A Coaching Power Tool Created by Gaëlle Bovy
(Career and Well Being Coach, THAILAND)
Habits
Our life is largely dictated by our subconscious mind (95 percent, according to neuroscientist Dr. Bruce Lipton, author of The Biology of Belief). This means that most of our daily actions are run by our subconscious mind on autopilot. For example, when you are driving your car, it’s actually your subconscious mind that is guiding you.
Habits or patterns can be behavioral but also emotional. These patterns are guiding the way we act and they way we think without being aware of. These patterns are our response to stimuli from our external environment (education, fears, believes…). We continue to respond in the same way, most of the time to protect us, it becomes a patterns and it becomes our truth. That’s the point where our subconscious controls our behavior every moment of every day.
In fact, habits are created in our subconscious mind because we’ve repeated certain behaviors so we go into autopilot. Autopilot has some advantages as it helps you do things effortlessly with minimal thought. So actually, most of the choices we make every day are not well-considered decision making but rather are habits. This can be pretty helpful when we are seeing the possible amount of decisions we are making on a daily basis.
However, when our patterns are not serving us in a positive way or are not in aligned with our true self, it doesn’t feel right anymore and comes the awareness phase.
Choice
With awareness comes choice, when you start noticing your reactions and behaviors, you can explore your beliefs and patterns behind them. You can start becoming conscious about them and liberate yourself.
Choice is the power, the opportunity to choose. In that case it would mean that you are mindful of the possibilities you have and you are consciously taking a direction. In choice you have also the possibility of discerning right from wrong or what is true to you or not.
Choice is present everywhere in our actions, our thoughts, our emotions, and our daily life. The life we are experiencing is a result of the choices we make and the habits we create. In the same way, our future will not be determined by chance, but rather by the choices we make today. The choices we are making by seeing reality from a certain perspective or believe, by the daily routine formatting of our daily experience of life.
How new habits are formatted?
In order to change your habits, you need to understand them. You need to identify the components of your loops. Once you have diagnosed the habit loop of a particular behavior, you can look for ways to supplant old vices with new routines. To change this old habit, you need to replace it and have a plan. Write down what you are going to do, when, and detail how it’s going to help you to reach your reward.
Self-Application
- A coach can support you in being mindful of your habits and understanding your motivation to change certain habits.
- Can you identify habits or patterns you’ve created in your life?
- Can you identify things you are doing or thinking on autopilot and that are serving you?
- Can you identify the ones that are not serving you?
- Which ones do you want to change and replace?
- What would be the benefit for you to change?
- What makes it important for you?
Coaching application
A coach can support you in this change of habits process by identify the situation and the loop:
1. Situation
What happened? Where? When? With who?
2. Reaction
What’s your emotional state? How intense was it?
What went through your mind? What ‘button’ is this pressing for me?
3. Behavior
How do you react? What are your behaviors?
4. Alternative
Think back about the situation.
What evidence is there that this thought is true? What evidence is there that this thought is not true?
Taking the information into account, is there an alternative way of thinking about the situation? Can
someone I trust understand this situation in a different way?
What are your other perspectives of it?
What is the new perspective you can see towards such situation?
What could you do differently in such situation?
How could you react differently?
What other activities can you do?
Can you think of any activities or hobbies that you used to enjoy doing but have now stopped doing?
Can you think of any activities or hobbies that you would like to do but have never done?
5. Replace
List the Potential Pros and Cons of Each Potential Solution
Decide of a Plan and replace your old behaviors with a new one and decide now what you you gonna
do instead:
- When I feel (symptom), I will (tool learned in therapy).
- If _ (stressor)___, I will (tool learned in therapy).
When I feel sad for 2 days, I will go for a walk and call a friend to have lunch. If my boyfriend breaks up with me, I will do a thought record to evaluate any dysfunctional thoughts.
6. Plan an easy routine
When you want to add or change a behavior, have small but achievable objectives. Start with small objective you can maintain and once it’s part of your life, add an extra challenge. Repeat this process.
There is no point to stretch yourself too much with big goals that you not going to achieve and will make you feel even worse. Start with small wins, build new simple habits, increase your confidence and build on that until you reach big goal.
- Define what you are going to do and decide upfront what’s going to happen. You don’t need to think or take decision on the moment it needs to be decided before (Plan 10 minutes workout/day and have you set of workout ready so you just have to do it without searching or looking for).
- Define when is going to happen. Plan it in your agenda as a meeting (Put in your agenda your 10 minutes workout before the shower).
- Define what you need to make it happen and prepare it (Sportwear ready, music ready, equipment ready).
Bibliography:
Rewire Your Brain for New Healthy Habits by Deane Alban
How Habits Work by Charles Duhigg
\sguideto_brief_cognitive_behavioral_therapy,
ngtonpost.com/amanda-gore/fear-patterns_b_1892298.html,
Patterns and Habits: Ruling Your Life!, Amanda Gore