Change your habits, change your life.
All too often, we’re taught how to be more mindful, how to change our mindset, and how to improve our lives with our minds. What we’re not told is that just changing your mindset isn’t enough. As your personal mentor, Meru Mentor can help you understand this.
You see, if we’re able to successfully shift our mindset, it will not automatically result in a change in our habits as well.
Our habits shape everything in our lives. The way we get ready for bed, prepare a meal, manage our employees, and care for our families are all a result of our habits.
The Four Stages of Habit Formation
Whether we realize it or not, there is a process to our habit formation over the years. James Clear discusses the four main stages we all go through when a new habit is being formed:
- Cue – What is causing us to desire to perform a certain behavior? A sound, environment, smell, etc.
- Crave – As a result of the cue, we crave something — a feeling or the result of our actions.
- Respond – How we respond to our craving is the actual habit that we act out.
- Reward – Once we have acted out our habit, we are rewarded with the thing we craved.
How to Successfully Stop Bad Habits
Creating good habits and stopping bad ones will require us to be very intentional with our actions. If we have a positive mindset, but our habits have not been corrected, that mindset will do nothing to correct our sleeping, eating, and thinking habits.
Here are steps to help as you work through changing a habit:
- Identify – What is the bad habit that you are trying to change?
- Understand – What is causing you to fall into this habit? Remove this obstacle or remove yourself from the environment that is causing you to fall into your bad habit.
- Challenge – How can you challenge these bad habits? Is there something healthier, more beneficial, or more productive that you could replace this habit with? What is the root cause of your habit? For example, if you struggle with an addiction to smoking, you may chew gum, or if you’re spending too much time on your phone, maybe you pick up another hobby to keep your mind and hands busy such as decluttering your home.
At the beginning of your journey, you may not get it right 100% of the time — and that’s okay! We all get a few redos or retries before successfully changing our habits. When you do fall back into a bad habit, remind yourself that small changes over time will result in significant changes long term.
Note: Not all habits are “bad,” but they may keep you from being your most productive and content self.
Creating Good Habits with Meru
If you find yourself needing a little guidance and support as you work towards breaking bad (or unproductive) habits and creating good habits, Meru Mentor is here to help. As a holistic life mentor, we specialize in helping you create processes and put strategies in place to create a life of balance (and good habits)! If you’re interested in transforming your life, contact us to learn about our mentorship programs today!