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Change your habits

Change is hard work!! It’s often much easier to maintain the status quo than to challenge ourselves to change habits.

Here are a few of my favourite posts on goal setting to help you get started on the path to achieving your goals!!

How to set (really good) goals!
Self monitor and reflect on your current behaviour before you start your changes
Consider the different pathways to help you to achieve your goals and increase your hope!!

What do you want to achieve? Why does it matter to you? Would you try some of these tips?

A simple strategy to improve your self regulation

I for one, know what it’s like to set goals just to realise I haven’t come close to achieving them!! I’ve set about many resolutions to increase my exercise, save money, improve my diet etc, but haven’t got there…why is this? Did I not clearly define what I wanted to achieve? Was I not motivated to actually achieve the goal? Or could it have been that I hadn’t taken the time to look at what I was currently doing, and reflect on this is relation to what I wanted to achieve.

Self regulation lies at the heart of goal setting. Self regulation is about firstly setting a standard for our desired behaviour, then monitoring our current behaviour….if the fit between our desired goal and our current behaviour is right, then we don’t need to act to change what we’re doing….. but if what we want to achieve does not match up with what were currently doing, this discrepancy (also known as Cognitive Dissonance) then motivates us to act!!

So….when preparing to make a change, firstly, set a clear goal for what you want to achieve (for example, I want to reduce my coffee consumption to one cup per day)…and then spend some time collecting some observations about what you are currently doing (currently drinking four cups!). It’s likely that simply comparing what you’re currently doing, to the goal or standard you wish to achieve, will increase your motivation to act towards change, as you have a clear baseline for what you want to address. Taking the time to really notice what we’re doing, also helps us to notice when we’re doing things on “auto-pilot” and to reflect on possible triggers for our behaviours. Is it that in fact I go for another coffee when I’m in need of a break, or is it to relieve boredom?

Watch - by The Fifth - Similar Here

Wanting to change your diet? Start with a 1 week food diary where you write down everything you eat each day. Wanting to save money? Keep a log of every purchase you make (no matter how small) for seven days. At the end of your week reflect on your log/diary in relation to where you want to be. Then have a think about the triggers or antecedents that might have led to the behaviour you’ve logged. This simple self monitoring task is very likely to increase your motivation and help you achieve your goals. Continue your log as you set about achieving your goal, and this will give you objective feedback of your progress!!

It may sound basic, but it works!! Have you tried this strategy when making a change?

References:

Watson, D. (1997). The principles of self-regulation. Self directed behaviour: self modification for personal adjustment. Pacific Grove: California, pp 111 – 136.

A few small things i’ve learned in 2015

Did you spend time making new years resolutions? This year I decided that before setting more goals that I’d take some time to reflect on 2015. It’s been a massive year…Dash is now 15 months old, I’ve taken on a new job, got through more of my Masters degree, done some more travel and spent time expanding Pop Therapy…but what is it that I’ve learned from these things? Here are a few of my rants below!!

1) I can never be in control of everything….but that’s ok. The house will never stay perfectly clean, I will never have everything on my “to do” list done, no matter how many times I go to Coles, I’m probably still out of milk, and/or paper towels, I wanted to go to the gym but I caught a cold, then Dash caught a cold, then Dash cried, then I cried, and the list goes on…but that’s ok. I spend a good deal of my life agonising over the small things, when really, life is pretty good.

2) Mindfulness is a powerful tool to unhook from worries and anxiety provoking thoughts…it’s easy to learn, practice and integrate into your daily life….finding an activity that helps you to experience flow is a great way to become more connected with the present and engage in mindful awareness.

3) Being a parent is !@#$ing hard, but seeing Dash’s happy little face and hearing his sweet little voice is enough to melt my heart (even if he did just mash bolognese sauce into my hair and whizz all over the floor!!). Nonetheless, it takes time to adjust to motherhood, and anyone who tells you it’s a breeze, would be lying!!

4) Connections with others matter more than everything else. I’m lucky to have some amazing friends and a truly wonderful husband in my life….without people we care about to share our experiences with, nothing is as special.

5) If you’re attempting DIY fake tan application (in my case, if you’re looking to go from “translucent”, to “fair”)…use a tanning glove!! Who knew these things even existed!? They’re about $5, and would have saved me many a streak and uneven application….a tan glove!!? who knew!?

6) Having turned 30 this year, there’s no point in trying to be someone I’m not….be true to yourself, and life is a hell of a lot easier.

7) I bought this sparkling water machine for my husband Lachy, and who knew how wonderful sparkling water on tap could be!?

8) Upon becoming a parent, my hobbies and interests went from: guitar, yoga, travel…to: sleep, being able to eat an entire meal without interruption, grocery shopping without a baby etc. The point of this is that I’m realising how important it is to do the things you care about, even though life is busy. Doing things you’re passionate about is important for wellbeing, and for our sense of self.

9) I’m all for healthy eating, but these cookies are the bomb

What did you learn in 2015? Do any of these resonate with you? The cookies!?

Are you a High Hoper?

Hope is a psychological construct which is receiving more and more attention in the field of positive psychology. Hope helps us to achieve our goals in the face of adversity and gives us the willpower to keep going. High hopers have higher levels of well-being including improved relationships and performance and decreased negative emotions (Worgan, 2013).

Hope is different from optimism. Optimism can be defined as the extent to which people hold generable favourable expectancies for their future (Carver, Scheier & Segerstorm, 2010). Hope can be defined as the extent to which individuals can find pathways to reach their goals, and become motivated to reach those pathways (Synder, Rand & Sigmon) and is more goal specific than optimism.

There are three key elements to hope:

1) Goal directed thinking – our perception of our short and long term goals

2) Pathways thinking – or the ability to find different paths to reach our goals

3) Agency thinking – the motivation and will power to work towards our goals. We can call this our determination to achieve our goals!!

So how can we increase our levels of hope? Here are a few ideas!!

Do a brainstorming session, writing down as many possible paths to achieving your goal as possible.
Have a discussion with a friend or colleague – share your goal and ask how they would achieve the goal if it were their own!!
Write a list of five reasons why achieving your goal is important.
Reflect on your values. What are your top three values? Go back to your goal and relate it to your top three values.
Imagine you have achieved your goal. How would this feel? What would be different in your life? Make a list of the positive changes that achieving your goal would bring!!

Are you working on achieving an important goal? Would you try these ideas? I’d love to hear about your experiences!!

Change your health behaviour by reflecting on your values

Changing behaviour is not easy. Often we fall into bad habits such as skipping exercise and eating unhealthy food.
For people at high risk of neglecting their health, often hearing messages about healthy eating and exercise falls on deaf ears, and instead can lead to a fear or avoidance response. It’s all too easy to think “I’ll start tomorrow,” no matter how often we hear about the benefits of healthy behaviours.

A new study by Falk et al. (2015) showed that focusing on values that are personally important to an individual can help people to then act on health advice which they previously perceived as threatening.

Participants were given typical advice about health behaviour like they would receive from a doctor, and underwent neurological scans. Prior to receiving advice, half of the participants were lead through a self affirmation exercise where they reflected on what’s important to them, such as work or family. Those who did the self affirmations showed more behaviour change, in a follow up one month after the initial study.

The authors of the study state:

“Neural responses associated with self-related processing and value in response to an otherwise threatening health communication intervention can be changed using self affiramaton….

These findings suggest that affirmation of core values may exert its effects by allowing at-risk individuals to see the self-reference and value in otherwise-threatening messages.”

So what does this mean for you? Are you sitting on the fence of change? Before you seek out information, why don’t you think about your values around the change. For example – you know exercise is a good thing, but just can’t be bothered….why not think about what matters to you first. Do you value looking after your family? Think about how change may make you a better parent/sister/etc. Would better health impact your value of looking after your family?

Think about your values – they might just help you to achieve some serious goals!!

Set Goals, not Resolutions

It’s the new year which means new year’s resolutions. How many years have you found yourself setting resolution after resolution to lose weight, make more money, give up junk food etc, only to find that it’s February and you haven’t been to the gym in weeks, and have just eaten a chocolate brownie!!

Why is it that new year’s resolutions don’t work? Simply put, they are often overly generalised or vague, and don’t have the specificity and planning which is needed to help us succeed.

My advice – set goals (and make them good ones!!).

Here are some simple principles to put in to play which have been demonstrated to help people achieve their goals.

1) Goals must be specific!! Want to lose weight? How much do you want to lose? In what time frame do you want to achieve it? How will you measure it?
Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance (Locke, 1996). Making a goal specific helps us direct our action clearly and makes us more likely to achieve a difficult goal.

2) We need to be committed to our goals, particularly when they are difficult. Our commitment to goals comes through our belief that the goal is important (Locke, 1996). When setting your goals, reflect on how important you feel it is that you achieve it. Did you set the goal yourself, or are you trying to please someone else?

3) Self efficacy and our feeling of competence to achieve a goal fosters goal achievement. Do you feel that you have the skills or abilities to achieve your goal? If not, what will help you to feel more confident? Do you need a mentor, or perhaps additional resources like materials or information. The more empowered you feel, the more likely you are to achieve your goal!

4) Set implementation intentions. Implementation intentions are the small situational cues we set in line with our goals, which prompt us to take action. For example, your goal is to spend one hour each day studying. Your implementation intentions may include the exact time you plan on studying (6pm each night), where you will do it (the desk in your room, with the TV off), the materials you need to do it (notepad, textbook, highlighters). Setting implementation intentions has been shown to increase goal attainment on difficult tasks (Gollwitzer, 1999).

5) Write it down and share it with others!! You’re much more likely to succeed if you put your goal in writing, and enlist the support of others by sharing it with them!!

I hope this has helped with a touch of motivation to start 2015!! What are you goals for the new year?

References

Gollwitzer, P.M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Simple effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503

Locke, E. (1996). Motivation through conscious goal setting. Applied and Preventative Psychology, 5(2), 117-124