How Tiny Habits Make My Goals Achievable
And why I have second thoughts on self-help books, which never taught me to take action
How many times did you scroll through your social media feed only to find a well-meaning guru who gave you highly creative tips on setting and — ideally — achieving your goals? You need to design your path and make a plan accordingly — they say. Having a five-year plan and a meticulously designed bullet journal will identify your goals and the results will blow your mind. But will they? I’ve read my way through countless books that promised to change my life, but most of the creative ideas failed to give me the results I so badly craved. I couldn’t help but ask myself where I went wrong.
Did I have the wrong idea?
Was my plan full of flaws?
Did I not put enough effort into my projects?
After battling with my inner demons for a while I came up with the answer to my failures. And that was focusing on the outcome. Let me explain! Let’s say you love helping people and your heart’s desire is to become the best psychotherapist that’s ever lived on Earth. You request a brochure from the nearest university and you can’t shake off the disappointing truth that becoming a psychotherapist requires many years of studying. Let alone the money you have to invest in your own therapy, which is a necessary part of learning. You instantly panic and the effort just seems too overwhelming to realise your dream. In fact, it’s so intense that the voice of your ego immediately springs into action. “ It takes too long”, “it’s too hard”, “why even bother”? Do you recognise the noise in the back of your mind? I certainly do. I’ve heard it too many times.
But what if you can silence the voice and view things from a different perspective?
I don’t want to become a therapist but wanted to challenge my regular yoga practice, to strengthen my arms, which -despite exercising for some years- are still painfully weak and thin.
Looking for yoga poses that are suitable for the purpose, filled me with dread, and imagining myself balancing my body weight on my arms felt like a ridiculously distant dream. Until I stumbled upon a video on: Forget big change, start with a tiny habit.
The Power Of Tiny Habits
According to B J Fogg -an American social scientist- developing tiny, daily habits could end up being the building blocks of significant changes in the long term. While flossing your teeth daily sounds like a daunting prospect, flossing one tooth only is trivial. It only takes a second. But flossing one tooth every day will undoubtedly lead to cleaning your whole mouth eventually. Micro habits help you overcome the roadblocks and give you the push before your willpower expires.
I liked the idea. Taking one small step every day to achieve my goal suddenly seemed like an attractive and attainable option.
So, I chose Bakasana (crow pose) to build muscles in my arms to avoid flabby muscles waving back at me. I practice it for five minutes every day. Most part of my practice is spent on concentration and placing my arms in the right position. Placing my hands too far back means losing balance and risking knocking my teeth out while placing them too far ahead makes it difficult to lift my legs off the ground.
But having the first positive results and being able to lift my body in the air feels incredibly empowering and gives me the courage to keep going. Remember, I only practice this posture for five minutes every day. After the first three weeks, I got my first results and managed to hold the posture for about three seconds. Next day five seconds and so on, until I held the pose for as long as my arms allowed. I felt such a victory and thought that I can apply the same technique to other areas of my life. Like reading, drawing, writing or whatever skill I’d like to develop.
Just imagine that you want to lose weight and the idea of dieting puts you off from going to the gym before you could even consider it. But how about doing five squats a day?
The Journey That Counts, The Outcome Is Just A Bonus
I find that tackling a big project can be incredibly intimidating, especially if it requires me to step out of my comfort zone. And while some thrive on trying out new things I personally feel anxiety arise. How about giving a speech in front of a large audience? Public speaking can easily scare the bravest ones. It freezes you with fear. You start to sweat, your mouth goes dry and your legs tremble. Does it ring a bell? Although I can hardly call myself an expert in the speech department, I’ve spoken enough times in front of groups of people to remember the butterflies in my stomach. But you don’t just step on the stage or give your presentation without being prepared. At least I wouldn’t dare attempt. You work on the context and familiarize yourself with the subject. Then you practice the speech and perfect your style, cut out irrelevant parts and emphasize the ones that count. And you do it as often as you can until the event. By this time the information will be steadily engraved in every neuron of your brain and you’ll be ready to blow away your audience.
Sculpting your body with any exercise also takes time and effort. And a lot of money if you do this at a gym. While bursting triceps look sexy, having a demanding and time-consuming workout could easily threaten your fragile enthusiasm within a few weeks. But hey, how about five minutes a day? Investing a tiny chunk of your time that over a longer period will produce visible results will push you to a point where sticking with your routine suddenly becomes effortless. You’ll want to do more and you’ll want to do better.
You don’t need a planner to fit it into your daily schedule or high levels of motivation. All you have to do is to dedicate a few minutes without a fail.
And if you can manage all this, do yourself a favour and enjoy it, which brings me to my next point.
Have No Expectations And Celebrate Your Wins
I convinced myself that it’d take months before I can lift my butt up in the air. I tried it first and quickly put my feet back onto the ground, tried it again and the same thing happened for a while. Then all of a sudden I did it. What? How did that happen? How could I possibly balance my body weight on my ridiculously weak arms? I’ll tell you how. The posture is new to me, but yoga isn’t. And my regular practice over the years have helped me develop skills that I failed to realize I even had. I can focus my attention, control my breathing and balance my core. It all boils down to doing a little something as often as you can and seeing the positive changes will inevitably lift your spirits.
As BJ Fogg says:
“ The feeling of success that wires in the habit. It’s not repetition.”
Our emotions are the trigger to creating long-lasting habits. How many times did you come up with New Year’s resolutions? And how many times did you stick with them? I’m guessing that if you answer honestly to this question, you wouldn’t nominate yourself for the “ King/Queen of willpower of the year” award any time soon. Except if you actually find self-motivation easy, in which case you probably wouldn’t even click on this article.
We all want to feel good about ourselves. We want to believe that achieving anything is possible, but finding faith in our abilities often requires us to separate ourselves from the norm and ease our way into new perspectives.
And once we do it calls for a celebration. Remind yourself that your success -however tiny it may be- it’s a result of your incredible efforts. Treat yourself to a chocolate cupcake, a frothy cappuccino, or whatever takes your fancy.
Setting goals and achieving them doesn’t only make us feel powerful but boosts our self-confidence. Abandoning ideas doesn’t mean being a fraud, it means you haven’t found the trick ingredient to keep you on the path.
So, if you are like me who needs that extra oomph to remind me daily, have an open mind, find yourself a goal, and start working towards it for just five minutes a day!
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