We are poor at following the rule books of habits we need to build around our wellness. We make excuses or prioritize things completely off the basis of what’s in the moment. We spent last post really establishing our baseline of work, now we need to put a action plan in place that works to the task at hand. Michelle Segar explains why:
In short: If your motivation is some abstract, fuzzy future goal like losing weight or being healthy, you have the wrong ‘Why’. We want to re-frame our ‘Why’ so it’s focused on the IMMEDIATE benefits we get-shifting from ‘chore’ we have to do to a gift we get to give ourselves.
Holstee suggests using the same “1” to “5” scale to create habits that we used to find out our deficits in the 6 dimensions we discussed (Make an Assessment) in a previous posting this week. The “1” this time represents the quote above, “a chore to accomplish” and the “5” represents a “gift to give yourself”. Then you take yourself through the same exploratory work you did for our previous exercise with deeper questions to find your “Why” in the work. Here’s an example of one:
If I could make the work feel less like a chore, how would I do that and what would it take to make that happen?
I’ll use the same deficit I discovered I had from the previous post, spiritual wellness. To make it feel less like a chore I need to when prioritizing the work really make it part of another dimension I was already strong in or enjoy, so it becomes a gift. For example, there is a great running devotional I have that explores the spiritual work through the physical work I was already enjoying, running. So, when I reflect in my mediation time (mental and spiritual wellness) after finishing a run (physical wellness) I can read through a couple of pages of the devotional (spiritual wellness) as I think about what the run I just completed meant to me.
To many times when we map out a habit we want to get better at, we make it an additional item on top of 10 others. We try to pile it in with everything else. It then has to compete for the top spot in our mind and rarely wins over those habits that are much stronger. With the deep dive in Make an Assessment the whole reason I wasn’t successful with spiritual wellness was I didn’t make it a priority and made it instead a separate line item to try and accomplish. It got lost in the shuffle or I just was to spent to give it a chance by the time I got around to it.
By incorporating our work to improve into our work we are already doing we are building on the habit. We are creating a much stronger routine by not making it “one more thing” in a bunch of things we already don’t have the time to get done. We need to take as many to do items as we can and focus them down to the few by combining the work together into one focus. A couple of quotes in a great book, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Parasan, to read if you got the time makes this exact point:
Where I had huge success I had narrowed my concentration to one thing…extraordinary results are determined by how narrow you make your focus.
Once I was able to make it a part of some great wellness strengths that I already felt were gifts to do and not chores, mixing in what I thought was a chore no longer became one. Naturally I was able to double my time over what I previously was spending on spiritual wellness. I was well on the way to making it more of a strength, then a weakness.
Hope that helps you think about building a habit easier that you want to create towards being more balanced in your wellness focuses. I hope it gives you a small spark of inspiration towards making it less of a chore and more of a gift to yourself.
Next post, now that we know our “Why” and our “How”, it might do some good to understand the “What” each dimension is.
I hope your weekend has been going well. Thanks for viewing and reading.
Shawn
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