Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything(59)

SKILL SET #2—SELF-INSIGHT


Next comes understanding your preferences, strengths, and aspirations. In previous chapters, we’ve discussed the following skills related to Self-Insight.

Clarify your aspirations or desired outcomes



Understand what motivates you—i.e., know the difference between what you really want and what you think you should do





Here is the next skill that will take you from tiny to transformative.



The skill of knowing which new habits will have meaning to you





Those last two words—“to you”—are important because which habits are significant varies from one person to the next. What you’re aiming for is to create new habits that start small in size but are mighty in meaning.

Here are some guidelines to predict if a new habit will be meaningful to you.

The new habit affirms a piece of the identity that you want to cultivate. If you want to be a person who is loving and appreciative, the habit of saying thank you after your husband makes you dinner is inherently meaningful and will likely propel you toward transformation.



The new habit helps you reach an important aspiration. If the line from your new habit to your aspiration is clear, your habit will have meaning. A habit of putting on your running shoes may seem small and insignificant, but if your aspiration is to run a 5K, it’s decidedly not.



The new habit has a big impact despite being tiny. Sarika’s turning on the stove burner was small, yet it triggered a cascade of changes.





Find the smallest, easiest change you can make that will have the biggest meaning to you.

Here’s one from my life: Each morning I fill a water bottle with filtered water and take it with me when I leave the house. This is actually three habits that happen at different times: putting water in the filter, pouring water into a portable bottle, and taking the bottle with me. All these are tiny—and you might find them insignificant—but to me they have important meaning.

Thanks in part to my Stanford students, I became uneasy drinking water from disposable plastic bottles. Being wasteful was not the kind of person I wanted to be. And I didn’t want to be the type of person my students saw as uncaring about the earth’s future. My identity was at stake.

I explored my options, and these three habits were my solution. Creating these habits was a breeze. And, yes, there are ripple effects, other ecofriendly behaviors I do without thinking, like picking up litter on the beach. (Next habit: carry a small garbage bag in my pocket when I go hiking.)

You can practice this skill by answering one question: What is the tiniest habit I could create that would have the most meaning? Write down a few answers even if you don’t intend to create any of those habits right now. The more answers you come up with, the more you are practicing this skill.

Getting good at this skill helps you match yourself with habits that you can easily create and maintain. But there’s more. As you acquire this skill, you will be more able to identify habits that do not have meaning to you, and you will avoid wasting your time.

If you’re having trouble getting a habit to stick, this skill will come to the forefront. Remember when Jill was reflecting on her wiping-the-counter habit? At first it was tough for her to remember—after all, it’s a pretty mundane and boring habit on the surface. But when she looked deeper, she realized that this small action had a connection to her larger aspiration—a more harmonious family life and a better relationship with her husband. Once she made that important connection, she was able to generate the meaning necessary to power that habit. She was leveraging the skill of knowing which habits will have meaning to her.

This skill can be vital for habits that are motivationally tricky, the ones that teeter precariously between “I want to do it” and “I should do it.” Sometimes you can shift a behavior more firmly to the “want to do” camp by uncovering the meaning. Maybe you think, I should cultivate a habit of eating vegetables with every meal, but I don’t really like them, and I don’t know how to cook them so they taste good. Hello, resistance.

Once you identify a deeply held aspiration connected to eating vegetables, you will be more successful in creating the vegetable habit. There could be lots of hidden meaning for you to find. Maybe you are a grandparent who wants to be fit and healthy enough to see your grandkids grow up. Maybe you want to feel confident in your wardrobe at the annual company conference. Either of those larger aspirations might be enough to help bolster your resolve to eat more vegetables.

On the other hand, maybe you realize that eating vegetables doesn’t have any meaning at all. The vegetable-eating habit was all your partner’s idea in the first place, and you can’t think of why it matters to you at all. That’s fine. Drop the broccoli habit and focus on what’s significant to you.

By practicing Self-Insight, you can figure out if a new habit is worth pursuing. If it is, great—you’ll have renewed motivation. If it’s not, great—you’ll free up space for other habits that matter more to you. Mastering this skill directs your energy toward more important changes.





SKILL SET #3—PROCESS


As the days go by, your habits change, you change, and the world around you changes. Process Skills are focused on adjusting to the dynamic nature of life in order to strengthen and grow your habits.