New Year, New Triggers
As we ring in the roaring twenties, there’s that collective sigh of relief in the air once again.
People are getting ready to change their lives. A new year, let alone a new decade, often brings lists of resolutions and goals with it, all neatly inscribed in our brand, spankin’ new agenda book. Statuses and captions everywhere announcing ‘new year, new me’ have begun flooding the social media networks. Gyms are overflowing with ambitious newcomers and WeightWatchers sees a spike in sales. We’re all eager to start 2020 off on the right foot.
But do we succeed?
Unfortunately, most people have a hard time sticking to their New Year’s resolutions. A whopping 80% of resolutions fail by mid-February, to be exact. In any case, the odds are very well against you.
Disrupting a routine is no small feat—we know this. There’s a reason why old habits die hard. We become accustomed to the life we built and the nuances that surround it. This can be difficult to transform, especially when things are so…sedentary.
Please don’t be disheartened by the statistics though. It’s not impossible by any means, you can be a part of the few and far between. If you’re serious about your new years resolutions, start with the small stuff first.
Create a couple of activation triggers to help you implement your goals. If you look closely, you’ll find that each and every die-hard habit is accompanied by a trigger of some sort. 99.9% of the time, we are oblivious to what that even is. More often than not, we continue acting on our bad habits because of these unconscious triggers.
For example, coming home from work can trigger turning on the television. Or feeling bored may trigger you to eat even if you’re not hungry, and eating can trigger smoking a cigarette, and receiving an Instagram notification may trigger hours of aimless scrolling on your phone. Do you see where I’m going with this?
If you count the seconds, these seemingly tiny fragments of time start to make up the bigger picture that is life. It only takes a millisecond to receive a notification or turn on the television. Yet, those moments accumulate quickly and grow to dictate much of our time.
The million-dollar question we face when trying to achieve our goals: how do we replace the wrong habits with the right ones?
It’s as simple as creating new triggers.
When I started going to the gym instead of turning on Netflix, the first thing I’d do after coming home from work was put on the workout clothes I had laid out the night before. Once I had my leggings and running shoes on, I found it easier to get my butt to the gym. There was no turning back after the leggings came on. I know it sounds too easy. Is it a mindset thing? Absolutely. But it works. The trick is figuring out what triggers you to instill the habits you want to form. If you can start with one small change, you can work your way up to something truly meaningful.
An activation trigger is, “a simple statement or action that streamlines the process of reaching our goals.” I picked it up from this goal-setting guru. Basically, when I set a goal, I also set a contingency plan for any obstacles that’s going to stand in my way. Using the simple formula of “if X, then Y”, you have the power to make your goals actionable. These little cues help get me moving, even when my willpower is at a low point.
Here’s what the research says:
By using what motivational scientists call if-then planning to express and implement your group’s intentions, you can significantly improve execution. If-then plans work because contingencies are built into our neurological wiring. Humans are very good at encoding information in “If x, then y” terms and using those connections (often unconsciously) to guide their behavior. When people decide exactly when, where, and how they will fulfill their goals, they create a link in their brains between a certain situation or cue (“If or when x happens”) and the behavior that should follow (“then I will do y”).
We’ve learned from more than 200 studies that if-then planners are about 300% more likely than others to reach their goals.
Now there’s a statistic we can all get behind!
Change may be uncomfortable. Change can be stressful and inconvenient. Change resides in the unknown and that scares the crap out of most people.
Trust me, I get it. But your life will never get any better if you don’t accept the fact that change will happen with or without your permission. It’s up to you to decide if that’s going to be for better or for worse.
I know many who refuse to accept change into their lives. It may be natural to most, to live in the past, and avoid anything that resembles the new and unfamiliar. But what I wish they’d understand is that something new doesn’t always equate to something bad.
New can mean something great, maybe even something so much more than anything we’ve ever imagined.
All we have to do is begin and don’t stop until we’re proud.