Are you sick of making and breaking promises to yourself?
Do you want to change direction, but you don’t know how?
Are you harshly blaming yourself for all of the above?
What’s more …. are you sick of being told to ‘simply manifest’ your dreams?
Urgh right? The only thing worse might be one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Vagina Scented Candles?
You are not alone. We have all tried to create changes in our life by using willpower or wishing. We all know (despite what we are being told and sold) it doesn’t work, it just makes things worse.
Willpower and wishing don’t work on habits like exercise and diet, and they certainly don’t work for attracting wealth or love into your life.
There are decades of good science that can help. For some reason the basic facts feel almost like secrets as they are not commonly understood or shared. In this world of social media it can be difficult to tell fact from fake news. Let me help you today.
The Secret Formula to Change your Habits
Below is the secret formula to creating sustainable change in your life. It’ that simple. I’ll tell you a secret – it isn’t actually a secret. It’s just no-one is shouting about it and sharing it enough, bar the odd awesome scientist like Wendy Wood.
Here is how it works – to create a new habit you actually need to take time to sit down and proactively design it. Seems weird but this works where willpower doesn’t. I’ve seen it time and time again with coaching clients and in my life.
- First you plan the context (or trigger) – when and where or with what or whom will you do this thing? e.g., floss your teeth after you clean them in the evening.
- What will you do to make it easy (reduce friction)? e.g., leave your gym clothes in your work bag.
- How will you reward yourself (bonus secret tip, rewards only work if they are immediately after the habit not off in the future)?
- And finally you repeat it until it sticks. For 21 days eh? Actually that’s a myth, its more like 66, soz.
The fact is you are not failing at stopping bad or creating good habits because you are weak, or lazy or somehow less. You are absolutely fine. You fail at them because no-one showed you how to hack them with the latest science.
You can find out much more about the gentle (and kind to yourself) approach to changing habits, making major decisions and getting really clear on your meaning and purpose in the KAN PLAN with me, Dr Rachel. It’s all based on good science and free from woo-woo and hoo-haa steaming.
Secret tip to remember the secret.
For now here is a bit of a tip for remembering the secret as it surprisingly hard to keep in your head.
Here it is FIRT. A bit like fart but with an ‘i’. First stands for Friction, Immediate Reward and Trigger (aka Context). It took me ages to get this one, however I am very keen for a real word to replace it, wordle gurus please send ideas. The winner will get a free ticket to the KAN PLAN 😉
For now, go well in the direction of your desired habits,
Dr Rachel xxx
