One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself in any aspect of life is installing a new habit. Whether it’s a habit for your business, your health or your relationships, habit installing is powerful stuff! So how can you install a new habit?
When you look at your life you’re a collection of habits. Some of them good ones, and some not so “good”! Some habits lead you to outcomes you want, such as a larger bank balance, or a healthier body, and some lead you to results you don’t want, such as being overweight and broke!
Start by owning these habits. Take some responsibility for them. After all, you created them, either by default (from allowing them to form), or by taking conscious action and forming them deliberately.
When you can observe that your outcomes in life are a direct result of your habit patterns, you can begin to take some positive action and adjust some of the things which aren’t working in your life.
Installing A New Habit – A Push Up
In Stephen Guise’s book Mini Habits, he uses the example of a “micro commitment” to install a new habits. One specific example is that of a push up, or press-up. If you want to get fitter, a push up can be used to “install” a new habit pattern. Now a push up isn’t a massive achievement, but it’s used to gain momentum in one area of your life.
By committing to a single push up each day, you cement the habit. You make it easy for yourself to do it. Can you do a single push up to improve your health? Do one now – go on!
The idea isn’t that a single push up will drastically alter your health. It won’t. No, the strategy is to begin by installing a tiny commitment which gets the wheels turning. Once you are in the push up position, you can easily do more than one push up. So you might even do 10 while you’re down there. But you only have to do 1. So on a bad day, you don’t have to give yourself a hard time for only doing one.
Installing A New Habit – What Area Of Your Life Would You Like To Improve?
Whether you want to earn more money, have better relationships, get fitter or build a larger social circle, there’s mini steps you can do in each area to get the ball rolling. Find a micro commitment you can do each day and commit to it. Over time, you can build on that commitment.
Another example is getting to the gym. If you struggle finding the time and commitment getting to the gym, find a small step which helps you do it. It could be just swiping your gym card and physically getting there. Once you have overcome the mental hurdle to achieve that, it’s much easier to actually do some exercise once you’re there. But you don’t have to, you can let yourself off if you’re having a bad day!
Here’s a few ideas of micro commitments in different areas of life:
- Health – a single push up or swiping your gym card each day
- Wealth – Take some action starting an online business, or learning about stocks/shares
- Relationships – pick up the phone to an old friend or relative once a week.
- Personal development – read 10 pages of a personal development book each day
- Health – do a 5 minutes run each day
- Health – cycle to work, rather than driving
- Wealth – write a blog post to get more people to your affiliate link
Installing A New Habit – Brushing Your Teeth
Do you brush your teeth each day? How did you form the habit? It’s a pretty common habit brushing your teeth and most people do it without thinking. That’s because the habit was installed long ago. In fact, it feels weird NOT to brush your teeth once the habit is deeply engrained.
This will eventually be the same for your new installed habit that you choose. Pick a habit you would like to “install” and create a new behaviour to improve a specific area of your life.
Can you commit to it even on your worst days?
To build momentum, it’s important to start small, even if it seems slightly ridiculous. But have you ever started a habit with good intentions only to give up a few weeks/months later? Most people do this with the gym. They decide to join a gym and pay their yearly fees only to give up on month 3, usually in March after the “New Year, New You” phase has died down!
But if you choose a micro commitment, rather than a lofty goal you can’t sustain, you build momentum and it becomes a part of your habit pattern.
Add On
After you’ve kept up your mini-habit for a few weeks you can start adding to it, if you haven’t done this already. Just built it up slowly, but make sure you don’t over commit and put yourself backwards. The key is to maintain the minimum commitment as part of your daily routine.
Once you have established your mini commitment, you can add on. So, for example if you’re doing a single push up, and you’ve done 3 weeks of this habit, take it up to 3 push ups for example, or as much as feels comfortable.
Pretty soon, you’ll be adding more and more and doing 10 and above push ups each day without even thinking about it. Once you get past a few months of this it will feel wrong NOT doing it!
You can also use your newly established habit to “add on” another habit. Habit “stacking” allows you to establish a routine and add other parts to it. So for example with the push ups, you can add on star jumps (or crunches, or whatever) once you’ve done the push up.
Summary
Micro habits are powerful when you understand how to implement them for change in your life. Wherever you are at the moment, choose a mini commitment which suits you and which you can sustain over the longer term.
It’s no use picking something you’ll burn out from in 3 weeks. Choose something that’s ridiculously easy and which you’ll commit to. That way, it becomes part of your routine and eventually you won’t feel right skipping it! Once you have “hard-wired” it into your routine, you can build it up by adding.
This is a great strategy for your online business if you have one. It can feel overwhelming at first when you start but building supportive daily habits helps you stay focused on productive activities and avoid falling into procrastination and inactivity. You can get started with an online business from scratch here.