Still Hanging On To Your New Year's Resolution? - Part 1

With this being the third week in January, I thought I would write a little about New Year's Resolution and how to keep it going. According to one study most New Year's Resolutions are all but forgotten by February 1st and 68% reported it was much earlier than that. So I thought I would give you some strategies today to help you keep it going before it's too late. 

For most us when we are thinking about our New Year's Resolution is about changing something in our lives. For the most part we are often talking about changing our habits. We want to build good habits, and remove old habits. So here are some things that you should know about habits that may help you in accomplishing or maintaining your New Year's Resolution or the goals you chose this year.

Getting Started
We first want to optimize the starting line. Typically when we set our goal, we talk about the end goal or the final milestone. How much weight we want to lose, how much money we want to earn, how many subscribers we want our blog to have. All fixed on the finish line. What I am proposing is thinking making it easy on us to get started. If you have already done that great, but if you haven't it's not too late. We are only 21 days into the new year. There are still 344 days to go. 
What is one thing you can do to make getting started easier?

Set up your environment for success
One of the most overlooked drivers of our habits is our environment. Our environment has things that we see, or things that remind us of our bad habits. We have items on our counters in our kitchen that continue tempting us. If you want to start eating more fruit, put it a bowl on the counter, not in the bottom of your fridge. If you want to stop eating crap, remove it from your line of sight. Design your environment to make your good habits easier and your bad habits harder. Do you want to play the guitar more often, leave somewhere where you will see often so the effort it takes to pick it up and start playing is minimal. Your job is to set up your environment to make the things you want to do easier, and the things you want to stop doing require more effort. For example, during Christmas, my wife made tons of cookies. Now I can walk passed a cake, cupcake, or a pie for weeks without being tempted, but put one of her chocolate chip cookies in front of me and it's not if I will eat them, but how many. We just had them on the counter, with all the other cookies. So after a day where I ate far too many of them, I put them in the freezer. Now, if I wanted one, I would need to either get it out way beforehand and let them thaw, or put them in the microwave. Yes, them, multiple. You didn't think I was going to eat just one, did you? Just that simple act, greatly reduced the amount I would eat. I also reorganize the pantry so instead of the snack food right in front, I have items like rice, nuts, and protein powder. If you wanted something to grab and go, your only option is nuts. Everything else requires more effort to consume. In order to drink more water, I bring a one liter bottle into my office that I use to fill my drinking glass. By reducing the effort for good habits and increasing the effort for bad habits, it has made a big difference.
What is one thing that you can do to reduce the effort of your good habit, or increase the effort for your bad habit?

Take baby steps 
Start small, build the habit muscle, then make it bigger. Too many of us try to completely change everything with big bold massive action when we start out. Take baby steps. Don't promise yourself you are going to work out 1 hour every morning when you haven't done that in years. Not to say this is impossible, but it is unlikely you will stick to it. If you want to build a habit of 45 mins of yoga everyday, start with 5 mins of stretching in the morning. Continue with just 5 mins of stretching for 2 weeks. Once you have completed 2 weeks of stretching, then up it to 10 mins for another two weeks. Then go to 20 mins, etc. If you want to start weight training, start with 10 push-ups for 2 weeks. Then add sit-ups. After you have built a consistent routine, then it is time to start increasing the time and intensity of your workouts. You see where this is going? Start by building the small habits and routines first and doing something everyday BEFORE we try to carve out an hour of day every day. We are far more likely to be successful.
What is one baby step you can take that will take no more than five minutes that you can do consistently to build that habit?

Habit stacking
Use triggers or cues to get you started. One way to do that is to do the habit you want to build immediately after a habit you already have. Something you do at regular intervals. For example, Wayne Dyer's habit stack, was that as soon as his feet hit the floor in the morning, he did his gratitude practice. B.J. Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, started doing two pushups after going to the bathroom. I wanted to listen to a particular podcast everyday. I tried many times and was never consistent. Now I listen to the podcast while getting ready in the morning and I rarely miss it.
Construct you own habit stack.

Put in the reps
Any outcome is just a point along the spectrum of repetitions. Yes, you need to do the work. Wishing for it, thinking about it, wondering about it will not get you the goal. If I told you that you could achieve your goal by doing the task 100 times, how likely would you be to continue doing the task. Let's say, your goal is to write a book, and I told you it will take you 100 writing sessions to complete your book. That every time you did the writing you would be one rep closer to having it completed. The only question then would be, how long do you want this to take? You need to put in 100 reps. You can do it in 100 days if you write everyday. Or if you only wrote one day per week, then it would take 2 years. You see, every goal you want, every habit you want to build only requires you putting in the reps. You only need to continue to do the work, do the reps, and the goal will get closer to you every time you do it. Even if you are really bad at first. With every rep you will improve. You will get better at it. And then the gold, I mean the goal, will be yours.

Have a plan
There was a study* conducted containing three groups. Group 1 tracked how often they worked out. Group 2 tracked how often they worked out and received motivational material and videos talking about the benefits of exercise, etc. Group 3 - same as Group 2 plus they had to write out this statement, "During the next week, I will partake in at least 20 minutes of vigorous exercise on [Day] at [Time], at/in [Place]. The results came back of each group and how many of them worked out at least 1 time per week over the study period. Group 1 - 38%, Group 2 - 35%, Group 3 - 91%. You see having clarity on your plan and is the key to staying persistent. If you have failed in the past, it isn't because you lack self-discipline, it is because you lacked the clarity of a plan. Let me be clear. It is not the writing it down that is important. It is having the clarity of what you are willing to do, when you will do it and where it will happen that matters. It is by taking the decision making out of the moment by planning, when, where and how you plan to implement that habit that matters. When you have a specific plan research shows that if you do this one thing that you can increase your odds of success by 2x or 3x. Time to build your plan.
Determine what days, time of day and where those actions will take place.

Join us next week for Part 2

*Study Source: British Journal of Health Psychology