Julie Long Writes

Here are three habits I’m attempting to add to my daily routine: 

1. Rising at 5 am 
2. Writing morning pages 
3. Meditating

And three habits I’m trying to lose:

1. Coffee 
2. Dairy
3. Wheat

Some of these I’m succeeding at better than others. I’ve only seen 5 a.m. thrice in the last 7 days but haven’t missed a morning of writing pages and meditating. I’ve made it two weeks without coffee despite a stretch of wet, cool weather that made me think I was in Seattle. But it’s too soon to tell about dairy (I’ve made it a couple of days but I miss you, Greek yogurt). And I’m still gearing up to give up wheat (oh how I loves me a samwich).

Given where I am in the process, I was happy to come across this article by Leigh Newman: The No-Gimmick, Fastest Way to Make Real Change. She walks us through the  “3 Tiny Habits” approach newly developed by B.J. Fogg, a social scientist and behavior researcher at Stanford University. According to Fogg, only three things will change behavior over the long term:

• Option A: Have an epiphany
• Option B: Change your context (what surrounds you)
• Option C: Take baby steps

It’s hard to create an epiphany (although I’m hoping that reading Wheat Belly might help), so that leaves changing context and taking baby steps. And when he says baby steps, he means seriously teeny tiny steps. So minuscule you’d think “but that’s hardly doing anything!” And that’s the point. 

Identify an action that is so minuscule it takes almost no effort, and do it for five days. Newman wanted to run every morning. Waaayyy too big. Her revised tiny action? Just putting on her running shoes. I think writing 3 morning pages is, in a writer’s world, fairly tiny and that’s why I’ve been able to accomplish this habit. They don’t have to be good pages; I can be half-asleep and merely whining about how tired I am. 

Attach that action to an anchor. So that you remember to do the tiny habit, execute it immediately following an old one. Something crisp and precise. “Before breakfast” is too vague. Newman put her running shoes on after she pushed the “on” button on the coffee machine. I’ve kept at my morning pages, I now realize, because I do them immediately after I get my cup of tea. 

Then force yourself to celebrate. Do something physical to affirm the tiny thing you’ve done. Pump your fist. Do a happy dance. Declare “I rock!” The emotion of celebrating glues the tiny habit because your brain wants to feel happy. You’re teaching your brain that doing the tiny habit makes it happy. It’s all about building competence and confidence. I need to work on this step. 

Fogg has his habiteers choose 3 Tiny Habits instead of one so they can see why some habits fail and learn from it. I see now that my 5 a.m. rise time isn’t working because I haven’t attached it to a crisp anchor: namely, my own alarm. I’ve attached it to my husband’s actions, which vary day to day.

One important thing to note is that Fogg’s “3 Tiny Habits” approach only works in adding a new habit, not getting rid of one. But you can create a new habit to block the old one. I see now that giving up coffee worked because I added the habit of green tea. Skipping the Greek yogurt on my oatmeal was unbearable until I substituted Coconut Milk. Yesterday I substituted a rice wrap for sandwich bread and it turned out pretty well.

I’ve no idea how to tackle pizza, though (the double-whammy of dairy and wheat). But when I figure out how to replace it with a new Tiny Habit, you’ll know I’ve succeeded from my celebratory “WOOOHOOOO! I AM FABULOUS!”