For the next two weeks the following coaching programme will help you focus on forming new habits and setting new goals along the way.
Health and wellbeing so often doesn’t form part of the habit process for many of us and is something that you must work really hard at and more often than not is at the bottom of the priority list of personal things to do.
By forming new habits and overiding old ones we can start the journey to making small changes for the better that will lead to health improves of both body and mind.
Your first task is to think of three new habits you will be forming over the next two weeks and which are going to help you get on the new you journey to being awesome.
Set three habits in relation to your health and wellbeing, such as drink 2 litres of water a day, eat vegetables with every meal, walk 10k steps a day or read for 20 minutes a day. Whatever you want you can choose to do.
They are your habits.
What if I said to you that 40% of your daily actions taken are in the form of habit, habits that subconsciously we do in the main without thinking about it. Habits need to become a subconscious thought and when we have 60,000 subconscious thoughts a day habits are the most natural thing to do.
This is where your health and wellbeing comes into play, what if it was a habit that you didn’t have to work hard at, a natural action you did every day without having to think too hard about it. Would not that make it easier to stick to and help you achieve.
Use the download habits sheet below.
Now you have your three new habits, lets start by writing them on a sheet of paper with a grid for days of the month and boxes to tick every day when you hit this new habit.
The aim is to have as many ticks in the boxes as you can.
To start with hitting 5 out of 7 days a week should be a great target to reach. Perfection will come from here on in.
So why three habits you might ask.
Remember Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The three blind mice, Three Wise men, Three little pigs or the Three Musketeers.
Well three really is the magic number. It is the proven principle that any message is stronger, more effective, and more memorable when it comes in three parts.
In terms of coaching, three is a good number to help us break old- or develop new habits. Three is a number the brain can cope with and hitting three habits is an achievable target that increases motivation while promoting success. If you choose five habits and reach only three, this signals failure to the brain, this then becomes the negative focus and not the positive focus.
Remember new habits are also great for replacing old ones too, they allow personal growth, positive outcomes and create self-worth.
Old habits can be difficult to shake, and healthy habits are often harder to develop than one would like. But through repetition, it is possible to form—and maintain—new habits.
Even long-time habits that are detrimental to one’s health and well-being can be broken with enough determination and a smart approach. Often the formation of new habits around your health can take more effort and concentration over a longer period of time.
Remember to ask those questions of yourself at the end of the day?
Once again new habits are awesome for, building confidence, sense of achievement and as the formation of one keystone habit progresses the formation of others become easier to.
It can be difficult to stay consistent with a habit if you have a lot going on in your life, or if you take a break from your normal routine.
The perfect example of this is the weekend.
So, let us set you up to win this weekend.
How?
By being aware of your new habits as well as being aware of what could derail you at the weekend. Awareness of this helps you understand both the forming of the habit as well as if you have a day when these new skills slip, and this will happen we are all human at the end of the day.
Both ownership and responsibility of what you do brings success and improved performance. This is the journey you are on to raise levels of your own health and wellness and trying to make life easier for you and something that is done automatically every single day.
You deserve that.
Write these THREE words next to your habit list:
Ownership, Responsibility and Accountability.
This where you will grow as an individual.
Today is a day to reflect on your past week and prepare for the next one ahead.
Look at your habit list, how was it for you. Are you forming new habits, is there more focus needed or are you on track to have another great week?
Either way focus on the now and prepare to move forward once again and be awesome.
Ask yourself the questions:
Consider writing a short journal entry or gratitude log about these reflections, to solidify your learning.
Treat habit formation as a learning process, to learn about yourself, your mind, mindfulness, resistance and more.
Today I want you to focus once again on those new habits and ask yourself how they are working, do I feel good for these new habits and are they inspiring me to focus on new goals too as I move forward on this journey.
If you struggled last week, focus on the new one and leave that past one behind you. Make this the driver to complete those three new habits.
How do you help yourself continue to create and work on these new habits?
Shape your surroundings and those things that are around you and work with what best suits your life.
For example, if cutting out the snacks is a new habit not having them around you will do this. Having healthy meals, you have already prepared will help you eat better throughout the week and allows the new habit to form rather than returning to old ones of just eating anything that is available.
One of the biggest ways to successfully creating new habits is repeat.
Repeat, repeat, repeat – an action that increases its adherence and an action that allows the habit to build if you are consistent.
It is not enough to do it a few times, but evidence shows that often it may take six months to build a habit.
This is where goals alongside habits can mean that over time, that the habit has a greater chance of becoming rewarding.
So, keep habits for the things you really want to structure into your life, and for the things you want to experience and to appreciate each time.
Reward the success: Habits will smooth the way to that healthy you and as the repetition builds other habits will form.
Allowing even a minor reward for your efforts along the way will help cement that sense of achievement and help with the motivation as you continue.
From a psychological point of view the brain reads unexpected rewards and so spurs the release of dopamine, imprinting the details of the rewarding experience into memory, and making it more likely that you’ll repeat the behaviour. This creates a habit that energizes and invigorates you to pursue actions that have positive consequences and meet your goals.
Keep the focus.
As you approach the weekend of the second week continue to focus on the I WILL part of the new habit-forming process and think how far you have come and how much you have achieved.
These habits do take time and like we have said new habits around health always seem that much harder to form.
Be aware of your habits, both good and bad as this is how the body responds to that habit action. There is always a trigger to a behaviour what is yours, attach a positive thought to those triggers and help form new healthy habits.
Stick with it as you go into the weekend, you are worth it.
We are almost at the end of our two-week habit-forming coaching challenge.
Every element of your life, mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, is essentially the sum of your habits and your habits have been influenced and developed since the moment you were born.
What you repeatedly spend time thinking about, saying, and doing each day is mostly unconscious. It comes from deeply ingrained habits and values that form the person you are, the things you believe and your personality.
These thoughts and behaviours are then the instructions that your subconscious uses to deal predictably with everything that you face. Yes, even how you use these habits to lose weight and promote that positive mindset.
Over the last two weeks you have completed the ‘forming new habits’ challenge – well done.
Today, take a minute to reflect again on the past week of doing your new habits.
What has the new process been like, were some habits easier to form than others, how did you achieve them.
Reflect on how you did this and use this moving forward to create new habits.
The learning message from these past two weeks:
Limiting beliefs cause fear-based emotions and unconscious reactions that can hold you back, cause you to make rash judgements, bad decisions and simply make you feel sad, angry, or defensive often without knowing why.
Without exploring, defining, and working on breaking old, negative habits and beliefs that no longer serve you do you grow.
Developing new, positive habits and beliefs bring happiness and success and allows you to begin to change what is inside.
When you are positive, balanced, secure, and conscious with what is on the inside, will this then continue to radiate happiness and success out on the outside; including how well you understand the journey you are on and the road to new health.