Breaking The Loop

Happy New Year!?

I hope you managed to get some time over the festive period to relax and also to reflect.?

I was extremely grateful to be able to get down to the Coast with a trip to Cornwall.?Living in landlocked Staffordshire the sea is always a happy place for me, I could spend hours watching and listening to it and I did just that.?

I did however, find some time to listen to some other things, one of which was the Steven Bartlett, Diary of a CEO and his?'5 Scientific Rules For Making and Breaking Habits'?and learnt a couple of things I thought you might be interested in.?

You might already be aware that most people who make New Years Resolutions give up within a month.

In a US study, of the 41% of Americans who made a New Years Resolution, only 9% of them achieved their goals by the end of the year.

However, contrary to widespread public opinion, a considerable proportion of New Year resolvers do succeed. What’s more, scientific research indicates that you are 10 times more likely to change by making a New Year’s resolution compared to non-resolvers with the identical goals and comparable motivation to change. Psychologist John Norcross

Intention setting actually makes new years resolutions important.?

Habits are encoded into your mind and are extremely hard to break.?The habit loop requires three elements; a Cue, Routine and Reward.?

• Stress is a driving factor to habits, Dopamine?is a neurotransmitter and chemical messenger that sends messages between neurons in the?brain. Not only does it control mental health and emotional responses, but physical?reactions?as well, this and stress undermines our ability to make better habits.
• Those with the ability to delay gratification are proven over time to be more successful, be less stressed and achieve more goals. You may have seen the marshmallow experiment led by psychologist Walter Mischel, if not more on that here.
• Better sleep and physical exercise are both major factors in achieving our goals and creating better habits, in losing weight and eating healthier.
• Sleep deprived people in management roles are described as; less ethical, not as alert, not as motivated, not as cheerful.
• Focussing too hard on stopping something or trying to supress your thoughts are likely to result in you thinking even more about and doing the same activity you are trying to stop. You will end up doing the thing you are focussing on, so focus on the thing you want to do instead and give it a more action related goal that you can latch on to.
• If you want to set a good habit, you need a reason which is personally, intrinsically linked to you, your purpose and your why, otherwise your reason just might not be good enough.
• Forming a habit takes time and commitment, don't be too hard on yourself and expect too much too soon, keep trying. Only this week I saw this post from Sam White, CEO of Stella Insurance, who shared her 20 year journey and what a transformation.

A little bit of improvement every day can have a significant impact, just keep on trying, as Dr Chatterjee said on 5 Live, " people go too hard with their resolutions" and that "most will quit soon into the new year". He says the key to long term change is to “start small” and to “stick” new habits onto existing ones.

The full podcast is in the link above, for other good content when it comes to good habits, try Atomic Habits by James Clear, and the Morning Miracle by Hal Eldroyd.

What about you, do you have some top tips or good content to help others achieve their goals, or better habits for this year and beyond? It would be great to get your comments as always.

Wishing you every success for 2023.