Tiny Actions Equals BIG Habits

Your daily habits either move you towards your goals or further away from them. January is that the time of year to take a long look at your daily habits. It is often when you make the decision to get rid of the bad habits and replace them with new ones that will lead you towards your goals. 

So, what is a habit and why are they so important?

Habits are routines and actions that you take on a regular basis, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unknowingly. Your brain loves to create habits based on actions that you take over and over again. These actions create a pathway in your brain that becomes ingrained as you do the same thing over and over. Imagine a car stuck in the mud. As you push on the accelerator, the tires spin and create deeper ruts making it impossible to move forward. The same is true with a habit. The more often the action occurs, the stronger the habit becomes. As an action becomes a habit, it frees up your brain to focus and spend energy on something else.

Your brain creates habits without analyzing the consequences they will have on your life.

The brain is an amazing organ created by God. Your brain is the most complex part of your body. Weighing in at three-pounds it is the center of your intelligence, it interprets your senses, initiates movement in your body and controls your behavior. As you go about your day, your brain is bombarded with information that needs to be sorted, processed and prioritized. 

Habits are your brain's way of being efficient so that it has enough energy for your life. When an action becomes a habit, your brain knows what to do so it is able to switch to auto-pilot. For example, do you think about the act of brushing your teeth or taking a shower? Have you ever arrived home, but not remembered getting on the interstate or turning on your street? Have you ever eaten an entire bag of chips without thinking about the taste or the amount you are eating? All of these actions have become habits. 

Habits can be beneficial because they can free up your brain for more important tasks, but like unknowingly eating an entire bag of chips, habits can be detrimental to your life as well. 

To reach your goals, you must recognize the habits that are holding you back and prevent you from reaching your goals so that you can begin to replace them with beneficial habits. 

As you set goals and then take the necessary actions to reach them, it will take time for these actions to become habits. For example, when you want to get in shape and decide to workout each day you may feel motivated and inspired to get up early and go to the gym, but unfortunately motivation and inspiration don’t last. The first morning that you wake up tired or when it's cold outside, you can easily talk yourself into staying in bed and skipping the workout. Instead, when your daily workout is a habit, you have become someone who works out daily. That habit has become a ritual and your brain goes into auto-pilot mode to ensure that it happens. 

Lose with GRACE, a Catholic weight loss workshop, begins by establishing a habit of prayer. The first week, participants are encouraged to spend 15 minutes in daily prayer. The prayer routine looks different for each person, but taking the action each morning helps to become someone who prays. This builds the foundation for the other lessons in the 12-week workshop. Becoming someone who prays each day is a habit that allows inner healing, breaking the strongholds of food and as the new habits are formed all areas of life are impacted.

So, how do you create habits that are beneficial? 

1. Once you identify the habit you want to create then you have to BECOME someone who takes that action. If you want to create the habit of walking each day before work, then you have to become a person who gets up every morning, puts on tennis shoes and walks. Habits are created with action. Just thinking about walking isn’t enough. Research has shown that a habit takes 21-66 days to form, it is different for each person. 
2. Make a 30 day commitment. As you build a habit you will have to take intentional action to “become” the person who takes those actions on a regular basis. You will have to show your brain that you mean business through your actions. It is easy to procrastinate and put things off, but committing to a certain time frame creates urgency. Comedian, Jerry Seinfied, created the habit of writing by becoming a writer. A young comedian once asked Jerry what was the key to him having so much content to share. Jerry suggested that he create a chain of daily action. Each day he was to commit to writing and once the task was complete to make a big X on the calendar. As he became someone who wrote each day, his brain could see the Xs add up day after day. 
3. Be prepared for the excuses. When you start to build a new habit, you are creating new pathways in your brain.Your brain will want you to go back to what is routine and familiar so you will feel resistance. The resistance will show up as excuses. Your brain is brilliant so it will come up with amazing reasons why you shouldn’t take the new action. Excuses like, It is too cold to walk. I don’t have time to pray. I’m too busy to eat healthy. I am sure you can think of some common excuses that come up in your life. The key is to know that these excuses are coming, to recognize them and to then take the action anyway. Habits are created by taking the action time and time again, no matter how much your brain is pushing you in a different direction. 

In the month of January, you can follow Catholic Life Coach, Jennie, as she creates a new habit of exercise by following her journey of 30 days of 30 minutes of movement. Jennie will equip and encourage you to establish new habits in your life that move you towards your goals.