Getting Started – Designing your Life, Choosing your Habits
Habits and Self Discipline are the lynchpin of every person’s health and performance in all walks of life. There are a number of great books on habit, my favorite being the power of habit and Atomic Habits. Roughly half of everything you do, you do simply because you ‘have’ done it, it’s a largely autonomic habit.
By recognizing this fact and pinpointing your habits you can ask yourself if they really serve you and change them. By taking time to curate your habits, and pepper those changes with your self discipline you can design your life just as you would like it to be. Self discipline is a finite resource, your brain has a certain number of wise decisions you make every day before you begin to take the easy way out or make decisions that don’t serve you.
Many of us make bad eating choices late at night, or choose to spend our time unwisely before bed or when we could be sleeping, and this is in part because our self discipline has been used up for the day and we become a victim of perceived comfort or negative habits. I believe that these aspects of ourself go hand in hand in determining how successful and fulfilled we are as people. In order to cultivate Brio in our lives we must work with these things in mind.
I will now go into detail on some ways to notice, change, and improve our habits and self discipline.
1. Make important decisions early in the day.
I decidedly used “not a morning person”, this obviously was just a story I would tell myself, and many of my habits were unchecked, unhealthy, and I was generally not rested, low performing. I became a morning person out of necessity for work, but I grew to appreciate it and now enjoy going to bed early (most of the time) and doing things in the morning by choice. I will either plan my week in my planner on sunday or monday morning, and/or add detail on the given morning to set up my day for success. I find that after I have worked (7 or 8pm) my decision making is not as strong, so I make food and food choices, do my chores,and prepare for the next day before I am depleted. I make content, and do my work early in the day so it is well thought of, disciplined, and high quality. By making time for important decisions early in the day you can help ensure they are good ones. Discipline is like a muscle that can be trained, with practice your decisions will be wiser for longer parts of the day.
2. Take decisions off your plate by planning ahead.
When I am working at the clinic I often ask my patients what they are having for dinner, a surprising number of them (more than half) will tell me, even at 5 or 6pm that they don’t know what they are eating for dinner. Not planning ahead, and making food decisions when you are already hungry and tired will not set you up for success. This can apply to making it to the gym, doing your homework, cleaning the house, or any other activity that requires a decision. Try making the basic decisions hours, days, or weeks in advance. You can also remove the decisions completely. Adopt a meal plan, sign up for a service. For 2 years I was working 70 to 80 hours a week in several roles, and I paid someone to make my meals for me autonomously according to my food sensitivities. I made absolutely no decisions about what to eat, and it helped me be effective more often and longer. However, because of this crutch when I ‘did’ order food, or eat outside my prepared meals I was much more likely to end up with something that I shouldn’t be eating. I started cooking for myself again in March, and it took some getting used to, but I prep meals for a week and do not deviate. It takes the decisions out my day to day, and I eat out twice a month or less! I focused on food here, but you could apply this to any part of your routine. Sign up at a gym, on a set schedule for a class if you struggle to decide to get to the gym. If you struggle with wasting time on TV, set yourself a limit or plan ahead on when you really ‘need’ or deserve that time.
3. Change a habit by replacing a habit.
Many times when people are trying to change something they will attempt to simply abstain from doing it. This is not nearly as successful as replacing a habit with a new one, which is much more manageable. For example, if you had a cookie every single day and you wanted to stop, it would probably be hard to just take from from your day. Instead you could identify a healthier snack to have at the same time, like a piece of fruit, a tasty nutty snack bar, or a little bit of dairy free ice cream as some examples. By replacing the habit, you will have a much easier time of letting the original habit go. If you have a habit of coming home from work, sitting on the couch and looking for something to watch (and possibly not get up until bed time) , maybe instead you could come home from work and unpack your stuff, prepare for the the next day and take a shower before you settle into a leisure activity. Consider habits that may not be serving you, why you do them, and how they might be replaced.
4. Think of ‘triggers’ for habits you are trying to add or change.
Many people with valuable habits utilize a trigger or a ritual that precludes the activity. For example, you may sit down and tie your shoes nicely before you run. You may get a cup of coffee before you sit down to work. You might equip your heart rate monitor, and headphones, and start the program on your smart watch before a workout. Having a set activity or preparation that puts you in a state of readiness for the target activity can reinforce habit adoption. As you are thinking of things to change in your habits, think also of a trigger or ritual that will prepare you to go forth with Brio on a daily basis.
5. Set yourself up for success on purpose.
As begin a process of change, purposefully start with changes and activities you are overly confident about making successfully. A number of small successes will embolden you to tackle bigger changes with a similar mindset. If you sign yourself for too much and have one or a number of failures it may decrease your resilience, chance to be successful. Purposefully start with the no brainers, to build your self discipline up, and when its time to go on in your hardest habits, you will absolutely be ready.
6. Review setbacks and failures objectively, look for the lessons.
Whenever I make a mistake or put myself into a set back, the first thing I do is review. Ask yourself ‘why’ that happened. Even if at first glance you feel like it was totally out of control, if you examine the situation you will likely find that it ‘was’. A life coach that I admire once said, “Have you ever noticed whenever you have a problem, that you are always there? Maybe it’s you”. Learning from a mistake, and gaining value from it is an extremely important part of life in my opinion. Noticing what is causing your setbacks, and taking measures to adapt more capably can grant huge returns on your efforts. For example, when adjusting my diet I found that I was not hitting my goals, I didn’t feel hungry enough to eat all the food! Well I found that I was waiting a while to eat after I got up, and that if I started eating 30 minutes after waking that I would easily hit my numbers by the end of the day with genuine hunger. The more I hit my numbers, the more my body adjusts and the easier and easier it gets. Tightening up my food prep habits alongside this, is making me bulletproof.
7. Replace one habit at a time if you are not a habit change veteran.
“Makeover” is a term I used to hear a lot, and it implies changing many things about oneself, appearance, situation, building etc. This is not realistic in practice for habits. If you attempt a “makeover” and change everything at once, it is likely that you will relapse and rebound hard into the poor habits that have been ‘comfortable’ to you. This will also decrease your personal efficacy, or your effectiveness at approaching these parts of yourself with good intentions. Choose one to replace, when you have it down, and it feels like a new habit, carefully select your next target.
I hope these tips will help you approach the wide world of habit change, self discipline, and self improvement. I would be next to nothing without these ideas and principles, and I enjoy my energy levels, my bodies capabilities, and my day to day life immeasurably because I am often auditing my habits and examining them for potential improvement. My setbacks happen less and less often, and I am triaging mistakes rarely. My mindset has improved, and I believe I can change anything about myself and my routines as I please, and ultimately that is TRUE. It can (and should) be true for you too.