Changing our habits can be hard; there is no argument about that. Essentially we need to take things that are currently subconscious and either stop them or create new habits consiously.
Trying to go at it alone without any sort of help will almost always set you up for failure.
Think about your morning routine, almost all of the things you do are probably unconscious habits. You don’t necessarily need to think about everything, it just happens. You wake up, maybe go take a shower, brush your teeth then go and get dressed and ready for the rest of your day. Most of that can probably get done without much mental thought, now imagine you wanted to change the order of your routine or add something new in too your routine. It will probably require a little extra thinking.
Simply trying to change this on your own is extremely hard. One thing that we like to use to help people change your habit is what we call a trigger.
To explain what a trigger is and how it helps I want to share a personal experience of how it helped me create a new habit.
So recently I have been trying to work on my nutrition and more specifically planning and prepping my meals. I came to realize that just like everyone else when I would get home from a long and stressful day of work I would make some decisions that were less than ideal. I knew something needed to change.
What I started to do was prepare food for a few days and make sure I had it ready to heat up in the fridge. I would find a day or two where I had time to get to the store and cook. I realized that was the easy part, the hardest thing for me was trying to remember to bring my lunch or breakfast too work with me.
I would prepare my meals the night before and simply get up, get ready and walk out of my house without my food. I didn’t just do this once; it became a regular occurrence and was extremely frustrating. I began to think “Why am I so dumb?” all I had to do grab my food out of the fridge before I left.
Instead of continuing to forget my food I created a trigger for myself, I simply put a post-it note on my fridge to remind me to grab my food before I left. I didn’t even write anything on the post-it note I just know when I see it to grab my food, I have paired the two items together. Now I know I will see that every morning because I go into my kitchen to make my coffee in the morning if I didn’t go into the kitchen the trigger would not help me.
Ever since I put the post it on my fridge I have been less forgetful of my food and it has made things so much easier.
Now the great thing about triggers is that they can literally be anything, a post-it, a pencil, a plant, the object does not matter, all that matters is associating your habit with the object.
You can also use a trigger with any habit, for me it was remembering to bring my food, for you it could be remembering to slow down while eating, remembering to eat vegetables, even remembering to brush your teeth if you need some help with that.
Keep things simple, think about one habit you either want to change or create and find a trigger that will help you remember to perform that action.
If you need more help dialing in your habits send an email to
Info@coreprinciples-sc.com
or shoot us a text/call 203-914-6369 and we would be more than happy to help.
-Coach Pat
