Rewire your Habits – Part 2

Hopefully you read part 1 of my ‘Rewire you Habits’ post where I talked about some really useful ways of decoding these automated behaviours. Some key takeaways were:

• Habits are formed from the unconscious mind and therefore you should emotionally detach yourself from the bad ones.  

A habit is simply our inner mindless robot coming out, and taking over

Why get upset at yourself if you find it extremely difficult to resist continually checking your email?

• A habit is made up a cue, craving, routine and reward. Understanding this structure and breaking down our bad habits accordingly, gives us power over them. 

When you start seeing you behaviour through this framework, you’ll notice how habits can very easily be changed.

• Belief is required for long lasting change. 

Think about this one. What’s the point doing exercise everyday if you don’t have a belief that it will make you healthier or slimmer?

• Developing a single habit can lead to great change.

This one is harder to see. But you might have come across people who have taken one habit like running, and they change other aspects of their life. They might become more confident and outgoing, or they end up having new relationships.

What I didn’t talk about last time was the topic of pre-commitment. Doing this links in nicely with the basic structure of a habit: the cue, the routine, and the reward. We’ve all actually created a pre-commitment at some point in our life. We might be really motivated to make sure something happens, like we have a job interview the next day and we can’t miss it, so we set an extra alarm, we have the suit ready to go, and we have the exact directions printed out. The same thing applies with making a pre-commitment. If we’re motivated to make sure we get up early to go to the gym, we’ll have our gym clothes ready, the alarm is set and we’ll go to bed a little bit earlier than usual.

When I first started getting up early for the gym.

We can use this concept of a pre-commitment to create new habits or to override old ones.  For example, if we want to create a new habit of drinking less soft-drink, there’s a few pre-commitments that can be tried. The simple option is throwing out the soft drink or replacing it with a flavoured water. If that’s not possible, some people will carry a bottle of water around.

To go a level deeper, you could analyse when you have a craving for a soft-drink and attempt to short circuit it. For example, you might find you get that soft-drink craving in the afternoon because you’re tired and you need a energy boost. You can create a pre-commitment by going for a walk just before the usual afternoon slow down.

Pre-commitments are a powerful way to rewire an old habit or create a new one. Depending on your situation, it might require some creative thinking but if you try different things, you’re bound to crack the habit code.

Try it and let me know how it can help you.

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Musings on the Process

In order to achieve anything of great significance I believe we have to love or enjoy the day to day grind of it.  So rather than purely focussing on the goal, simply be aware of it and focus on he steps.  I’d like to give you a personal case study on it to hopefully allow you to reflect on your own experience. 

Fitness has been a huge part of my life. I’d never call myself an athlete and I don’t have a trophy cabinet. I did start off at 145lbs and now I’m at 165lbs which is pretty good I think. I wanted to have definition, tone and muscle bulk and I have some of that now but I’m definitely no ‘Men’s Health’ model.  I went through phases of getting big, trimming down, getting ‘fat’, doing no exercise at all and all the dieting or lack of it. 

Now my focus is just maintaining my fitness and becoming a better surfer which means I have a training schedule at the gym, I eat healthily and of course heading out in the surf and giving it a good go. So over 8 years it’s been trying different things or nothing at all.  The big question is whether I have enjoyed the actual process and in some areas I can say I have. Surfing is definitely one area where I actually like and look forward to. I have moments of course where I think it’s going to be miserable and cold or I think the session I just had was bloody average but generally the feeling is positive. When I go to the gym to do a bunch of exercise which are pretty boring, I do get a feeling of satisfaction and a sense of achievement in performing each exercise. And of course, there are plenty of times where I come away disappointed that I didn’t lift a certain weight or that I feel discouraged by how difficult a cardio session was but again the general feeling at the time is positive. 

I realise I don’t spend a huge amount of time thinking this is great or how terrible it will be. Once it becomes a habit, it doesn’t trigger as much thought and so I just get on with it. When I first start some new exercises then I’ll probably have a lil chat to myself about how difficult it is but if I have bad thoughts about it, I won’t get sad about it. For example, with my cardio which I do on the bike, there’s been numerous times where I have tried a new difficulty level and thought just kill me now because it’s too hard and gone back to an easier setting. I could be really disappointed by it, and tell myself what a failure I am but I try not to go down that path because I know it doesn’t help. 

There’s also the point that I’ve always had a curiosity to try something different and if the workout doesn’t quite fit with me then I change it. I think that doing this over time has evolved into a path of what really fits my personality as I don’t recall a time where I’ve really had to trudge through something really unenjoyable.

I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy fitness as much as say, going on a roller coaster or having a hot shower on a cold day (odd example but it is enjoyable!). But there’s enough positivity in what I do to keep on going. Surely for anything worth pursuing there’s going to be parts of it you don’t like but you gotta trust the bigger picture and be curious in finding what suits you. Whether you’re going for fitness, being rich or finding the girl / boy of your dreams, I reckon it’s a process of discovering your own likes/dislikes and working on it until you find that point where it feels easy and it’s emotionally and intellectually fulfilling. It’s a very personal process where we need to sense what our intuition is saying and where it’s directing us.

Do you use intuition to guide your pursuits?

If you reflect on something you’ve been doing for a while, can you see these elements in that journey?