Building a New Habit

I am so excited that I am successfully incorporating a new habit - regular exercise - in to my routines. A measurable, positive effect of this change is that I have managed to reduce my A1C from 7.0 to 6.6! My doctor says that most often patients are unsuccessful at incorporating lifestyle change, and that the family doctor usually adjusts by modifying medication. I credit the group instructors of Force and Zumba at World Health, Darcy at the Primary Care Network, and the lay instructors for "Live Better Every Day", Bill and Lorraine, for enthusiastically supporting me towards my goal.

I've targeted regular exercise as my chief bugbear since hitting the third habit in Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ”. This third habit is “Put First Things First”, managing yourself. The idea is that before you can be effective and influential in your job - out there - in the world - you need to conquer your internal, personal world. Covey asks the reader,

What one thing could you do (you aren’t doing now) that if you did on a regular
basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your personal life?

Covey’s book, originally launched in 1989, was hugely influential and often quoted. I’ve heard anecdotally that fewer people have actually read it from cover to cover. When I read the book in 2008 I found it to be hugely helpful, but I put the book down for a few months when I hit the third habit, putting first things first. The book demands action, and I wasn’t ready to make the change.

That question for habit three put me on hold. I believe it is Covey's call to change personal habits that makes the book difficult; not that the principles themselves are hard to understand.

Once I began the journey to conquer my personal new habit of fitness and exercise, I was able to finish the rest of the book in a few weeks.

Starting new habits and breaking old bad ones is tough. Our bodies quickly get comfortable with routines, and resist change. But regularly raising the bar and incorporating new habits builds strength and invigorates the mind. Have you seen those spry eighty-seven year olds? Wonder how they do it? They’ve incorporated this important lesson of continuous self-improvement.

These days, when the "powers that be" recognize a social problem, their first plan of attack is to educate the public. But personally, I don’t need more education. I know what is good for me. The problem has always been a matter of application, the incorporation of new habits.

My recent discovery is in the application of some tried and true practices to help me build new habits. I attended a once-a-week, six weeks course called “Living Better Every Day ” sponsored by Alberta Health Services, and developed by Stanford’s Chronic Disease Self-Management Program . The tools I practiced in the past six weeks have effectively helped me build new habits in to my daily routine. Here are ten steps gleaned from my learning and living in the past few years and months:

1. Are you ready to change?
2. Develop a SMART action plan for the next week.
3. Write your action plan down.
4. Keep a log or diary of your progress. I use the carrot.
5. Recruit accountability partners (family or friends).
6. Review and reflect on your progress weekly, and make adjustments as needed.
7. It takes about twenty-one days to turn your new activity in to a new habit.
8. Continually review your action plan and targets to keep away boredom, and within a few months you have established a new routine.
9. Remember that relapses happen to nearly everyone. Anticipate possible causes for a relapse (i.e. interruptions to routine like holidays) and adjust your plan. After a relapse, create a new action plan without guilt.
10. Trust the process. To keep from being overwhelmed, focus on the next action rather than the ultimate goal.

That's it. The work is in the doing, not in the reading. Steps one and two, I would say, are the most critical to success. Be ready and set small, achievable goals and you are well on your way. Occassional intensive diarizing has helped me connect behavior with consequences; first with food, and now with activity. I can no longer brush off that achey, lazy feeling as being "tired". My body, rather, is begging for movement.

Whatever stage you are at in your change journey, I wish you all success and great supporters along the way.

Janet's Proverbs

I'm having one of my morning brainwaves, and I'm catching here some of my home-made proverbs. I'll explain in a later post.

In doing, don't delay.

Taking longer than I expect is not failure. Sometimes the journey is just as important.

Habits are easier to make than to break. Build great new habits.

My 100'th post, on habits

Do you think I've successfully made blogging a habit? I do believe so. There's a part of my nature that just quits..when something gets too boring, or the appreciation is just not there any more. I can tell myself to go on, but something inside my soul just digs in and refuses to budge. Perhaps it is my subconscious telling me to move on. On top of that I then get a little voice inside my head whispering, "quitter". The drive to avoid failure is so much less motivating than the drive to excellence. Think of the difference between a mule being driven by a stick and the same mule being tempted by a carrot.


I do hope I won't quit blogging. Writing is a drive deep in my soul. My instincts tell me to keep doing it, audience or not, as joyful work always pays off.

Anyways, my intent was to talk about habits today. I've thought long and hard about this; both good and bad habits. There's eating habits for instance; those that will help me be fitter and lose weight, and habits that will slowly kill. (I am diabetic). Why is it so hard to turn around old habits around food, and why do we turn it in to such a drama of abstension and a symbol of discipline (or lack thereof)?

I am reminded of a story dad told me of a surveyor was asking questions about nutrition and food habits. It became obvious that the author of the survey was seeking confirmation that improved education would improve society's food choices. Dad got mad, and asked to speak to the author. As he ranted to me afterwards, there is no lack of information in our society regarding nutrition. Food choices has to do with self-discipline.

Which led me to thinking (for years afterward), if self-discipline and choices is the problem, how do we teach self-discipline? Or, as I am pondering lately, maybe it is not a problem of self-discipine at all. Maybe we fight our basic nature when we turn around an old habit or start a new one.

What got me thinking along these lines is a proposed list of instincts in Stephen Pinker's book, "The Language Instinct", that may be hard wired in to every human being. The instincts of:

2. intuitive biology (understanding how plants and animals work)
4. Mental maps of large territories
7. Food: what is good to eat

These combined instincts gave me an image of prehistoric woman grazing along her habitual route, taking note of where food sources are, and checking them on a routine basis. As I've mentioned in the past few weeks, I've learned a bit about efficient grazing by watching the bee.

I note that if my body has become used to two pieces of toast for my breakfast, if I suddenly change that habit there is mild distress. Something is missing, and I become fiercly protective of my earned toast. Yet, if I am successful in transitioning to one piece of toast as the norm, I will feel overfull if I indulge in more.

The trick, it seems to me, is to avoid the whole abstention/indulgence cycle, which is too much like the ancient grazer's feast-and-famine, acknowledge our desire for routine, and slowly adjust our mind and body to new norms.

I am testing out another recommendation from a course instructor. He suggested a routine where days each week are dedicated to customer relationships, research, and so on. I was skeptical, as my week is a chaotic blend of meetings, working with employees, and pockets of sit-down time. Yet the new routine is working very well. My mind and body like routine. It is as if my body remembers that Thursday is sit-down day.

I discovered the same issues when I started working from home. My mind and body are geared to relax (thank God) the moment my toe hits the thresshold. How do I gear myself back in to work when I am sitting in my home office? I tricked myself back in to work by only taking materials home that I love to work on.

Now, of course, the problem is to switch myself "off" when I am at home.

I am using this same theory of routine to finish undone projects around home. I want to take up painting again. I want to blog. I want to remember my friends. Yet day after day goes by and these stated priorities remain undone. Blogging has been taken up again because I have successfully added "writing" to my lonely morning routine. Now I've designated days of the week to call friends and to paint. I've successfully called up two friends in the past month and reconnected, and it feels great.

As I've learned from Covey's book on the seven habits, how effective are we as human beings if we put off those activities that really matter? Adding these new routines is helping. Now, to add exercise to my daily routine.