Tiny Habits, Big Health

We weave our fate through the choices we make.

We weave our fate through the choices we make

Welcome to today's newsletter on the pillar of health. And as the opening quote suggests, today we are talking about the power of choice and we're weaving it together with a discussion of BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits methodology that Mike and I incorporated into our Greater Life Playbook, which is the system for how each of us, as business owners over 50, can create greater lives and build better businesses by daily and weekly and monthly tracking tiny habits that lead to major behaviour changes – because major changes in behaviour lead to major results in your desired direction in life and business.

We’ll get to the actual Tiny Habits method in a moment. First, let’s talk about the power of choice. The reality that, across a long enough time span, the choices you consistently make are literally what will define your fate. That if you consistently choose to eat McDonald's, even though each day may seem like a tiny choice unique to that particular day, then your fate, because of that consistency of choice, is much more likely to be the fate of someone who suffers from a heart attack.

Similarly, if you smoke and drink and eat McDonald's, those choices are going to lead to an even greater likelihood of your fate being someone who suffers a heart attack or other chronic illness. In this example we see the great power we possess in being able to make choices…that our destiny is defined by our choices is clear. But perhaps what isn't as clear is how we support ourselves to make different choices where currently we are making choices that we know are not in our best interests. The choice to have an extra glass of wine. The choice to pick up the pack of cigarettes, even though we'd given up for a month. The choice to keep that subscription to a streaming service instead of using that same money to join a gym.

What can we do to give ourselves the wind beneath our wings to make different choices?

This is where we come to our discussion of Tiny Habits, which is a methodology pioneered by the Stanford professor of behaviour change B.J. Fogg.

Here at Greater Life, we are supported by Mike Coulter, who is a former award-winning designer and creative, and one of the only UK-certified Tiny Habits coaches.

The first time I read Tiny Habits, I knew instantly that it was an absolute game-changer. It brought together much of the existing science on habits and behaviour change that I’d already researched but grounded it in an approach and explanation that was unlike anything else I’d come across.? It really spelt out why some of those approaches don't work, how they rely on willpower and incentivization in ways that aren't sustainable, mapping out instead a vision of how to make the process of behaviour change not just easy, but enjoyable.

I cannot recommend enough that you invest 7mins and 47secs to watch the following summary of the book, but if that’s too great a time investment to transform the behaviours you most need to, then here’s a summary.

In order for you to do something, you must have a combination of motivation and ability to do the thing, and often a prompt that will cue you to take action.

The thing I most took from BJ Fogg’s model is the importance of celebration. No matter how tiny we start (eg putting running shoes by the door the night before) we celebrate as though we’d achieved the intended goal of the whole habit (running a marathon). Put simply: Emotion Creates Habit.

So please…if there are things about your health that need to change, this newsletter is the way to make those changes. You will need to start small, but progress will be guaranteed as long as you’re willing to celebrate.

So check out the summary video, or buy the book – and create your first tiny habit for a radical transformation in your health (and anything else where you’d like new behaviours that will create greater results).

Have a GREAT week

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