Stick to your habits by shifting your mindset
We are HALFWAY through 2023, let’s take a quick review shall we?
How are we all getting on with those New Year’s resolutions about new habits we wanted to build, stick to, pick up again, or stop?
If you stuck to most of them and made them your new reality, niiiiice job! Feel free to share your secrets as to what helped you on this journey in the comments below so others can benefit too!
If you struggled a little bit, first up, that’s ok, and normal, it happens to the best of us (me included!). Even though I am writing every day, I have not been that consistent in writing specifically on my book, so I can count this as “did not stick to it”.
But let’s take a closer look at 1. WHY it is that we are not sticking to our habits and 2. what we can do starting from today to stick to it.
You view the habit only as optional and therefore make it easier to drop it. Indicators for this one are “Yeah, I will try, but can’t promise anything, let’s see”
Instead: Make it a non-negotiable, schedule your new habit into your calendar before anything else and proactively make time for it or attach it to something else you are already doing (not necessarily multi-tasking, but adding another key chain to the existing routine)
You believe your abilities are limited and think “It’s very hard for me to change, it never worked so far, why would it now, I’m just not as disciplined”. This is straight-up fixed mindset thinking and victim mentality as you are disempowering yourself and therefore decreasing your self-belief and self-trust that you can actually do it.
Open yourself up again to the possibility that you too can achieve this, if others can do it so can you, in the end, we are all human. The difference is how we think about ourselves. You too can learn, grow and change, nothing ever is truly fixed and everything can change (or like Miley Cyrus would say: “Change is a thing you can count on"!”)
You have a all-or-nothing mentality aka perfectionism. It’s either you are all in and blazing through it and being a master immediately and giving it 110% or you give up. However, this just leads to you burning yourself and your energy within no time until you are exhausted and extra demotivated to keep going.
Allow for the process to be slow and take time AND embrace messy action, the key is consistency, not perfectionism.
You foster negative self-talk and limiting beliefs vs empowering ones. This can be in the form of complaining, criticizing, or generally negative thoughts and statements around the habit you are trying to build. They may often be caused by fear, past experiences, traumas or all of that. They don’t have to be something extreme, it can be very simple yet also very imprinted memories that your brain autosaved as the standard program to run.
Shift your beliefs by creating awareness - ask “what”; then debunk them and ask “why”; last but not least ask yourself “how” you need to rewrite them into empowering thoughts instead.
You perceive the experience of executing the habit (or maybe even the thought of it) as hard and mundane, mainly because you keep telling yourself exactly that: “Oh it is so hard to stick to it!”
Use the ultimate cheat code: the 5-second rule, count down from 5, and then just get to it, use the moment to take a deep breath and push the excuses and negative self-talk as to why you can’t or shouldn’t or that it would be so much more rewarding to just sit on the sofa and do nothing ASIDE and do what you set out to do. Another great way to support yourself is in the form of an accountability buddy (like your coach!) or even a partner or friend whom you tell what you want to do and what the consequences are if you don’t. They may even do it WITH you! And then, of course, you can make it as fun and easy as possible to do the new habit, or the contrary for the old habit (make it hard and awful to do).
You compare yourself to others and tend to judge and criticize them or worse: yourself for not being as good, as far, as quick, …
The only 2 people you should ever compare yourself to are: 1. yourself from yesterday (reflect on your progress and what you can do to be a little bit better today than yesterday); and 2. yourself from the future (what else is needed to BE that new version of you who sticks to that new habit? What can you do today to step into that identity?)
You don’t want it enough. Tough truth. the reason for this could be that you think you should start this habit because someone told you so or because it would be the right thing to do (Yes, but doesn’t have to be the right thing for you!) OR someone made a comment about you that you internalised and now want to counteract OR society made you do it. Overall these reasons all come from outside of you (extrinsic motivation) but this might not be enough if it isn’t also partially or even fully intrinsic motivation
which leads us to the necessary shift for this one: from the outside to the inside, what do YOU truly want to do, why does this matter to you, and why is it so important? Does this align with your values and who you want to become? Is this habit part of how you envision your best self to be? The answers to these questions will reveal if you are int his truly for YOURSELF, and not for others.
As you can see building a habit may take a lot of work when it comes to your mindset. If you want to truly pinpoint what exactly it is that holds you back, try this quiz (click) to find out your self-sabotage type. Afterwards, you will receive a neat little guide with strategic action steps to stop holding yourself back and instead take action towards your best self.
If you want to deep dive into this, this course is for you! (click)
Did you like this article? Brilliant! Share it with someone who too could benefit from it or with whom you want to build a strong new habit together (for example let’s do the couch to 5k!) let me know how you get on over on Instagram (click).
With love & gratitude
Josi
