☀️Hello to a new year
Backed-by-science support to help you stick to your resolutions and achieve your goals
It's 2023 and we're guessing that despite all the research on how people just don't stick to New Year's resolutions, you've gone ahead and made some anyway. We're big believers in committing to making positive personal change and we're here to offer some backed-by-science support to help you stick to your resolutions (or whatever you choose to call them) and to achieve your goals.
Let’s focus on specific behaviors you may want to improve. These may include eating habits or posture improvement or how we communicate with others or how we organize our time... Behavior change can take time and requires a serious amount of mindfulness.
How we talk to ourselves may hold the key to lasting change.
1. Frame your resolution with positive language.
How we talk to ourselves matters. With a shift in perspective, we can take what might feel as if we're punishing ourselves and turn it into something empowering. Telling yourself not to eat junk food sounds restrictive and may not be sustainable. By telling yourself you'll make healthier choices when it comes to the food you eat, you're in control. You have the power of choice. The choice to occasionally eat some junk food but also the choice to make better decisions about what you're putting into your body.
Eliminating behavior that has become part of our way of existence is no easy task. We can make it easier with a little substitution.
2. Make a behavioral substitution.
When deciding to eliminate a habit that no longer serves you, you'll be more successful if you actually have a specific behavior with which to substitute it. Why? Because you can't tell your brain to not do something. If I asked you to not think of a yellow elephant, you'd probably think of a yellow elephant. Your brain can't not do something, it can only do something. This is why you often see former smokers chewing gum. Gum chewing is an acceptable alternative behavior that can be a substitute for smoking. Rather than telling yourself you can't smoke, you can tell yourself that when you feel like smoking, you’ll instead chew a piece of gum. We've substituted one acceptable behavior for one that no longer serves us or that we wish to eliminate.
Adding new behaviors can be tricky, no matter how well-intentioned you are. We all know that gym memberships spike in January and gym attendance falls drastically by March. The key to making new habits stick lies in being strategic in how and when you add a new behavior!
3. Be strategic in adding new behaviors, try stacking.
Adding a new behavior into your daily routine can be challenging. After all, it's called a routine for a reason. The best way to add a specific behavior to our routine is to stack the new behavior on top of one that we’re already doing. For example, if you need to drink more water during the day you can try carrying a water bottle around for a while and force yourself to drink a certain amount of water throughout the day. Or, you can stack the behavior onto something else, such as washing your hands. Every time you wash your hands (which is probably more than you realize) you're going to drink two glasses of water. The idea is that if you stack the new behavior onto one that’s already habitual you have a much greater chance of incorporating this new habit it your daily life and it will become habitual with more ease and less effort.
So what's your resolution? Can you incorporate one of these approaches? Give these techniques a try and let us know how it goes!
🧡Michele