In the New Year people often think about forming new positive habits such as exercising regularly and eating healthily and dropping destructive habits such as smoking and drinking too much.
The motivation behind making these changes is often as a result of an event that has happened or something that will happen in the coming months e.g chest pains whilst playing with the kids last autumn or fulfilling a dream of running the marathon.
The question is how easy is it to break old limiting habits and form new life changing ones in what is usually a short time period?
The answer depends on how often you’ve repeated the habit, which will indicate how powerful the emotions attached to that habit are. As Tony Robbins says we humans do almost everything in life to avoid pain and do things we love.
As a result we form habits with such emotional attachment that they can become very deep rooted. These are often the habits, which provide us with an emotional security blanket. For example, comfort eating on a Sunday night when you have that unfulfilling job to go to in the morning.
It’s when we start to add up all our positive and negatives habits that we can see what affect they are having on our daily lives. Sometimes you need a friend or a colleague to tell you of the habits you weren’t even aware of!
It could be that you have ten brilliant habits that help to make you the fantastic person you are but you have that one negative one that prevents you achieving something life changing. When you realise this, that could be the very trigger that brings about new habits for positive change.
Habit triggers are external stimuli that bring about an action done on a regular basis. These stimuli could be anything from looking at your watch (6pm), a word you hear (No?), an aroma you smell (coffee, bread, McDonalds ?!) or something you taste.
Not only is it important to identify which triggers spark negative habits but also to recognise that they can form new powerful habits, which can help change your life for the better!
So, what you can you do?
Find out what triggers those habits in the first place. Once you know these you can avoid certain situations. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight and you always turn left out of your office at lunch times towards McDonalds. Then try going in a different direction towards a healthier eating establishment. Or bring in your own lunch! The point is to avoid the trigger of turning left and break the pattern.
Secondly, you can deliberately pull that trigger, be aware of it and then consciously change how you react. E.G you turn left out of your office towards McDonalds but instead you walk straight past towards the healthy deli a couple of blocks further down.
Remember that it’s repetition that forms a habit and not time. The more you consciously repeat that new positive reaction to the old trigger the quicker a positive habit will develop.
