Home » Attitude » Mini habits: the power of small changes

Mini habits: the power of small changes

Feeling paralyzed or lacking motivation? Discover the best technique to overcome internal resistance and accomplish more!

Hello friends!

I am reading a very interesting book and would like to share some ideas with you. The book is called Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results🇧🇷 by Stephen Guise. The central idea of ​​the book is that we should abandon grandiose and overly ambitious projects and learn from Lao Tzu’s famous motto: “A long journey begins with a single step”.

Mini Habits vs Big Intentions

You know those year-end projects, appointments and promises we all make? Well, statistics indicate that only 8% will get done. This indicates that it is not enough to have good intentions and think big. In fact, everything indicates that the opposite is true: thinking big creates demotivation and not motivation and achievement.

An example of mine: our MSN Psychology site has more than 1,100 texts! Which amounts to 3 relatively large books. If, when I started the site, still as a blog, I had in mind that I would write so much, it would seem distant and almost impractical. Fortunately, at least when it comes to writing, I’ve always had a motto similar to Guise’s: write a little a day. Writing a text of 1,000 words, more or less a page and a half of Word, was the central idea from the beginning.

And, as the saying goes, from grain to grain the chicken fills the crop. So, we see that it is important to have confidence that our projects and ideas will work. But if we think of steps that are still a long way off, we won’t take the first one.

Read Also:  think the thoughts

An example, perhaps easier to visualize, is from Guise himself. He mentions that he would like to start exercising, going to the gym, losing weight and having a constant physical activity routine. However, when he thought about doing 50 push-ups and 100 sit-ups, he would freeze or leave it for later.

Until one day, doing a creativity exercise in which we try to think the opposite of what we are thinking, he reflected: “if doing 50 push-ups seems to me that I would be climbing Mount Everest, what if I think differently? What would be different from doing 50 push-ups?”

The insight he had was, “I’m just going to do a single push-up. Doing a single push-up is easy. I can do this. I can. For a single push-up there is no resistance.”

And that’s what he did. And from there, he began to notice the power of mini habits.

The concept of mini habits

Do a single push-up. Write a single text. Read two pages of a book. Now eat some more salad. Meditate for five minutes.

See also – No time to practice mindfulness? Do you have 1 minute?

What all these actions have in common – please note: actions and not intentions – is that they are practicable, easy, achievable here and now and that do not provoke resistance, or, if they do, it is not a matter of significant resistance.

Guise gives another very interesting example. Do the following: now place your hand on your nose. Do it. No need to think. Just put your hand on your nose and that’s it.

Read Also:  Video – Three Essays on Freud's Theory of Sexuality

Did?

Putting your hand on your nose is a simple act. We don’t need to think too much. It’s not grand. It’s even banal. The idea of ​​a mini-habit is just that. A person who is resisting going to the gym and spending an hour, an hour and a half, training imagines that all that will be exhausting, stressful, boring or even very complicated or unattractive.

Now, a single push-up? A single sit-up?

Well, just like putting your hand on your nose, these acts, these behaviors are simple. Easy. banal. We can do it and we can do it now.

The idea is that by doing a single push-up we can do one more. Perhaps one more. Maybe seven or ten more. And in doing so, we are putting aside the grandiose thoughts, the grand plans, and we are getting into practice.

It might be painful. It can be uncomfortable. But we will be overcoming any and all resistance if we put into practice a mini-habit.

Going back to the writing example, I learned something similar from coaching sessions and cognitive-behavioral psychology. When I thought I would have to write another 100 pages of my doctoral thesis, I paralyzed. It stalled. I kept blaming myself for stalling and stalling more. So, just like I do on the website, I started setting small goals each day.

Read five pages of the book I needed to read. Write a paragraph or a page. And ready. On days when I felt more motivated, I extrapolated. Write two or three pages. On days when I didn’t feel so motivated, anyway, I trained to write the least bit, but I wrote.

Read Also:  How is the routine of a University Professor?

Guise mentions that most days when he started training with the single-push-up mini-habit, he would do more than one push-up. Sometimes he even turned fifty. On days when he wasn’t feeling as motivated, he would do a single push-up anyway.

As we know, a habit is just and only an act repeated many times. What has to be clear is that intentions, plans, projects are not enough. Better a single behavior than none at all🇧🇷 A single behavior is already a first step. Remembering: “a long journey begins with a single step”.

So think about the first step you can take today: send that email? Make that call? Submit the proposal? Anyway, what can you do now?

What’s your first push-up to achieve what you want from now on?

Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below.

Are You Ready to Discover Your Twin Flame?

Answer just a few simple questions and Psychic Jane will draw a picture of your twin flame in breathtaking detail:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Los campos marcados con un asterisco son obligatorios *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.