Tiny habits for Coronavirus Challenges

 

A while back I read a book by Stanford University researcher BJ Fogg called Tiny Habits.

It provided what I thought was one of the neatest and most accessible and understandable models for making lifestyle changes.

It was so influential, that I reference it specifically in my work on Mental Fitness and regularly recommend that people just get his book, rather than listen to me speak on self-improvement.

 

Why do I like it so much?

In the Tiny Habits approach, you learn that any behaviour (an existing habit or one you’d like to develop) is the product of a few simple factors:

Motivation

Ability

Prompts

Celebrations/rewards

By learning to manipulate these factors, you can establish new habits quite quickly as well as analyse and extinguish existing bad habits.

As the name (Tiny) suggests, new ways of thinking and behaving are created through very small additions to existing habits and routines.

When you get a ‘foot in the door’ in terms of making an important lifestyle change and are able to do this easily, you then have the basis (and confidence) to translate these into bigger changes.

I find this particularly useful when talking to people who feel time pressured and not in a position to make large lifestyle changes. You can teach them to build a better life, piece by piece.

 

What does this have to do with Coronavirus?

BJ Fogg offers a free 5-day online program where you can learn the Tiny Habits method. Although conducted over 5 days, it only works out to about 40 minutes of learning and practice. Very short. You’ll get introduced to his model and taught how to apply it to making a few small changes in your life.

Just today though, I got notification in my email that he is getting some of his Tiny Habit coaches to run brief online sessions relating to how to use his behaviour change method to deal with some of the challenges of the current Coronavirus situation – staying upbeat on lockdown, staying mindful, tiny habits for kids at home, generosity, exercise at home, strengthening immune system, staying calm, developing resilience, sustaining positivity, cultivating gratitude, working from home, couples, handwashing and stopping touching your face.

Some of them are coming up. Some of them have already happened and you can access the video online. The sessions aren’t heaps long. He is saying they will be between 15-45 minutes in length.

I’m going to be checking out a couple of these over the next couple of weeks as I start my work from home.

 

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