7 Reasons to Change Only One Habit at a Time

Posted on January 15, 2010 12:00:00am, by Gerrianne Clare

 When you look at your whole life, do you feel you need a major overhaul or just need a minor tune up? 

 For those of you who feel a major overhaul is in order, the tendency is to try and fix your whole life all at once. For a variety of reasons those who approach changing more than one habit or circumstance at a time, are often unsuccessful in achieving their goals. 
 
Here are 7 reasons to change just ONE Habit at a time.

1.  Clarity – when you have taken time and identified what your priority habit is to change and why, it makes it easier to follow through. You know what you want to change and why it is   important. This helps keep you on track. 

2.  Focus – when you have clearly identified one thing you would like to change, you can keep that as your focus throughout your day. If you want to start taking 5 minutes every morning to calm yourself down and set the intention for the day, this becomes your focus before you start your day. Because you are changing just one habit, focusing on this one thing makes it easier to follow through.

3.  Commitment – It is easier to keep one commitment at a time. When we are clear as to why we have committed to the change, it is easier to follow through. Our minds often want to rebel when they have too many things that they are expected to do and change. By committing to changing only one habit, we can keep our agreements with ourselves

4.  Awareness – When you commit to changing just one thing at a time, you become more aware of what obstacles get in the way of you achieving your goal. With this increased awareness you can tackle these obstacles more effectively

5.  Success - How do you eat an elephant – one bite at a time? How do you change a habit, one success at a time? Changing your habit comes with a series of small successes. Every time you change your behavior, you get closer to your goal. Every day you meet your commitment to yourself around your goal is a success. That day, you changed your habit. Way to go.

6.  Intention – When you clearly set the intention that you want to change the habit start to notice how things line up to make this happen more easily. This gives a clear signal to you and your conscious mind to pay attention to how this can come about. When you say “I intend to spend 5 minutes calming myself down and setting the intention for the day”, opportunities for this to happen start to show up more easily.

7.  Celebration – Each day that you keep your commitment to change the habit is cause for celebration. We often have so many things to do that acknowledging our success rarely happens. When we take the steps necessary to make the change, we are that much closer to achieving our goals and this needs to be celebrated. 

Changing habits can be challenging. When we try and change more than one thing at a time, this makes the task almost impossible. 
 
Today, take a look at the things in your life you want to change. Look at my post “Keeping your New Year’s Resolutions – One moment at a time” .  

Identify one thing in your life you would like to change, make it a priority.  

Use the the points above to help you in changing one habit at a time.  Let me know how it goes. 
 
Remember, always celebrate your successes.  That way you can see how far you have come.
 
Take care and I will blog with you next week.
 
All the best,
Gerrianne

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