How to create, but above all keep new habits over time?
Whether I lead a general public workshop around relationships, its pro-personal balance or a workshop within an organization to transmit agile practices or facilitate Scrum ceremonies, the desires and needs of the interviewees are basically the same.
When I propose a "checkin" at the beginning of the workshop by asking each person in the group to complete the beginning of phrases of the type:
"What's bringing me energy right now..."
"What's costing me energy right now..."
"What I would like to dare right now to change what's costing me energy..."
"The little action I want to take tomorrow to move in that direction..."
... 80% of the time, I find the same initial desire and the same problem in order to progress towards expressed desire.
What is this first desire?
The first desire is to find time. So far, nothing original! We all want to find time for ourselves. But when I ask the question "why?" 90% of the time, I find one of these answers:
Successfully engage in physical or bodily activity on a daily basis or at least once a week
create moments of qualitative exchanges between couples on a daily or weekly basis, without the technological demands or the presence of children
create playtime with your children before or after school
Again, nothing very original. We all want to feel better physically, fulfilled in our relationships, or as a family.
And our first reflex is to pose the intention of doing more sports, doing more mindfulness activities or creating moments of sharing with others or with the family.
But then why is it so difficult to move from intention to action?
Under the intention of physical or relational well-being, the problem is to change behaviours facilitating the integration of new habits in our daily life.
What makes it possible to keep a habit for more than 3 days? What makes it possible to avoid any guilt when we fail to live up to our commitment and lose the energy to continue?
This leads to the question: what makes us keep this habit that feeds us when things are not going so well?
What interests me is to create habits that allow us to bounce back more quickly in the moments of low point in our lives.
Creating a new habit when things are going well is easy. Keeping it when things are not going so well is more complicated when you need routines to feed yourself and bounce faster.
Reminder of some good practices found in most articles on the subject
There are a plethora of articles on the new resolutions right now. Here are the 5 recurrent and relevant points in my opinion:
Forget the "I should."
Don't worry about perfection.
Simple start
Celebrate every new habit in your daily routine
Create new behaviours from what you're already doing
I've always been passionate about what drives people to change their behaviour. Whether in the younger competitive sport, or at the heart of the change of certain organizations, by taking an interest in the cultures of companies that last over time, and more recently by coaching people on their pro-personal balance through the integration of practices into their daily lives. I am fascinated by what drives some people to change their behaviour, to integrate new habits about time and others not so easily.
Let's go further.