Implementing our intentions for the year ahead is most likely going to involve changing some habits.
So let’s take a look at the research on transforming our habits:
Create Action Triggers
Once you know what you need to do to accomplish your goal, determine what things might “trigger” you to take those steps. We all know that brushing our teeth at night becomes a trigger for going to bed. You can go all Pavlov on yourself and find a way to create a trigger for your new habits – perhaps placing a small stone or a little Buddha on your coffee maker can help make your morning coffee a trigger for meditation.
You can read more about this in my article about Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit on my blog.
Post Your Goal in Front of You
All those funsheets from last week – post them where you can see them! Keeping goals front and center is a proven way to help you stick to them.
Practice Deliberately
Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool, in their book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, remind us that “continued doing is not practice.” Instead, if we want to see change or improvement, we must engage in what they call “deliberate practice.”
Ericsson and Pool primarily focused on musicians and artists in their research, but their findings are helpful for anyone hoping to develop a new skill or craft. They identify the following elements of deliberate practice:
- supported by a teacher: for most of our goals, it’s helpful to seek the advice of an instructor or someone who can support us in our work
- outside one’s comfort zone: we don’t grow unless we’re challenged. See if you can take some small steps out of your comfort zone.
- specific goals that target performance: “practice 30 minutes a day” won’t necessarily lead to growth; “play the concerto with less than 5 errors 5 times a day” is much more likely to help you improve (and it’s this type of feedback that often requires the assistance of a teacher)
- full attention and concentration: this is another place where our mindfulness practice will come in handy – the more we develop the ability to focus on our breath, the more we will build our capacity for paying attention and concentrating on the task at hand.
- feedback and modification: this is often done by working with a teacher, though certainly there are many places online (Facebook groups, online forums and discussion groups) where you can submit your work and get feedback
- self-monitoring: we must be able to assess 1) where we are, and 2) where we are in relation to where we want to be. This requires lots of mindfulness and huge does doses of self-compassion!
Focus on One Goal at a Time
This can be entirely up to you — if you think you can tackle more than one of your intentions, then go for it! But we’re often most successful if we channel our efforts. We can work on one intention, with about 3 sub-goals, per week.
Get Organized!
I love David Allen’s system — you can read about it here. This is the best system I have found for keeping all my information organized, and making sure that the forms and paperwork I need are easily available when I need them.
Make a Pre-Commitment
Studies show we are more likely to attain our goals if we publicly proclaim them. You could do this here, or you could share your goals with your partner or friends. You could also establish an accountability partner to keep you on track. (This is one reason why researchers believe Alcoholics Anonymous is effective — having a sponsor, and group that you can regularly meet with to track your progress, is very powerful!)
You don’t have to do ALL of these things, but take some time to consider what strategies would work best in your life!