Ways To Change a Habit (Part 5)

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE – WITHOUT SELF-JUDGMENT

Psychologists such as B.F. Skinner define learning as a stable change in behavior that comes as a result of practice. This idea is key to changing habits. Act on your intention. If you fail or forget, let go of any self-judgment. Just keep practicing the new habit and allow whatever time it takes to make a change.

Accept the feelings of discomfort that might come with a new habit. Keep practicing the new behavior, even if it feels unnatural. Trust the process. You will grow into the new behavior. However, if this new habit doesn’t work, simply note what happened (without guilt or blame), select a new behavior, and begin this cycle of steps over again.

Making mistakes as your practice doesn’t mean that you’ve failed. Even when you don’t get the results you want from a new behavior, you learn something valuable in the process. Once you understand ways to change one habit, you understand ways to change almost any habit.

Ways To Change a Habit (Part 4)

GET FEEDBACK AND SUPPORT

  

This is a crucial step and a point at which many plans for change break down. It’s easy to practice your new behavior with great enthusiasm for a few days. After the initial rush of excitement, however, things can get a little tougher. We begin to find excuses for slipping back into old habits: “One more cigarette won’t hurt.” “I can get back to my diet tomorrow.” “It’s been a tough day, I deserve this beer.”

One way to get feedback is to bring other people into the picture. Ask others to remind you that you are changing your habit. If you want to stop an old behavior, such as cramming for tests, then it often works to tell everyone you know that you intend to stop. When you want to start a new behavior, though, consider telling only a few people – those who truly support your efforts. Starting new habits might call for the more focused, long-lasting support that close friends and family members can give. Support from others can be as simple as a quick phone call: “Hi, have you started that outline for your research paper yet?” Or it can be as formal as a support group that meets once a week to review everyone’s goals and action plans.

You are probably the most effective source for your own support and feedback. You know yourself better than anyone else does and can design a system to monitor your behavior. Create your own charts to track your behavior or write about your progress in your journal. Figure out a way to monitor your progress.

Ways To Change a Habit (Part 3)

AFFIRM YOUR INTENTION  

You can pave the way for a new behaviour by clearing a mental path for it. Before you apply the new behaviour, rehearse it in your mind. Mentally picture what actions you will take and in what order.

Say that you plan to improve your handwriting when taking notes. Imagine yourself in class with a blank notebook poised before you. See yourself taking up a finely crafted pen. Notice how comfortable it feels in your hand. See yourself writing clearly and legibly. You can even picture how you will make individual letters: the e’s, i’s, and r’s. Then, when class is over, see yourself reviewing your notes and taking pleasure in how easy they are to read.

START WITH A SMALL CHANGE

You can sometimes rearrange a whole pattern of behaviours by changing one small habit. If you have a habit of always being late for class, and if you want to change that habit, then be on time for one class. As soon as you change the old pattern by getting ready and going on time to one class, you’ll likely find yourself arriving at all of your classes on time. You might even start arriving everywhere on time.

The joy of this process is watching one small change of habit ripple through your whole life.

Ways To Change a Habit (Part 2)

TELL THE TRUTH (please)

Telling the truth about any habit – from chewing our fingernails to cheating on tests – frees us. Without taking this step, our efforts to change might be as ineffective as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Telling the truth allows us to see what’s actually sinking the ship.

When we admit what’s really going on in our lives, our defenses are down. We’re open to accepting help from others. The support we need to change the habit has an opportunity to make an impact.

CHOOSE AND COMMIT TO A NEW BEHAVIOR

It often helps to choose a new habit to replace an old one. First, make a commitment to practice the new habit. Tell key people in your life about your decision to change. Set up a plan for when and how. Answer questions such as these: When will I apply the new habit? Where will I be? Who will be with me? What will I be seeing, hearing, touching, saying, or doing? Exactly how will I think, speak, or act differently?

Take the student who always snacks when he studies. Each time he sits down to read, he positions a bag of potato chips within easy reach. For him, opening a book is a cue to start chewing. Snacking is especially easy, given the place he chooses to study: the kitchen. He decides to change this habit by studying at a desk in his bedroom instead of at the kitchen table. And every time he feels the urge to bite into a potato chip, he drinks from a glass of water instead.

Richard Malott, a psychologist who specializes in helping people overcome procrastination, lists three key steps in committing to a new behavior. First, specify your goal in numerical terms whenever possible. For example, commit to reading 30 pages per day, Monday through Friday. Second, observe your behavior and record the results – in this case, the number of pages that you actually read every day. Finally, set up a small consequence for failing to keep your commitment. For instance, pay a friend one quarter for each day that you read less than 30 pages.

Ways To Change a Habit (Part 1)

Consider a new way to think about the world habit. Imagine for a moment that many of our most troublesome problems and even our most basic traits are just habits.

That expanding waistline that is being blamed on a spouse’s cooking – maybe that’s just a habit called overeating.

That fit of rage that a student blames on a teacher – maybe that’s just the student’s habit of closing the door to new ideas.

Procrastination, stress, and money shortages might just be names that we give to collections of habits – scores of simple, small, repeated behaviours that combine to create a huge result. The same goes for health, wealth, love, and many other things that we want from life.

One way of thinking about success is to focus on habits. Behaviours such as failing to complete reading assignments or skipping class might be habits leading to an outcome that “couldn’t” be avoided – dropping out of school.

When you confront a behaviour that undermines your goals or creates a circumstances that you don’t want, consider a new attitude: It’s just a habit. And it can be changed.

Thinking about ourselves as creatures of habit actually gives us power. Then we are not faced with the monumental task of changing our very nature. Rather, we can take on the double job of changing our habits. One change in behaviour that seems insignificant at first can have effects that ripple throughout your life. If you’re an adult learner, you might gain special value from experimenting with new strategies for learning.

After interviewing hundreds of people, psychologists James Prochaska, John Norcross, and Carlo DiClemente identified stages that people typically go through when adopting a new behaviour. These stages take people from contemplating a change and making clear determination to change, to taking action and maintaining the new behaviour. Following are ways to help yourself move successfully through each stage.

The seven-day anti-procrastination plan

Listed here are seven strategies you can use to reduce or eliminate many sources of procrastination. The suggestions are tied to the days of the week to help you remember them. Use this list to remind yourself that each day of your life presents an opportunity to stop the cycle of procrastination.

MONDAY Make it meaningful. What is important about the task you’ve been putting off? List all the benefits of completing it. Look at it in relation to your short-, mid-, or long-term goals. Be specific about the rewards for getting it done, including how you will feel when the task is completed. To remember this strategy, keep in mind that it starts with the letter M, like the word Monday.

TUESDAY Take it apart. Break jobs into a series of small ones you can do in 15 minutes or less. If a long reading assignment intimidates you, divide it into two-page or three-page sections. Make a list of these sections and cross them off as you complete them so you can see your progress. Even the biggest projects can be broken down into a series of small tasks. This strategy starts with the letter T, so mentally tie it to Tuesday.

WEDNESDAY Write an intention statement. For example, if you can’t get started on a term paper, you might write, “I intend to write a list of at least 10 possible topics by 9 p.m. I will reward myself with an hour of guilt-free recreational reading.” Write your intention on a 3 x 5 card and carry it with you, or post it in your study area where you can see it often. In your memory, file the first word in this strategy – write – with Wednesday.

THURSDAY Tell everyone. Publically announce your intentions to get a task done. Tell a friend that you intend to learn 10 irregular French verbs by Saturday. Tell your spouse, roommate, parents, and children. Include anyone who will ask whether you’ve completed the assignment or who will suggest ways to get it done. Make the world your support group. Associate tell with Thursday.

FRIDAY Find a reward. Construct rewards to yourself carefully. Be willing to withhold them if you do not complete the task. Don’t pick a movie as a reward for studying biology if you plan to go to the anyway. And when you legitimately reap your reward, notice how it feels. Remember that Friday is a fine day to find a reward. (Of course, you can find a reward on any day of the week. Rhyming Friday with fine day is just a memory trick.)

SATURDAY Settle it now. Do it now. The minute you notice yourself procrastinating, plunge into the task. Imagine yourself at a cold mountain lake, poised to dive. Gradual immersion would be slow torture. It’s often less painful to leap. Then be sure to savor the feeling of having the task behind you. Link settle with Sunday.

SUNDAY Say no. When you keep pushing a task into a low-priority category, re-examine your purpose for doing it at all. If you realize that you really don’t intend to do something, quit telling yourself that you will. That’s procrastinating. Just say no. Then you’re not procrastinating. You don’t have to carry around the baggage of an undone task. Sunday – the last day of this seven-day plan is a great day to finally let go and just say no.

Stop Procrastination NOW (Part 2)

As promised balance 4, enjoy!

4. Let feelings follow action. If you put off exercising until you feel energetic, you might wait for months. Instead, get moving now. Then watch your feelings change. After five minutes of brisk walking, you might be in the mood for a 20-minute run. This principle – action generates motivation – can apply to any task that’s been put on the back burner.

5. Choose to work under pressure. Sometimes people thrive under pressure. As one writer put it, “I don’t do my best work under deadline. I do my only work under deadline.” Used selectively, this strategy might also work for you.

Put yourself in control. If you choose to work with a due date staring you right in the face, then schedule a big block of time during the preceding week. Until then, enjoy!

5. Think ahead. Use the monthly calendar or the long-term planner to list due dates for assignments in all your courses. Using these tools, you can anticipate heavy demands on your time and take action to prevent last-minute crunches. Make Planning Strategically “home base”, the first place to turn in taking control of your schedule.

6. Give up “some day”. Procrastination rests on this vague notion: I’ll do it some day. Other people reinforce this notion by telling you that your life will really start when you . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (Fill in the blank with phrases like graduate from college, get married, have kids, get promoted, or retire.) Using this logic, you could wait your whole life to start living. Avoid this fate. Take action today.

7. Create goals that draw you forward. A goal that grabs you by the heart strings is an inspiration to act now. If you’re procrastinating, then set some goals that excite you. Then you might wake up one day and discover that procrastination is part of your past.