Model for change
During my research on how to effect change, I discovered Behavioural Scientist BJ Fogg who analysed how people make changes and noticed that people need a very big trigger to keep them motivated to make change if what they need to do is difficult. What he suggests to negate the need for a large trigger – like a traumatic incident or dramatic life event like a pregnancy – is to break the change down into tiny manageable micro-practices so people can continuously feel good about completing these small tasks and keep their motivation high.
I tried BJ Fogg’s method and was so impressed by the results, not just for me but for my whole family including my two young children, that I trained with BJ himself to teach his method to others along with learning CBT, Behavioural Science, Habit Coaching and Meditation.
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method
When people try to change something big in their life like their eating habits, how much they move about or how they organise themselves, they often embark on a regime which requires huge change immediately. Sustaining such large change on willpower and motivation alone is almost impossible so such endeavours are essentially doomed to fail. My method of helping people effect real lasting change in their lives revolves around both having a real profound reason to want to change and breaking that change into manageable pieces.
Why is 'habit' a dirty word
Making changes is often seen in terms of breaking bad habits. We have all tried to stop doing something completely and it’s manageable for a short period of time like Dry January or Stoptober because our motivation can hold strong for short periods of time. Stopping permanently is a different story though as it only takes something like a stressful event to break our motivation and cause us to fall back into it. So, let’s stop thinking of habits in those terms. Instead, let’s look at good habits in our lives and how we can add to them. Positivity and achievement are much better motivators than negative things. Nearly everyone gets up in the morning. Most people brush their teeth every day. These are positive habits. You can bring about huge change in your life by adding in very small and achievable good habits that accumulate as you continue to succeed in achieving them.
Achieving feels good
Behavioural scientist, BJ Fogg, uses a graph which has ‘motivation’ and ‘difficulty’ as its axis because he points out that its dead easy to stay motivated to do something that’s easy and almost impossible to stay motivated to do something that’s very difficult. This is why my method for change focuses on keeping changes very small and achievable while reinforcing motivation with a strong purpose behind what you’re doing. By forming very small daily good habits, you can celebrate every time you accomplish them until you feel really good about everything you’ve achieved and have ingrained these practices into your daily life.
Small Equals Big...
Imagine what good you would do your mental health if you could meditate for 30 hours. That sounds like a lot but if you meditated for just five minutes a day for a year, that is how much you would have meditated. What I can help you do is break down what you would like to achieve or put into practice into very small daily or weekly or monthly habits which you can easily incorporate into your daily routine by ‘anchoring’ them to other good daily habits you have.
Work with me and I will help you focus on the real reasons why you want to make these changes in your life and map out a path to get there in a way that doesn’t require phenomenal willpower and self-discipline to follow. Not only can I help you find an easily achievable way to get to where you want to go, I can provide accountability to give you extra support to stay on track.
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