Successfully Change Your Habits

The foundation for radically changing your life can start with one single thought followed by one simple action. 

Shifting towards life-affirming habits can start with setting an intention and then finding one positive action that supports that intention. Once you feel comfortable trying out your new habit,  you repeat the action regularly (every day if possible). The challenge is to avoid the tendency to do too many actions all at once. Ask yourself now, is there something you are longing to change in your life? Is there something that will positively impact your physical and mental health and well-being?

Perhaps you would like to have more energy, but you are navigating the impact of a more sedentary lifestyle this past year. Maybe you were super active and you’re now dealing with the discomfort of a new or existing injury. Maybe anxiety is interfering with a good night’s sleep and you’re finding it hard to think clearly. Maybe everything feels mostly fine, but you know your body needs more water and less alcohol. What your own body needs is personal to you, but the challenges to successfully nurturing new habits is universal. New health-supporting behaviors are like small children. They will flourish with attention and love.

The Importance of Taking Baby Steps

After researching human behavior for over 20 years, the founder of the Tiny Habits approach has learned that there are 3 things that can change your behavior for good. These include having an epiphany (or life-altering event), changing your environment, or taking baby steps (which is the easiest one to do). His approach uses the idea of building habits from a familiar activity that you already do every day. This existing activity serves as the cue for your new teeny tiny habit and can include daily actions such as getting out of bed in the morning, sitting on the toilet, opening email, driving to work or anything else you might already do without too much thought. The cue that you choose is meaningful to you and serves as a reminder for your new habit. 

New habits might be as small as stepping outside each day (as the first baby step for a daily walk), doing one sun salutation each morning, taking 10 deep breaths before stepping out of bed, writing one thing you are grateful for before going to bed. These small actions lead to bigger actions by teaching us that we can take these smaller actions until we aren’t even thinking about them.

I have found that taking baby steps is not only possible, but it actually works. As long as you can remain flexible and open to refining your habit as you experiment, you will find that you can do almost anything. 

The Importance of Practicing Kindness

According to The Kindness Method, changing habits for good depends on being able to treat ourselves with kindness. In practical terms, new habits can only succeed when they feel life affirming and positive. If any action we take feels like a punishment for something we think we are doing wrong, these new habits are doomed to fail. 

So what does this mean for you? 

If we learned anything from this past year, it is that when things are out of control all around us, we are left with our own thoughts and actions. While we cannot control what happens in the world, we do have the ability to adopt new habits that support and strengthen our well-being.

Habit change is not a one-size fits all approach so I invite you to commit to the yogic practice of listening. What is your body telling you? How is it asking you for support? Place your hand on your heart, and allow the answers to come. Listen deeply and create one positive intention for yourself. Let it come from what you know to be true for you and then see where it takes you.

xo Kika