With the new year right around the corner, everyone starts creating their “New Year New Me” lists. While these lists are made with good intentions, how long have you been able to stick to the list after the start of the New Year? Sometimes, it is difficult for us to break bad habits that we have been building for years and we struggle to start creating those new habits we’ve been dreaming of doing.
Past Habits
We all have a history with our past – things we did that we are proud of; things that we wish we did, but we didn’t; and things we kept saying we would get too, but we never seemed to have the time. The first step to working towards breaking old habits and creating new habits is to remember that your past does not define who you are or what you will be in the future. Let’s work on changing the way we say things. Instead of saying, “I am trying to stop oversleeping,” say something like, “I am not an over-sleeper.” Just because you have a habit of oversleeping doesn’t mean it defines your whole self or who you are going to be in the future.
New Habits
Creating new habits takes a bit of work and unlearning how to break free from those old, bad habits. The more you repeat a pattern of behaviors, the more they stick. Unfortunately, this works for both good and bad habits. New habits require you to:
- Decide the type of person you want to be and
- Prove this to yourself with small “wins”
Focus on becoming that type of person who does those good habits, rather than on a particular outcome. With the sleeping example above, we would want to focus on becoming someone who doesn’t oversleep anymore, rather than focusing on “oversleeping”. This makes the habit seem a little bit easier to tackle because it is now something that doesn’t define who we are. We also want to be able to focus on the process of creating the new habit through those small “wins”. Someone won’t be able to wake up early one morning and do everything they hope their morning consists of overnight. The process takes time. A small “win” could be you woke up 5 minutes earlier than normal for the last 3 days. Don’t over complicate things or depreciate your successes. Any progress in the right direction is a win!
The process of creating new habits
In order to make changes to our habits, we need to first identify what is a good habit versus what is a bad habit. This is going to be different for everyone as habits can be subjective.
- Write out all of your habits – both good and bad
- Next to each habit, write a “+” to represent a good habit, and a “-” to represent a bad habit
- Now we can easily identify those “bad” habits that we want to change
- Find at least one bad habit you want to change
- Point and call – say the bad habit(s) out loud to make it “real”
- “My bad habit is that I oversleep every morning.”
Change the environment
Once we have identified these habits, we can start moving forward with changing that bad habit into a good habit (from oversleeping to waking up when you want too). To do this, we need to make a change to our environment. Let’s follow the oversleeping example to explain this further. Clearly, the environment in which you may oversleep in isn’t working for you. What can we change about it? How can we make getting up in the morning more appealing? Identify those items in the bedroom that contribute to sleeping in. Could it be the fan is on and keeps you inside the warm blankets? Could it be the blackout curtains are keeping any ray of sunshine from helping you stir awake? If these are the cause for oversleeping, identify how that can be changed in the favor of waking up earlier. Maybe we want to put the fan on a smart outlet and set it to turn off at a certain time so we are more tempted to peel off the blankets in the morning. Maybe we change the curtains to be partial blackout curtains so the sun can start to wake us up in the morning.
Make it attractive
Next, we want to make our new habit (waking up earlier) more appealing or attractive to us. Maybe some of you are coffee drinkers, but are always rushing out of the house with a stale cup of mediocre coffee. We can make our morning more enticing to get up if we buy the good coffee and creamers. For others, you might be binge watching a show on Netflix and really want to watch the next episode. We could make waking up in the morning more enticing by giving us the time to watch an episode of that show while you are getting ready. What is at least two ways that we can make the morning more enticing to wake up at your desired time?
Make sure that however you handle waking up earlier, you reward yourself for those small successes and build upon those, even if they seem “small” or “silly”. Any step in the right direction is a cause for a little celebration.
Small goals
We want to create small goals for ourselves that we write out and physically check off every day that we accomplish them (another way to celebrate the small “wins”!). With our sleeping example, our goal could be to wake up every morning five minutes earlier than normal for two weeks. This allows your body to get used to waking up earlier and helps create a routine and path for the new habit to be created and stick! Reward yourself with that special coffee in the morning! Then, create the next step – this could be waking up ten minutes earlier and spending five of those minutes reading and the other five minutes with the special coffee you’ve gotten into the habit of making. Continue building onto your morning in small steps and celebrate these small steps along the way.
Be patient
Please remember that we are human – life happens. Some mornings, you may need that extra ten minutes of sleep. That is okay. Listen to your mind and your body. However, you want to make sure this does not become an excuse every day. Take that one day that is needed and get right back to creating your new habit the next day.
Review
- Identify your good and bad habits in a list
- Oversleeping (-)
- Point and call out the bad habit
- “My bad habit is that I oversleep every morning.”
- Rephrase your bad habit into who you want to be
- “I am not an over-sleeper. I am an early riser.”
- Change your environment
- Smart outlet turns fan off 10 minutes before alarm goes off
- Change to partial blackout curtains to allow some sunlight
- Make it attractive
- Purchased the Dunkin coffee beans and French vanilla creamers to make good coffee with the extra time from not oversleeping
- Small Goals
- Wake up 5 minutes earlier for 2 weeks
- Wake up 10 minutes earlier for 2 weeks
- Be Patient
- It’s okay to have a minor setback. Start over again the next day. You got this!
About Therapist Bethany Winter, MA Barnum Counseling
Clear, J. (2021). Atomic habits: Tiny changes, remarkable results: An easy & proven way to build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. CELA.
Image by Freepik