All of us know that building good positive habits can be a herculean task, especially if you are looking at sticking with them permanently. However over the years whilst working with my clients, I have developed simple strategies which each one of you can use to build long lasting good habits.
Habits are nothing but our reaction to a stimulus. Once we identity the stimulus, it is easier to work on changing things. Even though there are many ways to build empowering habits, I will be detailing below what has worked for me over the last couple of years.
Begin small & stay consistent: The key to building any empowering habit is to stay consistent. Sustained effort is what makes you live and breathe the habit. It is imperative that you work on building a small sustainable habit, which one can see in the mind’s eye as doable.
If you see a habit change as an insurmountable mountain, I will guarantee you that you will run out of stamina even before the journey begins. Therefore pick on small things, like reading or even writing for ten minutes a day. Allow your mind to create neural pathways, which you can use to build bigger life altering habits.
It will make the journey that much more fulfilling when you begin to connect both the conscious & the subconscious mind through this approach.
Get to know what is holding you back: Most of my clients begin to work on a new empowering habit, once they realize what exactly is holding them back. Remember there is no one way of getting a finger on the pulse. However with introspection and probing it is much easier.
Once you know the specific parts of the process that are holding you back, you can begin to develop your own solution to solve that challenge.Usually with nine out of ten people I work with, it is their own mindset which is holding them back,rather than anything or anybody.
When it comes to habit change work with Plan B: Each one of us who has worked on a positive Empowering habit has failed more than we can remember. Therefore failing is not the death trap, but giving up when failure hits is.
Having an alternate option when something does not go our way, is a smarter way of working on a habit change.Once you know from the inside-out that there is another option just in case something does not work, puts your mind at that much ease.
Look we are not looking at building Life altering habits in a day. When people ask me why I work with a client for 12 weeks,I tell them that a habit change is not something which happens in a day, but takes weeks and in some cases months.
Slipping up on your habits doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you normal.What separates top performers from the lesser mortals is that they get back on track quickly with an alternate plan when they fail.
See in the mind’s eye: I have spoken about visualisation many a times. When it does come to a habit change, it is imperative that you work on developing the habit of visualising the habit you are planning to work on. Remember the mind cannot make out what is real and what is visualised.
This is a critical step when it comes to breaking old habits and working on new ones. Do read my previous Blog on Visualization to get a heads up on the same.Visualization helps you hit the ground running and when it comes to your own habit change this key difference will eventually make a big difference.
I hope the above mentioned points would have given you an insight on how to break your old habit patterns and work on something new, which will alter your life going forward. I Would love to hear from you. as to How would you be able to work on your own habit change going forward post reading this Blog of mine or if you have any other thoughts on this aspect through my mail Id coach@satishrao.in or FaceBook Fan Page.