How to Break Old Habits and Create New Ones
We're all adapting to a new normal right now, and for many of us, this means we're creating a brand-new routine. Not just for our families, but for ourselves. Our daily habits play a big role in that.
It's essential we take the time we need to be kind to ourselves, as we navigate the uncertainty around us. But what we can also start doing is making sure we prioritize healthy habits in our day-to-day—ones that ensure we feel better in the long-run.
We all entered 2020 with a clean slate – a chance to start over and improve ourselves. Every year as the old year passes and a new one begins; millions of New Year’s resolutions are made:
I’m going to lose this excess weight
I’m going to exercise more
I’m going to be kinder
I’m going to get out of debt
I’m going to spend more time with my children
I’m going to spend more quality time with my spouse
I’m going to change jobs
I’m going to go back to school
I’m going to eat healthier
I’m going to get organized
I’m going to save more money
I’m going to give up sugar or soda or meat or dairy . . .
How many people actually make it past January with their new resolutions intact?
Studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after 30 days and only 8% actually accomplish them.
Why is this? How can we make sure to not become part of the 75% that doesn’t make it past 30 days? Unrealistic expectations are a big reason resolutions failed. We can’t just start with a vague idea and hope to accomplish it. We have to create a goal and then break it down into manageable steps. Another way to look at it is to create a Macro (main goal) and then break it down into Micros (specific steps) which will take us to our goal. Dr. Marcelo Campos, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School said, “Writing goals down can help us to achieve them because it feels like more of a commitment”.
In Atomic Habits by James Clear, he says:
Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits.
How in shape or out of shape you are? A result of your habits.
How happy or unhappy you are? A result of your habits.
How successful or unsuccessful you are? A result of your habits.
What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.
Create New Habits with Consistency
When we work on our goals sporadically, we are not going to see results. Research shows that willpower is like a muscle. It gets fatigued as you use it throughout the day. Another way to think of this is that your motivation ebbs and flows. It rises and falls. Stanford professor B.J. Fogg calls this the ‘motivation wave.’
“Success is a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.”
- Jim Rohn
In the Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, we learn:
Happiness doesn’t come from genetics, luck, or chance
Happiness has a lot less to do with circumstances than we think it does
Happiness isn’t the result of some big, out-of-reach event or attainment
Happiness is created by simple, easy things we do every day
And happiness is created by not doing those simple, easy, everyday things.
“The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they’re also just as easy not to do!”
- Jim Rohn
For instance, it’s easy to save a dollar a day. And it’s easy not to. It’s easy to go for a brisk walk everyday or not. It’s easy to remember to tell our spouse we love them every day and it’s easy to not do it. It’s easy to keep a water bottle with us all day to get the right amount of fluid intake for the day and it’s even easier to do nothing.
Jeff Olson also teaches:
Remember what pulls those who dwell in the failure curve? The past. And what pulls people who live on the success curve? The future. People who live with huge, vivid, clearly articulated dreams are pulled along toward those dreams with such force, they become practically unstoppable. What made people like Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, or Mother Theresa, Edison or IBM’s Thomas Watson, Wilberforce or Lincoln such forces of nature that nothing could stand in their way, no matter what the odds or obstacles? It was not some magic in their character, though they certainly became people of exceptional character along the way. It was the power of their dreams. The vision each of these men and women held created a magnetic force against which no opposition could stand.
Breaking Down A Goal
According to the science journal The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, roughly 55% of New Year’s resolutions were health-related, such as exercising more, eating healthier and getting out of financial debt. So, let’s use this resolution of health to create a macro (goal) and then see how we can break it down into micros (accomplishable steps). If we decide that our goal for the coming year is better health, then that is our Macro. Let’s put that at the top of the page – better health.
Now let’s create our micros. These might include:
Becoming hydrated
Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables
Exercising
Cleansing – working a fasting routine into our daily life
Taking supplements
Let’s start with these and see what this program might look like. Our goal is to take where we want to be and create manageable steps for getting there. If we were to take all of these micros on at one time – they might seem overwhelming, but by breaking them down into obtainable steps – we can begin to consistently work toward our long-term goal. As we create the steps we are willing to take, we need to pull out a calendar and actually start scheduling (making time) for these steps to happen.
One of the concepts that many people do not understand is that health is a choice. It is something we have to consciously work toward and make time for in our life. Like many other goals if ‘we fail to plan’ we are ‘planning to fail’. It takes time to make and carry out a meal plan. It takes time to schedule when we are going to exercise. This means that we have to be willing to consciously take time out of our day for these things to take place. For instance, we may have to get up an hour earlier or we may need to take something less important out of our day in order to accomplish the goal we have set for ourselves. So, with that set – let’s see what this goal might entail.
Macro: Better Health
Micros
Becoming hydrated
Take body weight and divide by 2 to determine amount of water in ounces to drink each day
Buy or obtain a water bottle to measure amount of water being consumed daily
Determine how many bottles of water need to be consumed – for instance: If you weigh 180 lbs, you would need to drink 90 ounces of water per day. If your water bottle holds 30 ounces of water, then you will need to drink 3 bottles of water to reach your 90 ounce goal.
Calendar into your daily schedule to drink one bottle of water by noon, one by dinner time and one by the time you go to bed.
Depending on your water sources – you may need to determine where you are going to obtain the purest, freshest water to meet your daily goal
Eating more fresh fruits and vegetables
Plan out your meals for the week
Make a shopping list
Depending on the knowledge you have about adding more fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet – you may need to purchase a book and/or gain additional knowledge on how to plan your meals
Put your menu on the calendar to help keep you on track
Exercising
Plan for the type of exercise you want to start with – are you going to walk a mile a day, are you going to put in 10,000 steps per day, are you going to a gym, are you going to alternate cardio and resistance training? Be specific about what your plan is!
If equipment such as a pedometer (measures steps taken in a day) is needed – purchase equipment.
Decide when you are going to work out – will it be first thing in the morning, will it be after the kids leave for school, will it be in the afternoon when the baby goes down for a nap or will it be in the evening when your husband gets home from work, so he can watch the children while you work out? Make sure you have a scheduled time!
Put it on the calendar, so you can hold yourself accountable!
Cleansing
True health comes from ‘cleansing and nourishing’ the body on a regular basis. We cleanse the toxins from the body and then give it the building blocks it needs to rebuild itself. Every cell in our body is constantly being replaced by new cells, so if we decide today that we want to be stronger and healthier a year from now – we can literally do that by replacing the old cells with stronger and healthier new cells. There are many ways to cleanse – we can use fruits, herbs, water, parasite cleanses, juicing – but the easiest way is to just make it part of our lifestyle. In the Miracle of Fasting, Paul Bragg teaches us to fast one day out of seven on just water, so if you were to pick Sunday as your day of fasting – you would just drink water on that day. He then teaches us to fast three days out of every month. So, if Sunday was our weekly fasting day – we might make the first weekend every month our period to fast for three days. Starting on Friday, we would just drink water or a fresh juice such as apple juice, for three days.
Calendar it! Whatever method you decide to use for your cleansing – make sure you consciously choose the method and time to cleanse.
Supplements
Decide what supplements you need to add to your regime. Do you want to add a vitamin supplement, green drinks, omega supplement?
Purchase your supplements.
Put them on your daily schedule.
Mapping Out a Timeline for Your Goal
Okay – we have our Macro and our micros written out. For most people it would be too overwhelming to take all of this on at once, so decide what you want to start with and schedule how long you are going to do it before adding the next micro. For instance, maybe for the month of January, you are going to focus on becoming hydrated and making your water bottle part of your daily habits. By just concentrating on this one goal for a month – you stand a good chance of accomplishing it!
Then in February add in some exercise or supplements. When you have done this consistently for a month you will have now created two habits you didn’t have before. Even though you may not see results on a daily basis by the end of the year by being consistent – you will definitely achieve your goal of experiencing better health.
When you were still a small child, you made your way around the world crawling on your hands and knees. Everyone else was walking, and one day you got it into your little head that maybe you could give that a try, too. Once that thought appeared, there was suddenly no “maybe” about it: you had to give it a try. It was the next frontier, period. There was no way you were not going to attempt it, fail at it, and then keep attempting it until you master it.
So, step by step – quite literally – you started working to develop the skills you needed to walk.
First you declared it. Maybe not in so many words (words were a whole other thing, a world you hadn’t even thought about pioneering yet). Like Babe Ruth pointing to the outfield before hitting a homer, you gabbled and gooed and grunted it, declaiming in the only way you knew how, “Get ready, I’ll be walking now!”
Then you grabbed onto something above you and pulled yourself upright. You stood, holding on to a playpen or chair or your biggest stuffed animal. You were wobbly an unsure. You let go, whether on purpose or by accident, and it didn’t matter which, because the result was the same – crash! Back down you fell. And then, either right away or later that day or the next, you tried it again. And then you tried it again, and again . . . until eventually you stood up all by yourself. Look, Ma, no hands.
Then you took a step – and in that step you assumed the mantle of mastery.
Yes, mastery, right then.
No, you weren’t actually walking yet, not like the practiced strider you would become. And yes, you probably fell right back down in the very next moment. But that didn’t matter. You had taken the Neil Armstrong step – and you were on the path.
- Jeff Olson
Are you going to miss days on your path to forming new habits? Probably – most people do. The point is to get back up and keep going. Do not make it an all or nothing proposition. Write out your goal, break it down into manageable steps and then begin to form new and better habits! Be consistent – see where you want to go – and you will accomplish it!