If you could do anything with your life, what would you do? What changes would you make? Who would you become? Many of us have big aspirations and sadly many don’t achieve them.
Start Tiny
The challenge is that most people try to start too big. They follow the “Go Big or Go Home” mantra that is so popular in today’s culture. In his New York Times Best Selling Book, Tiny Habits®, Stanford researcher and professor, BJ Fogg explains why Tiny steps lead to big behavior change.
Have you ever made and failed to keep a New Year’s resolution or any other desired change? Whether you are trying to lose 20 pounds, build a successful business, or improve your overall well-being, starting small gives you the best chance of success. Small changes in your habits and environment lead to larger changes that move you along the path to reaching your goals.
Three Tips to Get Started Making Lasting Change
- Clarity is key. Be clear and specific about what you want to achieve. If you want to lose weight, list how many pounds you want to lose. Want to build a successful business? Define how much monthly profit you need.
- Once you are clear about your goal, describe what you will need to do to achieve that goal.
- Find the smallest habit or change you can do to move you toward this goal. Implement it immediately and feel good about the change you’ve started.
A Quick Overview of Tiny Habits
The quick concept behind Tiny Habits is to create a very small habit that moves you toward a larger habit that you want to bring into your life. One of the book’s examples is flossing your teeth. The author was always in trouble with his dental hygenist for not flossing daily. He created a tiny habit recipe to floss a single tooth and built upon it from there.
Introducing Tiny Habits Recipes
To create a Tiny Habit, you create a recipe that you follow to get started and then you grow the habit further in the future.
Tiny Habits Basic Recipe Layout
After I – action you do before you do the habit action
I will – action you want to take – remember to make this really small.
Tiny Habits Tooth Flossing Habit
The flossing recipe looks like this:
After I brush my teeth
I will floss one tooth
Of course, once you’ve flossed one tooth you’re likely to keep flossing more but you don’t have to. If you just floss one tooth, it’s a win for the day.
Tiny Habits Basic Recipe Layout Part 2 – Adding the Celebration
Celebrating your success is key to making the habit stick. Sometimes people feel awkward celebrating a tiny step like flossing one tooth, but it truly is important if you want this habit to stick. The good news is that the celebration can be as simple as a smile or just thinking, “Yes, I’m doing something GOOD for me.” Associating good feelings with actions helps cement those actions into your mind and body until they become second nature – habits.
Tiny Habits Basic Recipe Layout with Celebration
After I – action you do before you do the habit action
I will – action you want to take – remember to make this really small.
Then I Celebrate – what celebration do you want to do for the habit?
Popular celebration examples include smiling, fist pumps, exclamations like “Yes” and “I’ve Got This” and even Happy Dances are popular among some Tiny Habiteers. People who follow the Tiny Habits methodology to create habits and behavior change refer to themselves as Tiny Habiteers.
Get Started with a Tiny Habits Free 5 Day Email Class
Would you like to take a free 5 Day email class to get started with your own Tiny Habits practice? If so, please complete the following form and I’ll let you know when the next class begins. Classes always start Monday and go through Friday with a wrap-up and evaluation on Saturday.
Tiny Habits 5 Day Class
This article expands on a short article I wrote for Golfer’s Digest Melbourne, a local lifestyle magazine.