Tiny Habits & Behaviour Change
I’ve been doing lots of work using BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits process with some clients and finding that its working! Both for my own experiments and for clients trying to make behaviour change happen.
Tiny Habits are tiny wins multiplied and it feels easy and fun. We can all fit in some tiny new habits, which feels far less onerous than having to complete a big hairy audacious goal right now!
The whole principle of BJ Fogg’s work is that people change best by feeling good and not by feeling bad.
Psychology suggests that when we celebrate ourselves or others for making small changes, this builds our motivation, capability and energy to keep going and wanting to change.
BJ Fogg is the father of Tiny Habits and he also taught people like James Clear who then went on to write the book Atomic Habits. Both books are based on the same principles that ultimately our motivation to make and stick to changes wanes and we need to have more than motivation in our toolkit to make changes sustainable. I love the simplicity of the model, A, B, C:
A = Anchor moment / prompt
We need an anchor / prompt to remind ourselves to action the change. So it works even better if its connected to something thats all ready in our routine as we build in the habit.
For example, I bought a set of 3kg weights back in lock down last year. They’ve sat under my bed for at least 9 months now and I’ve never used them, even though I had a really good intention that I would use them to address my increasingly unfirm upper arms!!!
Whilst teaching this the other week, as an example, I set myself a new Tiny Habit challenge - to use them every day.
So I moved the weights into my bathroom and the anchor moment became brushing my teeth at night.
B= Behaviour Change
What are you ACTUALLY going to do?
So for me, after I brush my teeth (anchor moment)…“I will do 3 x 10 reps of various different motions using said weights”.
C = Celebrate
Because we change when we feel good what will we do to celebrate! For me it’s just a simple ‘Yay I did it'!’ :)
After 9 months of not doing this, using this very simple and low time intensive shift, I’ve managed to do this nearly everyday for the past few weeks. My arms don’t look too much different but I’m going to keep going!
Our motivation wains, when we are tired, especially right now we need prompts and reminders to stick to our habits and I think we all need to feel that we can still make progress and build new habits and changes into our lives.
So, think about something you WANT to build into your life.
How can you make this really easy for yourself and look for ways to incorporate healthy habits into existing things that you are already doing:
For example:
Set alarms for ‘time-out’ no zoom time
Put your trainers by your bed at night time so that in the morning (if they don’t smell too much!) they remind you to go for a walk
Block your diary or send yourself meeting invites for things you want to do
If you want anymore help or advice this podcast and BJ’s Tedtalk are great. Plus you can sign up online for his free virtual tiny habits class. Let me know how you get on I’d love to hear :)
