Changing Old Habits

Having a hard time changing an old habit to a new one? Understanding the brain's hardwire pipeline triggers, routine and reward is important for success and sustainability. The triggers will remain the same, but switching up the routine response and what is the reward is the change. Don't fight the trigger, focus on the response. What does your body need that could be a different reward.

For example, I used to treat myself with a dessert if I worked out hard but my guts would pay for it as I wasn't eating many sugary foods these days. The trigger and seeking reward pattern is a hard pattern to break. So work with the pattern. Now I would work out, when I get home I give myself some grace to enjoy a cup of coffee while getting ready for work and getting kids off to school. (Yes that means I need to prep most things the night before to have this leisure). As a reward I now get my favorite dried fruit (dried mango tastes like fruit roll-ups!) or fruit smoothie to satisfy my sweet tooth. The interesting thing that happened is by using the process below and looking at what I wrote down often, eventually I stopped craving the reward. The reward slowly became the exercise itself and how great I felt the next 24-hours. 

Ask yourself these nine questions, write it down for extra momentum and trust the process. Look at it often to lock it in. I'd love to hear about how it worked for you! Send me an update at [email protected].