Life Contained's Personal Productivity Blog

3 Methods to Help You Achieve Your New Year's Resolutions

  

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I've written before about resolving to get organized. Today I'm going to reveal three of the tricks I use to change the contents of your brain to help manifest the change you want. Whether helping my work/life balance-seeking clients achieve new habits, or reaching toward my own declarations, I find these methods powerful.

Movie Making

Playing out the change we want to see like a movie is a simple tool for creating new habits. A few reasons why this works because making the movie:

• Allows our vision to take full shape

• I envision myself looking & feeling healthier because I'm eating healthier

• I see convenient healthy choices in the fridge every time I open it
  

• Puts a spotlight on unrealistic expectations

• I want to change the way I eat for every meal, but that's not realistic; I'm going to start with eating healthier snacks
  

• Calls for specificity

• I see my husband buying more vegetables at the grocery store

• I see me cutting up bell peppers and carrots on Sunday mornings before church

If-Then Planning

This Heidi Grant Halvorson article in Psychology Today outlines If-Then Planning, a technique first articulated by NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer.

"If X happens, then I will do Y.

"X can be a time and place, like Monday at 9 a.m., or it can be an event, like the arrival of the dessert menu at a restaurant. Y is the specific action you will take whenever X occurs. ...'Eat less,' becomes something like 'When the dessert menu comes, I will ignore it and order coffee.'

"Amazingly, you are two to three times more likely to succeed if you use an if-then plan than if you don't.

"These plans work...because they speak the language of...contingencies. ... Deciding exactly when and where you will act on your goal creates a link in your brain between the situation...and the behavior. ... Below your awareness, your brain starts scanning the environment, searching for...the "if". Once the "if" happens,...the "then" part...follows [almost] automatically."

Drawback Dwelling

Though it might seem pessimistic to dwell on the drawbacks of a new habit, I think it's an important part of change. (I first say this concept articulated in Julie Morgenstern's Shred book. Thanks, Julie!)

Let's say, for instance, you want to exercise more. Follow a sequence similar to the following to allow for a little dwelling time on the drawbacks of such a change:

1. Describe the specific change you want make: exercise for :30 three times weekly

2. List the reasons you want to make the change: betting-looking body in a bathing suit; improved health; sharper reputation; enhanced self image

3. List the drawbacks of making the change/the things you'll lose to this new habit: couch time watching your favorite television show; sleeping in time with your spouse

4. Rationally reconcile the pluses and minuses: I can record my favorite show and watch it at another time; I could even watch my show while walking on the treadmill if I set it up properly; I don't really sleep in after 6:30...I just stall getting out of bed
   

5. Draw a conclusion on whether or not you can rationally support the behavioral change: I will have to give up the luxury of laying in the bed doing nothing some mornings to exercise more, but having better health and a good-looking bikini body is totally worth it
   

What techniques do you find useful in following through on new habits?