once you get into the building endurance and up the mileage.
6. Set yourself up for success.
Start your new, easy practice when you’re really ready. Put in place the support or resources you need — be it information, a teacher/mentor/coach or a trusted “progress buddy” (like a diet buddy to keep you on track).
If you’re the kind of person that needs to make a public commitment to get yourself to do something, then email your friends and tell them your intentions. Ask them to hold you accountable to your new practice. In contrast, if you suspect your ‘friends’ might be jealous or competitive or might unknowingly undermine your efforts, then it doesn’t serve you to tell them what you’re up to.
Very important: If you are quitting smoking or going on a diet and this is not the first time be very careful who you share your new habit. Some people will remind you that you have not been able to succeed in the past and these are not the type of supporters you want in your cheer squad.
7. Monitor your progress.
Every day, make note of what you did, related to your target habit.
I keep a journal of all my new habits and strategies to ensure I am on track just as I did keep a log book of my swimming workouts, what I ate, how much I weighed, my morning heart rate, mileage swam… and handed in every week to my coach to write a report giving me feedback.
8. Remind yourself why you’re doing this.
Until your target habit becomes like breathing for you, make it a daily practice to review your ‘benefits’ list (from step 3). This only takes a few seconds and can really help.
9. Praise yourself.
This is non-negotiable. It’ll feel pretty darned good to do what you set out to do…yet it’s important to acknowledge you successes in some tangible way. Give yourself bonus points for every day that you carry out your intended new practice. You can mark ‘X’s on a calendar. You can give yourself gold stars. You can email your creativity buddy at the end of the week to say ‘I did it!’ Yes you can email me as I am on your Champion team in the balcony cheering you on to success. And while you are at it why not WOO HOO!!! in the mirror.
10. Be kind and gentle with yourself.
If you happen to not do what you intend, avoid beating yourself up. Simply record what did (or didn’t) happen. I’m human and therefore fallible. It’s no big deal. Let’s move on. Tomorrow is another day. Look at the bigger picture: okay, I missed yesterday, but I did my new practice eight times in the past two weeks. That’s eight days I did great. Overall, I can see I’m establishing this new target habit — I’m making this practice an automatic part of my life, most days.
11. If you find yourself consistently missing your intentions, then it’s time to dig deeper. What’s going on? Do you really want to establish this new target habit? If no, then review your list of habits from step #1, pick a habit you DO want to establish and start over with that. If yes, then perhaps you’re trying to do too much too fast. Try breaking your daily/weekly practices into smaller, easier increments. Or are you trying to start too many new habits at once? If so, pick one to focus on and leave the other target habits for now.
12. When you find yourself meeting your initial baby bite-size do-able step practices regularly and consistently, up the ante a bit.
Aim to do a little bit more. Repeat the process (steps 6 - 11) as you gradually work up to performing your target habit regularly and consistently. Build momentum, slowly but surely.
13. Be patient.
Slow and steady progress is better than short-term maniacal enthusiasm followed by sudden burnout or abandonment of your intentions. Avoid thinking about what’s to come — just focus on what you need to do today. Depending on what it is you’re trying to do, it can take 21 — 30 days — or more — to establish a new habit.
14. When you’ve successfully established your new habit, be sure to reward yourself for that milestone.
Give yourself a healthy, happy treat — you deserve it. After your first target habit is well established and ingrained, you can return to your list of habits from step #1, select a new habit and go through the process again. You’ll find that each time you go through the process, you’ll get faster and faster at establishing your new target habits.
Activity: Select a healthy, helpful habit you’d like to start. Follow steps 1 -14.
Would love to receive your comments below or email champion@championmindset.com.au and let me know of your progress as I would love to cheer you on as one of your supporters.
This is just a taste of the easy to techniques I teach in my program “Create Your Own Champion Mindset” — With the quickstart program, you can achieving the habits you desire right away…and at this ridiculous price of $149… get it quick… cause there are only 49 CDsets available til 9th August… or whichever runs out first.
Cheers Shelley Taylor-Smith
PS: If you are still struggling with too many talents, skills, ideas? Pick Shelley’s Brain for 10 minutes for fr.Ee Email Shelley at champion@championmindset.com.au and let me know what day and time of week suits your schedule.
