13 things to avoid when changing habits

13 things to avoid when changing habits
Personal improvement: October 6th, 2008
"Habit is a habit. No one can throw it out the window. Only by patience can you lure it down from the upstairs step by step ." -- Mark tween

In the past two and a half years, I have learned a lot about how to change my habits, from smoking cessation, long-distance running, using GTD, vegetarian diet, and getting up early. I can also give more examples, but I believe you have seen a large number of them. I not only understand what to do in the process of changing habits, I also learned through the various failures that I have experienced and what to avoid.

I have also experienced many failures.

I found that failure is equally important to improve myself, especially to change bad habits. It is not easy to get rid of bad habits. I believe that everyone of us has done this kind of effort, but eventually failed. Or we have tried to make some positive changes, but the results are not satisfactory. The key to success is obviously that, even if you fail, you should not give up. Instead, you should reinvent your determination, analyze where the error is and why, and then set up a new plan to overcome these obstacles next time.

As mentioned above, I have failed again and again to succeed. I found that some mistakes should be avoided when trying to get rid of bad habits. Below are some of my experiences.

"Driving forces you to get started and get used to keep you going ." -- Jim Ryun

Do not try to change two or more habits at a time

We always want to do this. I want to get up early, run, eat healthier food, make myself more organized, and keep writing every day ...... We want to implement them all at the same time! However, no matter how enthusiastic you are about these goals, even if you select only two of them at a time, it also indicates failure. I tried this, and many times. Setting multiple goals also makes it possible to achieve success, but it is not suitable for those who are difficult to change their habits (I think we almost all belong to this type of person. In my opinion, if you only focus on one habit at a time and stick to it for a month at a time, the chances of success will be three to four times the chance of cultivating multiple habits at the same time. Put all your energy into this habit. Once you get into the self-driving gear, consider the next habit. You only need to solve one problem at a time.

Ignore or write down specific plans

You woke up early in the morning and jumped out of bed and shouted, "I want to make a change today !" It is certainly very easy to do so. Who of us has never had such an experience? (Note: If you are not living alone, your roommate or family may not be happy with your shouting .) But what we need to tell ourselves in the brain, whether it is loud or in a whisper, is that it is not enough to say that we want to change. You should write down the target and write down the start date and end date (30 days is a suitable time ). Accurately write down what you plan to do, write down how you will honor yourself, how to reward yourself, what are the difficulties, what are your motivations, and most importantly: write these on paper, follow the plan (do not pile up your plan in the drawer !)

Lack of dedicated Investment

I sometimes do the same. I will say, "I want to quit smoking today ." Then, I will discard the cigarette package (the past tense should be used here, because I no longer smoke now, but I am still too lazy to change it ). In this way, I will stick to it (usually half a day !), Then give in to yourself and buy another package of cigarettes. Then there was a small sense of guilt, followed by a lack of sincerity and determination to quit again. This usually does not play any role. You must make a solemn determination, that is, to tell the world your determination. You need to be serious-write your decision on a blog, tell your family, friends, and colleagues, and tell your high school students who meet and greet you at the grocery store, tell the "guys" that you don't even remember. The more people, the better. Publish your entire plan to everyone. Make a reminder sign and paste it on your desk and refrigerator. Make a serious commitment to your child (I quit smoking in this way ).

Lack of support

Sometimes you may hesitate. This is very common. Who are you looking for when you need encouragement? If you don't have a proper answer to this question, you need to think about it. If you have a spouse, this person is a good choice, but it is best to have more than one person to support you. It may be your mother, your sisters, your friends, or your boss. Maybe one or several netizens. We also advocate that you join an organization or an online forum where you can find a group of friends who have the same requirements as you and tell them your determination, let them help you when you encounter difficulties and hesitate. You need to make a commitment. Write all this in your written plan.

Lack of Deep Thinking on motivation

After some experiences, I call people the "Precepts" thing as "motivation ". Why are you conscious enough to do something? Because you have enough motivation. When you lose motivation, you lose consciousness of discipline. Therefore, before you begin to change your habits, think carefully about your motivation. Why are you doing this? When you forget the reason, what will ultimately push you to continue? There is no denying that open commitment is the source of powerful motivation, but you should also give yourself some real inner motivation. This should also be written in your plan.

Lack of understanding of difficulties

Changing any habit means a path full of obstacles. Unfortunately, we often give up after encountering some of them. Or, we will try again, but we will always encounter the same obstacles and the results will be the same as in the past. If you want to jump out of this cycle, you need to think carefully and estimate the obstacles you will encounter in advance. If you fail before, you need to know what is blocking you this time. If you have never thought about how difficult this habit will be to change, do some research and read the success or failure examples of others, find out the obstacles you may encounter. Then, develop a plan for yourself and write down how you will respond to these obstacles. For example, when I went out for dinner, I was always unable to control a moderate amount of food. What do I have to do when I eat out? What method should I use? Before going out, I asked myself to think about the answers to these questions, because it was too late to think about how to control these questions when I suddenly faced this situation without any expectation.

Lack of records on progress

Although you can record the progress without writing logs during the process of changing habits, such a log can indeed increase your chances of success-so why not? If you do not use the methods you can use as much as possible, many things will add more difficulties out of thin air. Logging can effectively help you succeed because it reminds you to have perseverance. It makes you always know what you are actually doing. It can give you motivation, because you also want to keep a good record on it. It also gives you a sense of responsibility in front of the people you make your commitments.

Lack of responsibility

The responsibility should be put in the second half of your extremely important public commitment. I wrote a serious statement on my blog, but I did not follow it. It shows the shortcomings of this method. The difference is that, for example, I not only published the written plan to everyone early, but also made a small training blog ("tralog "). It can help me improve my sense of responsibility. I report on my progress every day, whether it is regressing or making some progress. Even if you do not have your own blog, you should establish your own system to monitor your reliability. -- You may post records at work, tell your friends about the progress, or report to them on a daily basis.

Unclear cause

This is the key to changing habits. Each habit has at least one cause-that is, what happened before a habit was developed. Some habits have more than one cause-for example, when I smoke, my incentives include refreshing, eating, sexual desire, stressful work, drinking outside, and so on. Every time these events occur, I smoke without exception. The more stable the relationship with the cause, the more stubborn the habit will be. Therefore, when trying to get rid of a habit, you must first find out what all of your incentives are (record them in a few days), and then correspond to each incentive, find a good habit to replace bad habits. For example, when I feel stressed, I use running instead of smoking. For good habits, such as exercise, you also need to find common things as a trigger event (if not encountered every day, at least the frequency you need ). For exercise, you can do it after drinking coffee in the morning (if you have the habit of drinking coffee at the same time every day) or if you get off work at the same time every day, you can also choose to leave after work. Write your trigger events in the plan and strictly monitor them-once a trigger event occurs, immediately follow the set habits for yourself. This is the case every time. If you do not execute the trigger events from start to end, it will become increasingly difficult to cultivate habits.

Lack of relevant knowledge

For each habit, I find that the most important thing is to learn as much about it as possible, whether it is about the habits that have been developed before or in progress. I will investigate and research to find methods of success, potential obstacles, and good tools to make myself successful. I will continue to read relevant knowledge, such as blogs, magazines, books, online forums, and successful stories, as I get rid of my habits, to increase my motivation.

Too early distraction

Usually, within one to two weeks after we begin to get rid of our habits, we will focus our attention elsewhere. However, at this time, new habits have not been firmly formed. In this way, we often put a lot of energy into a new habit, but we don't care about it until it is solid in the self-driving gear. My suggestion is that we should continue to focus on the changing habits at least for 30 days and try to stabilize them as much as possible.

Lack of perseverance

I have mentioned this several times, but it is important to list it separately. If you associate a habit with an incentive, You need to strictly implement this habit every time the cause occurs. If you do this sometimes, but sometimes you do not, you will not be able to cultivate your habits. Do your best not to miss it once, because if you miss it once, you will be tempted to miss it for the second or third time. In this way, the hope of cultivating habits becomes the basket of bamboo.

Give up upon failure

However, if you really miss once, twice, or even three times, you should not give up. Instead, you should find out the reason you missed, make a plan, and beat the difficulties in the next time. After that, we will continue to do it as planned until new habits are developed steadily. If you give up, it means you are defeated by failure. But if you learn from failure, failure becomes a good thing that will ultimately lead you to success. As I said before, I regard failure as the stepping stone to success.

"What we do day after day determines who we are. Therefore, excellence is not a behavior, but a habit ." -- Aristotle

Original article: 13 things to avoid when changing habits-zenhaibts

Translator: Ling Jianchuan (core member of GTD Team)