How am I sabotaging my new habits?

[Sworn]

Januari and februari this year were two months of succesful 30 day trials.
One of them is stretching my body, the other one is cleaning my room. Now, in order to do both, I still have to consciously engage my willpower.

So, Im not bitching or anything, I'm just interested in what could be going on so I can know what to do to change my approach.

Gezundheid

[SmellyOrc]

First thing that came to mind was motivation. You need to WANT to clean your room and stretch your body. When you really WANT something, there is motivation. Where there is motivation, there is action. Where there is action, there are results. Just get the motivation, and the rest will follow.

Just something I learned from Stephen R. Covey while listening to one of his audio books when I was half asleep

[Lauxa]

I've been reading Louise Hay's "You Can Heal Your Life" and though I am still very new to her material, I'll give a summary of her theory.

Willpower can only take you so far. To move beyond willpower and have things flow, you have to release the need for the thoughts that created the problems in the first place. Usually these are thoughts of not loving yourself or not deserving, and starting to love yourself is the first step. But for any negative pattern you want to change, she reccommends whenever you think of the problem to use an affirmation such as:

"I am willing to release the need for stiffness in my body."
"I am willing to release the need for a messy room."

Sometimes other things will then come up that you need to release, underlying causes for the thought patterns. For instance, she says that stiffness is caused by inflexible thinking, so you can try the affirmation:

"I am safe enough to be flexible in my mind."

I just got this book on Tuesday, but already it has made a big impact about how I talk to myself and I think positive changes are coming. I am trying to "release the need to be tired" and reclaim my energy. Peace.

[Greek Dog]

SmellyOrc - thanks for the reminder of how important motivation and WANTing to do or have something is. I had let that slip away.

Lauxa - thanks for that very helpful point. I love the phrasing "need for the thoughts that created the problems." The "need" is exactly what I needed to hear. My negative thoughts were needed for survival as a child in a very asceptic, formal home but I NEED to let them go in order to flourish now.

I will focus on this two concepts to help me through a difficult psychological place that I am in. Thanks to you both. Greek Dog

[ZenDude]

Originally Posted by Sworn

Januari and februari this year were two months of succesful 30 day trials.
One of them is stretching my body, the other one is cleaning my room. Now, in order to do both, I still have to consciously engage my willpower.

So, Im not bitching or anything, I'm just interested in what could be going on so I can know what to do to change my approach.

Gezundheid

First of all, way 2 go in creating new habits! You're grabbing the steering wheel of your own life!

1) Humans differ. So don't count on 30 days to create a habit for you, maybe you need more than that. It is also quite possible that it is different per habit that you try to establish.

2) Have you written down and frequently read the advantages of having a flexible body and clean room? This might help imho.

3)Try combining your new habits with something you enjoy, you can stretch and watch tv or listen to music/podcasts/audiobooks for instance. Same goes for cleaning your room.

4)Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi author of "Flow" has a few suggestions to make your activities more fertile for flow-experiences. Try tracking your progress and raising the bar on your new habits. Direct feedback, progress and a right balance between skill and challenge are cornerstones of flow experiences.

5)Think about how you can enjoy your habits more. Maybe you can buy new gear to clean your room with? Try timing cleaning your room with a stopwatch. Make a picture everyday of how clean your room is. Try every day to improve the organization of your room.

Good luck!

[Sworn]

great postingses y'all

as for the wanting. I took on those tasks because I wanted to cultivate discipline. So that's the deep mental craving behind the chores (yes I viewed them as chores - maybe some reframing on that may not hurt me right): cultivating more self-discipline.

Plug a little bit of "paradox of choice" into that and I realise that I need to stick to Powerpoint (see "my little progress" thread here in this effectiveness forum) eventhough I feel like planning and goalsetting should be my all encompassing new habit.

Lauxa, I will definately wing some of those concepts into my future meditations

and Zendude, your bullets are great.
The ones I had already taken into account were 2) en 5) only being 40% so now it's official that I can't say "but I tried everytthhiiiiinnngggg"