Every Monday, you tell yourself “Today’s the day!” You are going to lose that weight, you are going to quit drinking, you are going stop spending so much money, you are going to get organized! Why are these behavioral changes so hard? What can I do differently to reach these goals? Read on! I hope some of these tips may help you.
First thing first, why behavior change is so hard? You brain will always find ways to save energy. If you’ve done something 1000 times, chances are, your brain already create a short cut, so the next time you are going to do that same thing, it is going to take that short cut. For example, say you want to feel good. Instead of doing that cardio for 30 minutes, your brain already finds the short cut that’s built in in you, and instead, you sit down and scroll on your phone, or you reach for that comfort food. But there’s hope! You can create a new path for your brain! Yes, it will take time to crave out a new road, it will take time to build new habits, and it will all be worth it!
WHAT ARE THE THREE WAYS TO INCREASE LIFESTYLE CHANGES?
1. Examination. Albert Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Now it’s a good time to grab a pen and a piece of paper, and write down your goals, also write down what you had tried to reach your goals, so you can examine what’d been working for you and what’d been not working for you. Keep the things that been working for you and also try something new. After a week or so, go back to this piece of paper and examine again! What’s your obstacles? What prevents you from reaching your goals? What are something you need to change? These little steps will increase your chances of success.
2. Make small achievable goals. If I tell you to go run a marathon now, if you haven’t been training, it seems an impossible task. But if I ask you to just start walking for 10 minutes a day, 3 to 5 days a week, you may feel more confident in doing so. Maybe next week, you increase it to a 20-minute walk, and the following a week, you try to run a little bit. Maybe a month from now, you can’t run a marathon yet, but you sure accomplish a whole month of walking/running—and that itself is a start to a great success!
3. Celebrate the little success. I see way too many people obsessing over what they didn’t do, then focusing on that they achieve. Here is the picture, you don’t need to climb the entire ladder, you just have to take that first step. And when you take that first step, celebrate that success, give yourself a pad on the shoulder, use that positive reinforcement to keep going.
Here’s a little psychology class for you—The six stages of change. They are precomtemplation (denial/ Or people who don’t even know that the problem exsit), comtemplation (aware of the problem), preparation/determination, action, maintenance, and relapse. Relapse is normal and is part of the process. The important part is learning from the experience and keep going.
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