“We are what we repeatedly do, excellence therefore is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle
Under stress, your brain either defaults to good habits or bad habits that you’ve developed-you may not even realize you have the bad habits. Under stress, the limbic system in the brain can go haywire and default to a feeling brain instead of a thinking brain. If you’ve ever been around kids, you may have seen this in action. When your kids are calm, you explain to them that it’s not okay to hit when someone takes their toy and they need to use their words instead. They are calm and they understand. The next time you go on a playdate and someone snatches a toy out of your child’s hands, they may be under stress and reach out to hit the other child. Your child’s brain went to a thinking brain while calm to a feeling brain under stress.
What does a bad habit look like in a workplace example? Let’s say you don’t have good work habits in place. When you sit down at your desk, you have no idea what you should be working on and instead of getting to work, you feel stressed and aimless and avoid work by doing other activities. Instead of working on the task at hand you might scroll Facebook or Instagram, text a friend, drink a cup of coffee or leave your office and run errands. Target anyone? And then your work doesn’t get done. You got to avoid it for a while longer which may have temporarily relieved some stress or boredom.
What does a good habit look like in a workplace example? Let’s say you have good work habits in place. At the end of each work day, you look at your schedule for the next day and create a ‘to do’ list. When you start working the next day, you know exactly where to place your attention and can get right to work. You work with focus and your work gets done.
When we create good habits that we can lean into, even under stress, then we can improve our focus, manage our time better, feel in control of our environment, feel more calm during our work day and be in a better position to reach our goals. All great things!
Let’s look at eight steps to creating healthy habits:
- Don’t take on changing too many new habits at one time-one maybe two. Once you have success under your belt, you can consider adding another new habit.
- Write down the habit you want to break to be clear with yourself. It’s easier to change habits if you know exactly what you’re changing.
- Write down the new habit you want to create-focus on the positive change.
- Attach a strong emotion to the new habit: happy, confident, content, peaceful, proud, etc. and write it down.
- Write down the positive outcomes you will experience with your new habit: healthy, more energy, clothes fit better, increased business, better life balance, etc.
- Use a trigger object as a visual reminder. A trigger object is something that you can see visually that will remind you about your new habit. An example would be leaving your running shoes next to the front door to remind yourself to go out walking or running each day.
- Repeat your new habit over and over for 21 days. Keep repeating it as long as it takes to make it stick. It typically takes 18-254 days to change a habit with the sweet spot being 66 days. Our nervous systems don’t care for change so we have to keep at it-don’t give up.
- Celebrate your success! Don’t take it lightly when you have success-celebrate it, shout it and enjoy it!
Start working on a new habit today and reap the rewards of reaching your goals tomorrow! (or 66 days from now)
“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.”
John C. Maxwell
