“In his continuing series Philip Atkinson highlights the relatively simple method of replacing old habits with empowering new behaviours”.

About this time of year people often need a boost to their good intentions or resolutions committed to at the start of the New Year. We see those committed to fitness routines and diets start to get back into their old habits – letting the Gym membership lapse and eating the wrong comfort foods again. Many say –“ old habits die hard” or “it is just the way I am”. This is equally true when people decide they are going to change themselves to achieve or do new things in business. But habits are very easy to break. As we have acquired our old habits so we can distance ourselves from them by creating new ones. A client of mine lost weight simply by replacing the habit of watching 3-4 hours of TV nightly by taking up new activities: learning a language one night a week at the Local College, going for a nightly 30 minute walk, visiting friends and taking up modest home improvement. He has achieved more since January 2002 than he did in the whole of 2001!

Cracking those bad habits could not be easier. Whether in a business or personal context this process works. Invest 15 minutes of your time to complete this exercise and be honest with yourself.

Decide what it is that you want to change – write it down and describe the specific behaviours you want to change. You must be precise.

Now, right down all the pleasurable gains you get from this habit. What are the payoffs? What are the benefits? How does this habit impact upon your emotional state? How does this make you feel? How will this habit impact upon you as a person in the immediate future and in the long-term. If this is a habit you no longer wish maintain you will find very few positive benefits.

Now let us work with the pain associated with continuing this particular habit. Imagine continuing it not just in the immediate future but into the longer term. Write down what will happen to you, and what will not happen for you if this habit is maintained for a further year. Now project yourself ahead 5 years and write down what will happen or will not happen to you if you don’t change the habit. Do this again for 10,15 and 20,25 years. Now consider what will you look like, what people will say about you if you fail to change. At this stage you probably have enough leverage on your habit to let it go.

Now think positively. What triggers in your mind just before you do the bad “habit”. This trigger now has to be positively associated with new behaviours. What new behaviours can you install that will ensure your old habit is dumped. Write these behaviours down and commit to do them every day or every time the old triggers fire off.

This exercise works brilliantly in getting people to change and change quickly. It is best done if you can share the process with others close to you so that they can reinforce the new behaviours. This has been used by friends and colleagues to rejuvenate their relationships with core people in their life, change their career mid-stream, improve health and fitness and have a fundamental shift in their lives enabling people to invest in what they want to be, do, have and create. Change starts from the inside out.

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