Dream big.
That’s the concept flooding social media lately. Yet, there seems to be a gap between the dreaming and the achieving. It starts with high hopes that are often followed by fear and for good reason; the person you are today couldn’t do the thing you hope to do.
Accomplishing big dreams requires change and growth. Ick, that sounds hard.
Hard is when we get tangled in old familiar stories “I tried before and failed” or “It’s never worked in the past”.
What if you tried a different approach this time…instead of making drastic changes, start with small almost imperceptible changes?
a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. – C. S. Lewis
Why Mini Habits?
I love this statement by Stephen Guise:
The reason people fail to change their lives, and fail to instill new habits, is because they try to do too much at once. In simplest terms, if your new habit requires more willpower than you can muster, you will fail. If your new habit requires less willpower than you can muster, you will succeed. (Tweet this)
Habits are an automatic reaction to a cue, signaling the mind to undertake a learned routine.
Tapping in to this automatic signaling allows you to change the way you eat or commit to exercise with ease, rather than fighting the process. It allows for maintaining those changes long after friends have fallen off the wagon.
The benefit of the mini habit is this:
- Provides quick wins, which creates motivation to see more progress
- Easy enough that you won’t talk yourself out of it
- Allows you to accomplish something that feels productive
- Develops a base on which you can continue to build other habits
Mini Habit Ideas
Not sure where to start with mini habits to reach your healthy eating or fitness goals?
Here are a few ideas:
- Narrow your focus from “getting healthy” to I will eat 1 piece of fruit before my afternoon meeting.
- Narrow your focus from “getting fit” to doing 1 push up when you get out of bed.
- Walk for 10 minutes each day when you get home
- Do 5 sun salutations each morning when you get up
- Add carrots to whatever your breakfast might be
- Drink a glass of water after finishing your morning report
Mini habits provide a way to avoid the “this is hard” mentality.
Running 10 miles is hard, but putting on my shoes is doable.
Eating only salad for the rest of my life is hard, but eating an apple in the afternoon is doable.
I’ve shared this chart before, but I love it so you can enjoy it again!
The idea is that as you incorporate one of these small changes, it suddenly turns in to a habit. Then you’re no longer deciding whether to take a walk at lunch, you simply doing it. As you free up your mind from that decision, you can implement another little change like closing your Facebook stream for an hour each morning!
Soon not checking in because just as much a habit as your previous need to flee your work with a little mind numbing scrolling.
Change shouldn’t be hard. It rarely sticks that way. Make it easy. Make it small.
Resources for more on small changes:
Charles Duhiggs The Power of Habit
The 2-degree Difference: How Little Things Change Everything
Designing for Behavior ChangeMini Habits book
What mini habit started this week would move towards your goal?
What is a cue you could use today to start changing an old habit?
I’d love to hear your thoughts, share them in the comments below!
Other ways to connect with Amanda
Thanks to everyone who DELURKED last Friday {please do if you haven’t!}
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