What Makes Your Bad Habits Tick?

Sticking to the theme of goals and kicking bad habits this week, let us consider the mental processes behind bad habits and change. Stop and consider one bad habit that you currently have.

Chances are you are pretty anoyed about yourself and your inability to stop doing or start doing a particular thing. You probably feel like a sad failure and are likely to give yourself a hard time about it. But blaming yoruself or others is neither constructive nor will it get results. Quite the opposite, the more you put yourself under pressure, the less likely it is that you will gain control over your habit.

If you feel trapped by your habit, you need to take a good look at yourself to see what you are doing or not doing to contribute to it. Sometimes the simple fear of finding out something truly awful about ourselves stops us from looking closely at who we are. When we finally overcome our reluctance and examine our underlying motives for doing or not doing something, it can be surprising to discover the human and quite understandable reasons behind the issue.

The way people approach their problems can vary greatly from person to person. Whether you are successful in building up a good new habit or not will largely depend on your personal outlook. The right attitude can really move mountains! What you believe to be true will determine how you deal with life and how you deal with the challenges you face. However you also have to realise, that just because you believe something to be true, it does not mean thant it really is true.

Have a look at the following questions to find out what your attitude is. Give yourself one point for every time you agree with a statement.

QUESTIONNAIRE

• Life is hard.
• I need ot be hard on myself or I won't do anything right.
• I'm the way I am, and that's that.
• I'm probably too stupid to change my problem habit.
• It is self-indulgent to want to be happier.
• My self-criticisms are mostly justified.
• Nothing I do can ever be good enough.
• When others give me a hard time, it's because I deserve it.
• I am an unlucky person. Always have been. Always will be.
• Other people can change, but I can't.
• There's no point in trying to change anything. It won't make a difference.
• If I only change by getting someone to help me, it doesn't count.
• I'm too frightened to consider changing myself and my habits.
• I don't deserve to be happier.

How many points did you score? Anything between 1 and 14 points will hold you back from acheiving a successful change! Every one of the above statements is a block on the way towards a good result. If you have more than six blocks, they buld into a nice solid wall right in front of you, so it is worth a look at how you can change your attitude. Life can be a lot easier once you take a different view of things.

Now that we have a benchmark on any mental blocks you might have to changing habits, read through where these attitudes come from as I explore some of these mental blocks, and ways to change your thinking to start overcoming them!

Change A Habit, Change Your Life

Here I am are, a week after I decided to step up and take responsibility for all the aspects of my life. I had picked out all the things I wanted to change in my everyday life, and determined new time-saving habits to put in place. There were ten tasks I put in place to acheive each day. I am a self-professed statistics nerd, so I made a chart to tally up my level of success.

I'll be honest, week one wasn't great. I only achieved 55 points out of a possible 100 points. For a first attempt, that was not too bad. I did manage to go cold turkey of playing computer card games (my addiction to FreeCell and Vegas Solitaire was eating up a chunk of time every week) and get the ball rolling on some new habits.

A wise woman once told me that you will change when your desire to change is greater than your desire to remain the same. It comes down to despising the pain more than effort to make the change. If you are not already at that point, then take a little time to revel in the muck that is your current bad habit, so that you can truly appreciate the value of breaking out of it.

It is unrealistic to expect to be able to change a bunch of habits at once. Professional organiser Marcia Ramsland suggests that you cannot do it all at once. She recommends breaking one habit at a time.

Anything that is measurable is changeable. Studies show that realistically it takes twenty-one times to change a habit. Pick one daily habit you would like to change. Start by creating a chart with a spot for each one of the twenty-one days.

When looking at the anatomy of the rule of twenty-one, four levels start to appear during the process of creating a new habit:

1-4 times of doing a task

"I could do it if I just tried harder."

Then old habits kick in with time pressures and stress. The trick is to keep going anyway.

5-10 times of doing a task 

"I recognise the obstacles to doing it successfully."

Then the old habits kick in again and you start to feel like a failure. Just keep going.

11-15 times of doing a task

"I need to revisit my desired goal and focus on success."

Old habits will still try to thwart you, but now you are determined to persist. Keep going.

16-21 times of doing a task

"The goal is in sight. I know why I want it. It is worth pushing through to success."

You did it! Celebrate and enjoy your new habit.

By charting your progress, you can see the measured improvements you make which will help you move towards your goals. For example, you might set yourself the challenge of exercising for 10 hours a week. Every day, focus on doing something towards that goal. Anything will do. But you must doing something towards it.

If you look at the levels of habit changing above - the key along each step of the way is always keeping going. If you keep pushing through it, you should see improvements each week. If you take a backwards step, forgive yourself, remind yourself why you want the change, and then keep marching towards your goal.

If you get there in your 21 days - congratulations! If not, keep pushing! Once you've reached your target, do it another twenty-one times to ensure permanent success. The best way to maintain a new habit is to strive for a "no-exceptions policy." Keep at it every day!

Motivation is what gets you started.

Habit is what keeps you going.

~ Jim Rohn

The Truth Behind Smiles

Smiling.

We're born to do it.

A smile is one of the most basic, biologically uniform expressions of all humans.

One of the world’s leading expert on facial expressions Paul Ekman, discovered that smiles are cross-cultural and have the same meaning in different societies. In studies he conducted in Papua New Guinea, Ekman found that members of the Fore tribe (who were completely disconnected from Western culture and were also known for their unusual cannibalism rituals) attributed smiles to descriptions of situations in the same way you and I would.

3-D ultrasound technology shows that developing babies appear to smile even in the womb. After they’re born, babies continue to smile and even blind babies smile in response to the sound of the human voice.

The mood-boosting power of a smile is unfathomable. Studies show that one smile can can provide the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 chocolate bars. Yet, unlike lots of chocolate, lots of smiling can actually make you healthier. This is great new for me, partly because I am not a fan of chocolate at all, but mostly because I smile so much that it is nice to hear it makes me healthier! =)

So what are you waiting for? Get your smile on already!

Splash for Cash - Official Lap Sponsors - Pledge Here!

Pushed to the limits for my favourite charity event!

Anyone who knows me knows I live and breath Splash for Cash - a swimathon that raises money for the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children that is hosted by Rotaract. Every year I challenge myself both in the pool and in my fundraising!

It should be noted that when I started training for my first Splash, I could barely swim 150 metres...

KRISSIE'S SPLASH SWIMMING RECORD

2006... 154 laps (7.7km)
2007... 260 laps (13km)
2008... 277 laps (13.85 km)
2009... 310 laps(15.5km)
2010... 342 laps (17.1km)
2011... 100 laps BLINDFOLDED! (5km)
2012... 442 LAP GOAL! (22.1km)

I am already in heavy training. By Splash day, I will have swum over 200 kilometres in training!

To keep me motivated this year - pick a number between 1 & 442 for every $10 you donate,

and you will be an official sponsor of that lap. 

Just comment on this post with the lap numbers you would like to sponsor at $10 each.

To see the list of current pledges, click on the Charity Challenge tab at the top of my blog.

To fulfil your pledge, visit http://event.splashforcash.com.au/krissie2012 to pay up! Preferably pay now, but you can pay later (I swim in March, 2012).

Interested in swimming? Visit http://www.splashforcash.com.au/ for more information!

So get behind my 2012 Splash for Cash campaign for glory for my favourite charity the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children!

Thanks a million for your support!

Love y'all!

Krissie

Take Control Of Your Life

As I discussed on Monday, if we want to be truly successful, we have to take 100% responsibility for our lives. For the past three days, I have been trying to do just that and I would say I have only been moderately successful. I have acheived about 75% of the daily goals I had set out for myself. I honestly thought I would be able to do 90% - 100% of them though.

Upon reflection, the tasks I missed were ones where I let old habits get in the way, or I simply forgot to look at my list and make sure I did everything on there. The key word is 'I'.

I forgot. I let. I. I. I.

That in itself is a breakthrough. The things that did not happen the way I intended I immediately acknowledge as my fault. A week ago, I would have blamed my family for changing the schedule, the rain and who knows what else. But I automatically recognised that the things I missed were completely within my control.

We all have restrictions in our lives.

But, equally, we all have vast areas on untested capacity:

to make decisions, to plan our future,

to follow our paths.

It's easy to blame others for our inaction.

It's easy to blame our constraints.

Take the initiative.

Take control.

Decide your own journey.

So whilst I may not be running at 100% success rate yet, I am laying the responsibility in the right place... with myself! I consider this a major step in the right direction. Onwards and upwards!

Take 100% Responsibility For Your Life

Some time ago, my mother handed me a book that very well might be the key to personal success. In typical Krissie-fashion, life got in the way and leisure reading fell way off my radar. Today I finally decided to get stuck into it. The book is written by Jack Canfield, one of the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul. The book is aptly titled "The Success Priniciples"

According to Mr Canfield, the biggest myth in today's society is that we are not entitled to a great life and that somehow, somewhere, someone is responsible for filling our lives with continual happiness, nurturing family time, exciting career options, blissful personal relationships - all simply because we exist.

He argues that the real truth, is that there is only one person responsible for the quality of life you live, and that person is you.

This means that if you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the results you produce, the level of your acheivements, the state of your health and physical fitness, the quality of your relationships, your income, your debts, your feelings - absolutely everything!

This is not an easy idea to wrap one's head around, let alone to actually do. In our society, most of us have been conditioned to blame something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life we don't like. We blame our parents, our partners, our friends, our bosses, our colleagues, our clients, the media, the weather, the economy, our lack of money, our astrological chart - anyone or anything we can pin the blame on.

We never want to look at where the real problem is - ourselves.

In a year that has been primarily a journey of self-discovery as I pushed my boundaries, lived overseas, met new kinds of people from all walks of life, and spent some serious time reflecting on my life and who I truly am, I really wish I had read this book before I began. Just the opening chapter has me considering my situation in a totally different, brutally honest and open way.

As of this morning, I have written a list of the things about my life I don't like. I have selected five of them to start actively changing from RIGHT NOW and have developed a plan of attack to make it happen. Every week I am setting myself a set of goals and challenges to acheive in that seven day stretch to start proactively working towards the life I really want. At the end of each week, I will review and reset the goals for the following week.

I am excited. I am done making excuses and letting stuff slide. I don't like everything about the status quo that is my current life, so I am mixing it up and making things happen. External forces are no longer a factor.

 My success comes down to one thing... ME!

When You No Longer Need Your Organs, Who Gets Them?

At the Australian Rotaract Conference in Melbourne earlier this year, I was privileged to be in the room to hear Allan Turner, founder of Zaidee's Rainbow Foundation, share his heartfelt story.

His daughter Zaidee – aged 7 years died suddenly in 2004 from a burst blood vessel in her brain. At the time of Zaidee’s death the Turner family had been registered Organ and Tissue Donors for 5 years. As a result Zaidee donated her Organs and Tissues at the Royal Children’s Hospital, as were her wishes at the time. From this gift, the lives of up to seven other people were improved or saved. She was only 1 of 6 children nationally to donate their organs.

Listening to Allan talk about his journey since losing his daughter - a journey of hope as they run a foundation aimed at inspiring discussion about organ and tissue donation - it reminded me that it is not enough to just be a donor. Your family needs to know your wishes as well. Many donors' organs are not used, because their families did not know their choice, and when under the gun in a situation where they are about to lose a loved one, they chose not to give their organs.

Zaidee’s gift of her organs to others will allow them to have another birthday. 1 in 5 people on the transplant waiting list will never get the chance to have another birthday if people do not become registered donors.

In 2004, 130,000 Australians died. Only 218 were Organ Donors whose families also knew their wishes.

Now is the time to become an organ donor.

Some see it as giving part of themselves

so another can live.

Others see it as another allowing you to live on.

Whatever way you see it,

it's your chance to make a difference to another human.

There is no greater gift.

Make sure you tell your loved ones of your decision.

Ask them to honour it.

Think about giving this gift to others so they can live a better life and in some cases, have a second chance at life. Once you've made your choice, discuss it with your family. I am an organ and tissue donor, and my whole family knows about it. What about you?

'You give but little when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.'

Kahlil Gibran