So, last week in addition to drinking more water and eating something healthy whenever I got a craving for something that was less healthy, I said that I would move around more so that's exactly what I did. Two walks in a country park with the kids, a session at the gym and a tap dancing class were the sum total of my exercise and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. As I mentioned previously it's difficult for me to slot exercise into my day to day routine so walking with the kids worked well because it gave me the opportunity to spend some lovely quality time with them doing something we don't do nearly often enough. The bikes that I mentioned in last weeks blog have arrived at work now so as well as keeping up the walking I'm going to make sure that I add a couple of lunchtime bike rides in there too. For a lazy person like me cycling is the ultimate exercise because you still get to sit down :)
So, lets get back to the subject of those pesky habits, the ones which make us do things which we really would rather we didn't do. I've buried my head in behavioural science this last week and have been doing lots of swotting up on what habits are and why we have them. Here's another sciencey bit :
Habits are strong connections in the brain that are formed by repetitive behaviours and they are incredibly difficult to change once they become established. To demonstrate this point I would like you to do the following test:
- Fold your arms and note the position of your hands and which arm is on the outside.
- Now unfold them and fold them again but this time the opposite way. Note your reaction to how this feels.
How did it feel when you folded your arms the opposite way? Did it feel uncomfortable? The way you first folded your arms is your habitual way of doing it and I bet you didn’t have to think about it before you did it. The second way is more difficult and would have required a degree of thought before you could do it properly because you don’t have a habit pattern or the connections in your brain which would make it a subconscious action in the way that the first way was. I love this exercise as it demonstrates perfectly what a habit it and why it is so difficult to change one. Since I first tried this I have to admit that I've probably tried to fold and unfold my arms about fifty times. Surprisingly, as the week has gone on its started to get an awful lot easier (I've had some really strange looks though and it's not anything which is likely to help me get on in life lol). Understanding this has really helped me, especially with using the water thing to help stop snacking. It's something which is now a lot easier than it was initially and it's something which is getting easier the longer I do it. If you understand why you are doing what you are doing you stand a far greater chance of changing it in the long term.
Did you know that it takes around 30 days of repeated self aware behaviour to successfully establish a new habit? That's quite a long time. If you were one of the people that changed something when you first started reading this blog and you've stuck to it then you're well on the way to making it a long term change. Well done! I'm not going to introduce another change this week because I want to make sure that the changes I've already made "stick" so I'm concentrating on getting to the point where my changes require less thought. Please don't forget to leave a comment at the bottom of the page if you have decided to make a change, or if you have any general feedback for me. Have a great week and thanks for reading.
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