Over the holidays I visited my brother and his family in Virginia. Somehow we got into a discussion about geography and I suddenly threw my hands up in exasperation. “I’m terrible at geography,” I said. “I don’t know where anything is, and it’s really embarrassing and makes me feel stupid.” He immediately pulled up the online map game- Seterra.com. He said he had felt the same way I did… until he played this game. He guaranteed that I wasn’t terrible at geography, I just hadn’t taken the time to learn the countries. He promised me that if I played the game just once each day, I would soon learn where every country was on every continent, like he had. He said, “Expect to be bad at first, expect it to take a minute- but if you keep going, you’ll eventually get to 100%.” He was right, I was really bad at first, ridiculously bad. It’s easy to feel discouraged when you see very low scores reflected back to you each day. But I took him for his word and kept going. I’m happy to report that after a few weeks of playing for 5-10 minutes each day, I’m at 100% accuracy for Europe and Africa, and I’ve moved on to Asia. 
We all usually have lofty goals at the beginning of the year. With these goals comes the expectation of making big and extreme changes quickly, and therefore seeing fast results. We all know how that usually turns out; a temporary change in behavior followed by a quick reversion to old habits.
At the beginning of last year, I wrote a blog post on Five Steps to Successfully Change Your Habits. I had just read ‘The Power of Habit,’ by Charles Duhigg. It was a powerful foundation for understanding habits and how to change them.
Serendipitously (colliding with my Seterra game experience), this year I’m reading the fantastic book ‘Atomic Habits,’ by James Clear, which I highly recommend. He starts where Duhigg left off, diving into the practical application of habit research, with the focus on making tiny, easy changes that cause big results over time. “Success is the product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations,” Clear writes. This really resonates with me. My motto with my clients has always been, ‘What you do consistently determines your health.’ Not what you do every day for two weeks and then give up, and also not what you do every now and then on a bad day… but what you do consistently.
Here’s a powerful little history example that Clear shares in the beginning of his book:
In 2003, the British cycling team, which was notoriously unsuccessful, having won only one gold medal in Olympic Cycling since 1908, and never placing in the Tour de France, hired a new Performance Director, Dave Brailsford. Brailsford believed that if they made tiny 1% improvements in numerous areas, it would change the trajectory of the team’s success. After implementing hundreds of tiny improvements, such as finding the best mattress so the cyclists got better sleep at night, reducing their chances of catching a cold, wearing more aerodynamic uniforms, and rubbing alcohol on their tires for a better grip, in five years time, they were dominating the cycling events at the Olympics, and setting numerous Olympic and world records at the next Olympics. They also won the Tour de France many times over. WOW, what a change!
So, how might this apply to our health goals? The desire to lose weight or get healthy quickly often gets in the way of being able to take action for any length of the time necessary to make a longterm difference. Tiny, daily improvements are not very flashy or exciting, whereas losing a ton of weight in a short amount of time will get lots of Instagram and TikTok attention and feel momentous (although the actions taken to get there are rarely sustainable). In fact, tiny changes are so mundane that when they become ingrained and easy, we forget that we made any change at all. This is one reason why I spend time at the end of a 6-month program with clients celebrating everything they accomplished, both big and small. They’re often surprised to see all the little changes they’d forgotten they’d even made; changes that, in many cases, have added up to a cosmic shift.
This reminds me of when I took a 2-year Voice and Speech program in NYC with acclaimed Shakespeare teacher, Shane Ann Younts. On the first day of class, she taped each of us saying our name aloud, answering a few simple questions, and reading a passage. Two years later, after twice weekly classes where we learned and practiced vocal exercises, monologues and sonnets, she taped us again, using the same script. None of us had noticed the changes much in ourselves or each other on a daily or weekly basis, but when we listened to those tapes back-to-back, we literally fell out of our chairs in astonishment. “The difference tiny improvements can make over time is astounding,” Clear writes. Ain’t that the truth! I’ve often used the example with clients that changing the course of a ship’s direction by just one degree can land you on a different continent.
But, like with the ship example, if you don’t stay the course, then you won’t get to your destination. When the focus is on fast and big results, a major pitfall I’ve noticed is that after a week or two of practicing a new habit, like exercising a few times, or reducing sugar for a couple weeks, many people look at their results (i.e. what the scale says), and think, “Not much has changed. I’m not totally in shape yet, and haven’t lost the weight I wanted to.” Clear aptly calls this ‘Disappointment Valley.’ They might then slip back into previous habits, deeming these new habits as ‘not working.’ But the truth is that sticking with these positive habits over time can lead to a total transformation. Believe me, I’ve seen it many times. And conversely the same will happen with tiny bad habits that you repeat over time, as many of us experienced during the pandemic (the impact of which is still being felt). So, the question is, which tiny habits will you practice this year? Which tiny habits will you let shape your life? As Clear says, “You get what you repeat.”
If you have big goals this year, I encourage you not to rely solely on willpower and motivation; both will likely run out. Instead, set yourself up for success. Make repeatable, easy habits that you can sustain over time that will lead you to your goals. Psst- getting support will make this easier (coaches, classes, accountability groups, teams, like-minded community, etc.)!
As for me, among other tiny habits I’m in the process of implementing, I plan on continuing my 5-10 minute morning practice on the Seterra site, learning all the countries until I’m able to achieve a 100% score for every continent. Since the habit of learning and practicing something new each morning will become… well, a habit, I will then get to choose new things to learn, which really excites me. What other areas of my knowledge gaps do I want to improve? What new skills might I add? What do you want to improve in 2023? I look forward to swapping success stories!
Need support? Coach with me! Email me at jaimesaginor@gmail.com for a free consultation.
Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash
One Response
whoiscall
I agree!