The Habit

1. The Habit Breaking and Making http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2H4l9RpkwM

2. Examples of Bad Habits • What are your bad habits?

3. A Few Bad Habits… • Not asking for help when you know you need it • Letting one dark cloud cover the entire sky. • Holding on to things you need to let go of • Not making time for those who matter most • Letting everyone else make decisions for you. • Quitting as soon as things get slightly difficult. • Discrediting yourself for everything you aren’t • STOP discrediting yourself for everything you aren’t.  START giving yourself credit for everything that you are. • Denying your mistakes. • Focusing on the negative

4. How to Break that Bad Habit • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnFVFfAImEg

5. How to Break that Bad Habit • Step 1 • Write down the Habit you are trying to quit • Step 2 • Write down ways you can avoid this habit • Step 3 • Substitute your bad habits for good ones • Step 4 • Gather your army!

6. How to Break Bad Habits • Worksheet

7. Good Habits • What are your examples of good habits?

8. Good Habits • Being Physically Active • Eating a healthy diet • Eating junk/garbage food in MODERATION • Understand right from wrong • Believe in your ability to succeed • Manage your money before it starts to manage you • Seek less approval from others • Be less busy, and more productive • Make your goals a priority • Build the courage to face your fears

9. Breaking and Making a Habit • Two essential components to success • Time • Most habits take 3-4 weeks to really form • Repetition • Habits can only form when behaviour is repeated • The more the behaviour is repeated, the more HABITUAL it becomes • Also, it’s not a bad idea to set small goals and reward yourself. Extrinsic motivation can work extremely well in the short term, in order to develop a high degree of intrinsic motivation • Ex. Exercise 3x per week. At the end of the month, I get to order my favourite pizza (I like multigrain, thin crust, gluten free, vegetarian- but nonetheless a reward!)

10. Sleep by Midnight • How to form the habit: Fortunately for us, the science behind getting better sleep is makes things simple. Largely, it has nothing to do with counting sheep or hypnotizing yourself… • Tactic #1: Expend plenty of energy. According to CNN, "the National Sleep Foundation reports that exercise in the afternoon can help deepen shut-eye and cut the time it takes for you to fall into dreamland." Make sure to not exercise too late though, or it can have the reverse effect. • Tactic #2: Reduce screen time. Many studies have shown that backlit screens are pretty disastrous for sleep schedules. A large majority of us have to deal with a computer or phone at least some time during the day though, so the next best thing is to just try to reduce your overall "screen time" and definitely make sure to keep it to a minimum near bed time. At night, unwind with a book or some other form of entertainment that doesn't involve lights and pixels. • Tactic #3: Watch out for caffeine, alcohol, and cigarettes. According to a recent study on sleep, all three of these are pretty awful for sleep. Alcohol is pretty tricky, as it can help you get to sleep, but tends to ruin overall sleep quality (and will dehydrate you during a period where you are already pretty dehydrated). A glass of red wine with dinner has it’s health benefits, but not worth it close to bed time

11. Floss • A number of recent studies have shown that there are some strong ties between gum health and heart health. It's even been suggested that taking care of your gums can help reduce the risk of strokes! • Plus, the dangers of bad breath can not be understated… • How to form the habit: Flossing is a habit that we often make out to be way harder than it should be. First things first, if you hate using traditional floss, use things like Plackers instead (they're disposable and incredibly cheap). Next, since I'm going to assume you brush your teeth everyday (you better!), you need to start associating flossing with hitting your bathroom sink for brushing time, and "if-then" situation if you will. Make it so that you must floss before you allow yourself to brush your teeth (it's better to floss first anyway). This will set you up for long term success, because habits largely depend on "cues," and you'll be cued to floss when entering the bathroom to brush your teeth.

12. Read • Reading is a hard habit shun: most of us would like to consider ourselves to be intelligent, and we "know" that reading is good for our brains…so why do some of us find it so hard to read consistently? First things first, the hype behind reading is true: not only has study after studyshown that reading gives a noticeable to creativity & decision making, but research from Yale also points to reading as being a fantastic way to improve your memory. Last but not least, the valuable information obtained from good books is hard to put a price tag on. While reading isn't a race (and their isn't any conclusive research point to an ideal reading time), I've seen quite a few mentions of 30 minutes a day being a good place to start for those interesting in reading daily. • How to form the habit: The best thing about this habit is that is shouldn't be too hard to form. The key here is to pick books around topics you enjoy. If you hate fiction, I'd recommend reading history books, books on social psychology, and books on philosophy or memorable living, such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The next thing to do is make sure you only start off small, especially for reading. Sitting down and thinking, "Man, I have to read for an hour…" is a direct road to failure. Instead, try reading for 15-minutes a day on topics you like. Even those who claim they hate reading the most should be able to accomplish that

13. Exercise • We all knew this was going to be here! Regular exercise is like an elixir for your overall health. It plays a role in so many aspects of your well-being (both physical and mental) that we all hold it as a habit worth pursuing. • There's only one problem… it's one of the harder habits to form and it also takes a while for it to stick: research from the University College London found that regular exercise was significantly trickier to do regularly for participants, compared to easier habits like drinking a glass of water every morning. Their research suggests that it takes at least 66 days for a regular exercise habit to form. Worse yet, science has shown us that exercise is a "long game" if you're looking to see results (but hey, deep down we all already knew this). • How to form the habit: Since the biggest challenge for exercising regularly is how long it takes to form the habit and to see lasting results, reducing friction and increasing motivation are of paramount importance. A "tool" for establishing this often difficult habit is to take an oldschool flip calendar and tape it to your gym locker (or put it in your gym bag) and put a big "X" on the date every time you go to the gym. You’ll notice that not only will this encourage you to get down to the gym more often (since the calendar tells no lies), it also allows you to be more honest with yourself about how often you've gone. • Last tip: Focus on getting in and out, because the research says that people who spend too much time "measuring" results (through mirrors and scales) are more likely to de-motivate themselves.

14. Worksheet • New Habit Chart