Allovertheplace's January Project

This is a lot of text, but it's actually not too hard to read through- it's repetitive and you can skip through parts you don't find relevant. It's written as I took notes from Christine Carter's lectures, so from her perspective mostly and then I cut and pasted some information from BJ Fogg's website/tiny habits course. 

Habit Code- Day 3

This is going to be hard for perfectionists, but stay with it! For today's lesson we are going to scale it back. Ditch your ambition. If you feel humiliated, if you feel you are not doing well enough, that you're not changing by leaps and bounds, then remember the turtle beat the hare. We are going to start with some early wins or KEYSTONE habits. 

These are habits that have the power to change other habits (sorry I don't have a better description here…). Research shows that Keystone habits matter more than some of the other habits we can get into. 

The important part today is the INITIATING part of a routine. It is the first tiny step of something e.g. the first 30 seconds of meditation; the first 10 steps on the treadmill. These first few steps are so important and they might not FEEL that fulfilling, but think of them as catalysts. 

Three people influential for Christine for habit development are:   

1. BJ Fogg- he believes you can cultivate the skill of creating habits. He practices creating tiny habits (more below).  

  2. Martha Beck- a master life coach and sociologist. Teaches the use of the "turtle step"; notion that we just make change or create a routine by starting with small turtle steps. 

3. Anne Lamott, author-"bird by bird" is a metaphor (and book title) she uses to describe how she coached her son into finishing a long report. Her son sam had a school project on birds where he was overwhelmed; she worked with him and told him just to do it "bird by bird", one bird a day; one bird at a time. 

We're going to find the "tiny habits", "turtle steps", each "bird" in our goal behaviour. Every routine and resolution we look to creating can be seen as a series of behaviours or steps. When you think of your desired habit, try to think of what the initiating behaviours are for it. E.g. if you are trying to start meditating, maybe the first step is sitting on your meditation cushion. 

BJ Fogg- "tiny habit" is something you do once a day or more. It needs to take less than 30 seconds. IT should be really easy so that there is no resistance in our brain. The easier the behaviour, the less it depends on our motivation. The tiny habit can be expanded on; it is about practicing and not necessarily accomplishing the entire goal right now. It's about laying the neural pathways for establishing the initiating behaviour for this habit. BJ Fogg practices his three tiny habits program more to demonstrate the skills for learning new habits; he believes this is the critical piece: learning the skill to teach ourselves new habits. 

More examples and info excerpted from BJ Fogg's website and course "3 tiny habits" (in italics) are below.   

Exercises from the course: 

1. (Review: what is your anchor for your goal behaviour?)

What are some tiny habits your desired behaviour that you can accomplish in 30 seconds or less? Which ones will require very little effort? Which ones are you going to be able to do it at least once a day? 

2.  Write it like this: After I do (anchor or trigger behaviour) X….then I will do Y…..  

examples: after I walk in the door from work (anchor), I will put on my workout clothes. After I arrive home, I will hang up my keys by the door. After I finish breakfast I will play one scale on the piano. 

3. What is your REWARD? It needs to be immediately after the tiny habit/step: can be a physical action e.g. fist pump, "yay me" to yourself, something that cues your brain that this is worth doing over again because it feels good!  

4. Is there anything you need to set up to make your tiny habit easy to do? 

e.g. if you are going running, put your clothes right where you will see them. BJ Fogg says "arrange the world around you so it makes your new habit easy to do".

Bonus: Mentally rehearse your new tiny habit: this helps to "grease the wheels" . 

Try to do your new habit without reminders if you can. It's okay if you need to for the first few days, but you really want this to be generated internally. 

More examples and info excerpted from BJ Fogg's website and course "3 tiny habits"(in italics):

"After I brush, I will floss one tooth."

"After I pour my morning coffee, I will text my mom.” 

"After I start the dishwasher, I will read one sentence from a book.”

“After I walk in my door from work, I will get out my workout clothes.”

“After I sit down on the train, I will open my sketch notebook.”

"After I hear any phone ring, I will exhale and relax for 2 seconds.” 

“After I put my head on the pillow, I will think of one good thing from my day.”

“After I arrive home, I will hang my keys up by the door.”

Celebrate success

One last instruction about creating new habits . . .

Each time you do your new Tiny Habit, you need to celebrate your success. Perhaps you say “Victory!” to yourself. Or say “I’m awesome” or whatever. Feel the emotion of success. Perhaps you can think, “If nothing else goes right today, I at least did this one thing right. I’m awesome!” Again, I know this stuff may sound goofy, but it works. In my method you need to declare victory; you need to feel good about your Tiny Habit. Why? Because you are reinforcing yourself. The stronger you feel a positive emotion after your Tiny Habit, the faster it will become automatic in your life. (Please reread that last sentence.)

I’ve listed 10 modes of celebration. See examples in this slideset:http://bit.ly/how2celebrate

Don’t make it painful  It’s important that you not feel pain when you do your new habit. For example, if you tell me you’re going to do 50 pushups, I know for sure pushups will not become a new habit for you. Doing 50 pushups is painful. If you feel pain, you must revise and make the Tiny Habit easier (like 2 pushups). Why? Because if you feel pain, your brain will find ways to avoid the behavior in the future. In contrast, if you feel happy after you do the behavior, then your brain will remind you to do it again in the future.

In some ways, we humans are not so complicated. We avoid pain and we seek pleasure. I’ve designed 3 Tiny Habits for this reality. The key is to practice (in the right way)

(End of excerpt from BJ Fogg's 3 tiny habits course).  

Bad day today. No post. I felt stressed and came home and freaked out. I feel like I try really hard and if I don't do it, then no one else seems to care how things get done. Messes get left everywhere. Routines are not consistent. Clutter peeks out from all places but there's little acceptance that it is a problem; I guess it's not a problem for them, just for me. Sometimes reality really really sucks. So back on board. OK. Wallowing in my sorrow won't get me anywhere. 

I'll post day 3 tomorrow.

aotp 

I'm continuing to review the material from an awesome online course by Christine Carter on habit formation. Day two is about getting your brain on autopilot so the desired habit takes less effort in everyday life. These are my notes; tried to keep them as simple and accurate as I could. 

3 Foundations of a habit: 1. anchor, 2. the routine/habit itself, and 3. the reward

-doing something new requires a lot of energy, willpower and effort

-when we get tired or stressed, our efforts start to fail because our willpower is depleted throughout the day 

-our brain's "backup" is the basal ganglia- where habits are stored- once it is programmed it requires very little/no effort to accomplish truly amazing feats; if you want more evidence of this she recommends reading charles duhig's book, specifically where he details michael phelps olympic training strategies around habits

-habits are a critical cornerstone for our happiness: 40 % of our actions daily aren't actual decisions but are habits

-charles duhig defines habit as: the choice that all of us deliberately make at some point but then stop thinking about but continue doing, often everyday

-routines can make us feel habitually good or productive; they can make us feel bad as well

-to understand the energy consumption behind this better, think of the brain activity required to do something new

e.g. starting a new exercise routine- need to decide what you're going to do, what you're going to wear, when, etc., but when it is a habit all that brain activity ceases. We know when those decision areas in our brain quiet down (i.e. behaviours become automatic) then we don't need to think very much to do something that was previously very difficult for us. This is very energy efficient for us. 

Bad habits or routines can be altered to be more productive; but to stop a bad habit alone is very very difficult (not recommended!). The habit centre of our brain is very very powerful. Rather work on altering the habit by working with the existing anchor and reward. Neutral habits can be expanded to include a new resolution. 

The net/net here is that using willpower to change a behaviour is very hard, but when the habit is established, the change comes much more effortlessly. This gives us lots of energy for other things.

1. Anchor: the behaviour that cues or triggers the habit. It tells the brain to go into autopilot and which habit to use. e.g. can be external cue -alarm in morning; can be internal i.e. feeling an emotion e.g. feeling anger anger while driving- can be a cue to take a deep breath 

2. write down the specific action-by-action habit you are trying to cultivate: what is going to happen after the anchor?

To establish habit, it needs to be done in the same order daily (preferably). 

3. REWARD: can be as simple as thinking "yay me!" gives the self a little hit or feeling of accomplishment (should be simple, done in 30s or less).This simple reward can be enough to make an activity into a habit. 

Brainstorm other positive outcomes that would be something you would come to enjoy/anticipate positively with your habit (favourite music for working out, the sweat of a workout). The brain will start to expect these rewards and will help to create the automaticity of the habit- it will cause you to start CRAVING the reward. e.g. when the alarm goes off in the morning, you can start to crave exercising.  ;)

I think it's pretty cool that we had this ongoing dialogue about the course here! I found the exchange to be motivating and engaging; it helped me to stick with it knowing that you guys were checking it out. I wish she would do a part 2!!! 

I feel a bit thrown off today- big stress today, questioning myself and feeling the impulse to overcommit to something at work or risk disapproval by those higher up. however, if I manage the anxiety I believe I can better navigate this muddy water without losing my mind. 

I guess these are the tests. Listening to Christine I feel motivated to keep going; lapses are normal, most important to keep going and not to have a complete relapse. But it's also important for me to listen to my body and mind for the messages of how much is reasonable to expect from myself, and if there is a significant amount of resistance, perhaps it is too much too soon. 

I will go back tomorrow to revisit the course material and do it again. Bit by bit. Anyone interested?

aotp 

I was able to load the talk for yesterday with much difficulty for some reason. And my evening schedule was changed later than usual because of an appointment. When I came home (late) I did dishes and then watched the video and then it was very L.A.T.E. Hmmmm....makes me think of the recognition that when I'm stressed (i.e. tired) I might not make the 'wisest' decision, and sure enough, this morning I didn't get up with my alarm.

Last night I talked myself out of my alarm wake up because it was so late. But this morning I feel regretful and wish I had the self control to wrap things up earlier and go to bed so I could wake earlier. NOT judging, just evaluating and reflecting. Perhaps something to do in this situation is to predecide earlier in the week in planning how the evening routine will go on those days that are not straightforward. This way I don't have to rely on myself to do it in the moment. 

I enjoyed the talk, but didn't have the focus at that time to review my resolution more thoroughly and revise it officially from getting up to exercise to getting up with my alarmeverymorning. That needs some tweaking but it lacks a little bit of the fun factor. So I'll put that in my pocket to think about for now. 

The other thing that is challenging is letting a task go though it's not perfect or totally complete (i.e. dishes- there were a lot last night and perhaps I could have done half and the rest the next day...but my brain does not like that. The brain is a funny thing...) 

Well, though I haven't figured it out perfectly, I am going to move on with my morning.  

On with the day!

aotp