by Charles Barnard
Applying HEAT to your life is all about the habits. The habits we create allow us to manage our emotions and attitudes. Developing these habits around emotional management and attitude building skills requires training. As I have written, experts say creating this daily ritual so it becomes a habit takes on average 66 consecutive days. We all know how challenging that can be.
There are several steps we do in our coaching program. You first want to identify the limiting beliefs and any stored negative emotions that may be interfering with the building of good habits. Once identified we remove them.
Second, you want to identify your values and the hierarchy of those values. You will behave in accordance with what you value so if you want to lose weight or get fit and health as a value is down on your list of values, it will be an extra challenge to consistently do what you need to do to lose weight and or get fit.
Once we have removed obstacles and aligned values, you can begin the process of building the habits. The next secret is to take baby steps. The mantra is easy +1. You want to begin building the ritual one habit at a time and when it seems to be easy (not necessarily a habit yet, but easy to follow through on) you can add the next ritual component.
One of the ways to make it easy is to make it short. For example, when you start journaling you take 2 minutes max to journal. You start a breathing routine – 2 minutes max. You start your morning with a stretching or body movement practice – 2 minutes max. Once the habit has been established you can build onto it.
Another aspect of our coaching entails looking at environmental factors and existing habits. Environmentally, if you want to lose weight and eat right you need to do a kitchen inventory. Having junk food around will entice you to eat it. You want to have less screen time make it harder to access. In other words, make changes to your environment.
The other thing you can do is add to an existing routine. You want to get more steps in during the course of a day and week, park farther away when you go to work or go shopping. Is there a place you drive by everyday where you could stop and go for a walk? Even if it is just for two minutes you are creating a new pattern.
In our coaching, we sometimes have to really focus on bad habits and interrupting those. We begin with removing the beliefs and decisions around how they started – remove those obstacles to new and better habits. We then have to elicit the strategy of the old habit – what is the internal process they do to perform the behavior? We can then design a plan to try to consistently interrupt the behavior and create a new one.
There are tools that can help interrupt that pattern of a bad habit. One such tool is a SWISH pattern. Another is a visual squash. Yet another tool is hypnosis. In really extreme cases, you may even need a partner who can help interrupt the behavior consistently and have you do a new one.
There are different types habits I have been referring to in this article. There are the daily habits or routines we have and then there are habits such as biting your finger nails, snacking on certain foods, playing games on your phone or many other behaviors that can occur multiple times in a day. The principles for creating better habits are the same. Interrupt old patterns of behavior and do new ones repeatedly over time. The more you repeat it the more the old gets canceled out by the new.
Having a coach sometimes is vital. There are many behaviors or habits that are so unconscious trying to deal with them on our own is nearly impossible in part because we cannot always remove ourselves from the problem.
For example, for years I have had a stress induced skin rash. It is called neurodermatitis. It has moved locations over the years and I have identified the different stressors in my life with the different locations it appears on my body. I have gained control over it for short periods of times in my life but have not been able to eliminate it. In part, the reason I have not eliminated it on my own is I am operating at the same level as the problem.
In short, there are times you may know what needs to be done, how to do it, and even have the will to do it and not get results because there are layers to the problem that you can’t get to without outside help. Thus, therapists and coaches get clients.
