Hello May! It’s a new month, so how about a fresh start? Spring is in the air, the weather is warming, and post quarantine life is emerging. How about resetting ourselves as if it’s a new year. Perhaps time to look at our habits, embrace the good and discard the not-so-good, and move to heal and thrive.
“Hindsight is 20/20”, a proverb that means it’s easy to understand something after it has happened. We should have known that something like this could occur. How fitting this discovery is taking place in 2020.
As we’ve coped with this crisis, it has allowed time to reflect on our fundamental values and needs as humans. Perhaps we’ve been taking our daily existence for granted or relied too heavily on the outside world to fulfill our basic needs. In what area have we noticed ourselves most vulnerable? Financially, physically, mentally, or spiritually? It’s in our vulnerability that leads to our growth and happiness when we take constructive action.
We witnessed all the goodness that came from hunkering down for many weeks, so let’s welcome what we love and move away from what no longer serves us. If you’re stressed, not sleeping well, and down on yourself for using food as comfort instead of fuel, you can change all that today.
What habits or mindset changes can you make to become your best self?
James Clear, Atomic Habits, wrote a sensible guide with practical strategies for changing your life and why it’s so easy to repeat bad habits and so hard to form good ones. His book focuses on the science, behavior, and how small practices can make a big difference for habit change.
Your Identify Shapes Your Behavior
The problem isn’t with us, it’s with our programming, our belief system, and our identity. It’s hard to change old habits or make new ones if you never change the underlying beliefs that led to the behavior in the first place.
Behavior that is incongruent with the self will not last. You may want more money, but if your identity is someone who consumes rather than creates, then you'll continue to be pulled toward spending rather than earning. You may want better health, but if you continue to prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you'll be drawn to relaxing rather than training.
The Science of How Habits Work
A 4-step process is an endless feedback loop always running in our mind (Cue, Craving, Reward & Response). When a habit repeats often enough, it becomes so automatic that as adults, we seldom notice. James identifies four simple rules for lasting behavior change.
- Make it obvious
- Make it attractive
- Make it easy
- Make it satisfying
Why Small Habits Make A Difference
Improving by 1 percent doesn’t seem noticeable, but considering it as we do compound interest, the 1 percent adds up and becomes meaningful. We often dismiss small changes because they don’t seem to matter much at the moment, but when we repeat day after day, they count.
Join me in my move to heal and thrive from this quarantine to become the best version of myself.
Take a closer look at your belief system to identify what should stay and what should go.
Give yourself grace because change takes time. Small changes today will have a long-lasting, meaningful impact on tomorrow.