More on Changing Bad Habits

I'm not sure why changing habits is so hard for us human beings but it is.  I can't be the only one since if you Google "Changing Bad Habits to Good Ones" you will come up with a ton of advice.  When I do research I like to see what all of the advice posts have in common.  Here are some of the major ones that I can vouch for that work:

1.  Research your bad habits - when do you practice them, what do you do right before you practice them, what need are you trying to meet?  Most advice calls this researching your "triggers."  Triggers are what "triggers" the behavior.  For example, my overeating takes place in the evening when I'm not active.  It may be that I'm bored. 

2.  Choose something to replace the trigger and the habit.  Just stopping doing something doesn't work.  There has to be something positive to replace it that satisfies the need.  For example, I can replace my evening overeating with activity - maybe yoga, going for a walk, going out with friends.  Eventually, I may be able to stay home and watch t.v. without overeating, but practicing the replacements willl make it easier when the time comes

3.  Be consistent with using the replacement.  Much of the advice recommends a 30 day trial.  If you miss a day, start the 30 days over.

4.  Put some leverage into the new habit.  Try having people sponsor you - for every day you exercise, for every pound you lose, etc.  Give the money to your favorite charity.  Or vice versa:  Give a trusted friend a sum of money - enough that losing it would hurt.  You only get it back when you've completed the 30 days (consistently).

How to Change Your Bad Habits

Sometimes it seems to me that I have devoted my life to changing my habits.  I can't remember a time when I wasn't working on something, and as I've aged, I find the effort to live more delightfully and consciously immensely entertaining and rewarding.  In the beginning I tried to change out of ego and shame.  I thought I wasn't good enough and wanted to change so as to be able to approve of myself and get approval from other people.  Those motives never really helped me change.  As I've read and practiced and learned, I've found that creating a life of awareness and peace is much more motivating.  So here's a list of some of the ways that have helped me make positive changes in myself:

• Set goals with deadlines but only set goals that are so easy and simple you can't help but reach them.  Baby steps really work.
• Write goals down and look at them every day.
• Never, never, never, ever give up.
• Tell all the supportive people in your life what you're doing and report back to them.
• Find someone or more than one someone who has already made the change you're working on.  Ask them how they did it and do what they did.
• Prepare ahead of time.  If, for example, you want to eat more nutritiously, find receipes and buy the food.
• Expect to be uncomfortable.  Change is uncomfortable.  Make a plan for how you're going to deal with the discomfort.  Examples:  Get plenty of rest - change takes a lot of energy.  Read stuff that inspires you. 
• Expect to be imperfect.  Don't be a slacker but don't quit if you mess up.
• One of the reasons change is difficult is that our egos interpret it as criticism.  Remind yourself of why you're making the change.  Examples, to have more energy, to enjoy life more, to learn new things, to increase peace of mind.

These are just a few of the strategies that I've used that worked.  Do some research of your own.

How to Have a 25 Hour Day

I stole the above title from an email I get from an organization that provides information on health.  It's not the first time I've seen all the hints they published, but they are all things I always forget.  Of course, there are really only 24 hours in every day, but there are tons of ways to make those 24 hours go farther.  For example, if I make soup, I double the recipe and freeze the second portion.  That's one day I don't have to cook and cooking twice as much is only a tiny bit more time consuming than making the original recipe.  I only check email and Facebook twice a day.  I don't drive to the car wash - I just soap my car up when it rains and let the rain rinse it.  (If there's no rain, I just use the hose.)  I do all my errands at once.  (Saves time in running from one place to the next every day).  I return calls once a day.  I ask for help a lot.  People who come to visit are usually asked to help me with something.  (I keep a list of stuff I need help with.)  I open the mail as soon as I carry it in and throw out all the stuff that doesn't require action.  There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of web sites that give ideas for time savers.  If you feel pressed for time, look them up and use the ones that fit for you.

Checking Up on Yourself

Maybe you're like me; maybe you're not.  But the life of my dreams always eluded me because I forgot what it was and what I intended to do to get it.  The daily tasks and events of life completely distracted me from the big picture.  I started reading books on organization because I kept running out of time and couldn't get everything done.  What I learned from those books was that life was not about getting everything done; it was about getting the stuff done that would get me to the life of my dreams. 

The major thing was to get down in writing what I wanted (from my heart; not my ego).  Then that piece of paper needed to be in front of me every day when I made my to-do list for the day.  We're getting closer to the end of May, the 5th month.  So in another month and a week, we'll be half way through the year.  I know where my piece of paper is - it's in the front of my journal where I look at it every day.  Do you know where yours is?  I hope so because if you don't know, there's a good chance you've not been including the things that will get you to the life of your dreams on your to-do list.  So, it's not too late.  Before July 1 - the official halfway point of the year - best get that piece of paper and get going!

The "Not-To-Do" and the "Done" Lists

A whole lot of people make to-do lists.  Personally I hate them even though I make them.  I have a very hyperactive brain and I can think of way more stuff to do than I could possibly do.  My ego thinks I should do everything immediately which used to lead to my feeling frantic, fearful, and feverish.  Then I learned about the not-to-do and the done lists. 

The not-to-do list consists of the stuff I know perfectly well I will not be able to get to today and that don't matter anyway.  Sometimes the stuff on this list is carried over for years.  Sometimes I eventually completely forget about those items.  Every once in awhile after ten years or so, it will be time to take care of them and they make it to the real to-do list and get checked off.  This is extremely rare. 

The done list is the one I make at the end of each day so that I don't go to bed thinking that I got nothing accomplished (which is what my ego tells me, attempting to motivate me to do more the next day).  The done list is part of my daily journaling and helps me keep track of how I'm doing with my priorities. 

My mother used to say all the time that what she wanted was a day with more than 24 hours.  I know now that if I had a day with more than 24 hours, I would just have a longer to-do list.  So I rely on the not-to-do and done lists to keep me sane.

Happy Life or Crappy Life

I wish I had learned about focus earlier in my life, but I'm grateful to have finally learned how vital it is.  Better late than never.  I certainly never learned about focus in school.  I didn't learn it at home from my parents.  I didn't read about it in the newspaper or see it on t.v.  Never read a book about it.  Never heard anyone talk about it in either casual or serious conversations.  I did hear a little about it in terms of dealing with attention deficit disorder since a big part of that disorder is an inability to focus.  But I just assumed that if you didn't have ADD, focus didn't need to be a concern.  And yet it turns out to be one of the most critical pieces of information I needed to create the life of my dreams.

I'm not a big fan of "goals" since so often they're artificial - based on what the culture tells us will give us the life of our dreams and they are largely unconscious.  I know that I just assumed that what I had picked up from the culture was correct - that I would be happy if I worked hard, followed the rules, made money, got married to a guy that was good-looking, smart and law abiding, had kids and raised them right, went to church and kept my hair combed, etc.  This illusion persisted long into my adulthood even though I was noticing as I went along that although I was working as hard as I possibly could to do what I'd been taught, I never felt like I was any closer to the life of my dreams.  I began to suspect there was something wrong somewhere. 

For a long time I thought that other people and the world in general were what stood between me and the life of my dreams.  The culture certainly told me that that was the problem.  Unexpected circumstances provided me with another perspective, though, and I began to realize that it was me that was the barrier.  Then I worked even harder at doing what I had been taught were the "right" things.  Still no feeling of getting closer to the life of my dreams.

Quite a few different experiences accidentally (accidents are God being anonymous) gave me information I needed.  I had a couple of jobs where I designed training materials and delivered the training.  I researched adult learning and found out that adults are not listening 90% of the time.  If you just tell people things they miss most of it and forget the majority of what they do hear.  So just talking is a big waste of time.  I learned to use visual aides, examples, group projects, repetition, pre and post tests, etc. to enhance participants' ability to remember.  Focus - that was what was missing.  People were paying attention to their thoughts rather than the training material.  Apparently that's what we're all doing all the time.  It's a wonder the world works at all!

I also have had the experience of practicing meditation.  It's in the steps of my recovery program.  It's a discipline I've practiced off an on over several years.  I don't really like doing it.  I have to pay attention (focus), and that's really hard.  What meditation has taught me is that my mind is just randomly running thoughts about this and that and none of it really means anything.  Before meditation I thought my thoughts were the same thing as me and that they were always right.  Really though, it's just my brain running on neutral with the purpose of scanning for any possible danger so it can alert me.  Most of the time any danger it comes up with is just so much baloney.  Plus my ego likes to make judgments about other people (which keeps me from thinking judging thoughts about myself) so I can have a pleasant feeling of self-righteousness.  That feels good for awhile and then starts feeling crappy.

I can't even remember how I ran into the concept that we tend to bring into being whatever we think about.  There are whole philosophies and branches of religion that focus on this as the central theme.  There's way more to say about this than this post can handle so I will just say whether you believe in this concept or not, wouldn't it be better to think about things that are positive and helpful rather than think about the negative, useless things we usually think about?  So...I eventually arrived at a place where I made it a central concept to my life to make decisions about what to think about and then work at the discipline of thinking helpful and positive thoughts.  It is true that our thoughts arise without our input, but utilizing focus changes those thoughts into helpful ones.  It's the hardest discipline I've ever tried to bring into being, but I am quite sure it's been the most beneficial!

The Artists Way

Getting rid of the ego's thoughts is one way of getting in touch with what we really want.  The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is a book written to help artists who are blocked get past the block.  One of the primary tools is the "morning pages" activity.  By rapidly writing three long hand pages every morning, the ego gets its ideas recorded and it finally shuts up so that the creativity of the writer can come to the surface.  If we listen just to our egos, we will always be caught up in the "stuff" that needs to be done in order for us to look good to other people. Stuff like clothes, hair, cars, houses, jewelry, etc.  Of course a certain amount of maintenance is needed to get along in the world, but none of it really contributes to the life of our dreams.  What does contribute to the life of our dreams is the love we give, the fun we have, what we create, the enjoyment we have in the world.