Back in September 2015 I hosted a challenge for my clients called Sober September. The challenge consisted of the participants giving up their “vice” for the whole month. For some people that was alcohol, for others it was refined sugar or chocolate. The challenge was meant to encourage people to give up something that they had over indulged in and that was causing them to perhaps slip in their health and fitness goals. For one of my clients, this meant giving up donuts.
Being Canadian and all, he did try to convince me that it was his patriotic duty to pull into the Tim Horton’s drive thru every morning and order the exact same coffee and donut. In fact, he was so zealous that they even knew his order when they saw his vehicle pull up. For years, 5x a week on his way to work, this was his ritual. His behaviour became more rote with every passing week so when I encouraged him to give up donuts for Sober September, it was met with a little resistance.
Have you ever tried to give up something that you knew wasn’t good for you? Think back to those first few days. Do you recall how agonizing it can be? It is all that you can think of. To be honest, I truly didn’t think that he would be able to cut out the donuts. He had made such a habit of going over the years that he knew that if he tempted himself with going through that drive thru and ordering coffee only, the attractiveness of ordering a donut would be difficult to refuse.
“All habits start slowly and gradually and before you know you have the habit, the habit has you.”
~Zig Ziglar
So, he changed his pattern. He opted for coffee at the office instead and replaced the sugary donut with an omlette from the near by deli. He did that over and over and over until that became his new habit. Even when Tim Horton’s Roll Up The Rim contest came out at the beginning of March I was sure that he would go and at least have a coffee there, but he didn’t and it didn’t even phase him. That is, until last week when he received a thank you gift from a collegue which included a dozen, fresh Tim Horton’s Donuts, delivered right to his home!
Of course the giver didn’t know the addiction my client had to donuts in the past or what temptation he was delivering to his friend, and refusing the gift would have been plain rude. So he graciously received the delightful, devilish dozen and made a decision on what to do next.
Notably, he took the donuts to his office that morning and shared the lot with his staff. He didn’t even have one.
As he is telling me this story, my eyes well because I am so proud of his resolve and shocked at his earnestness to continue with his commitment to his health in this area. When I asked him why he didn’t have even one donut, his reply was that he didn’t want to undo all the good he did. He didn’t want his hard work to suddenly be nullified.
He recognized the effort that he put in, especially during that first month when he was fighting that habit of driving there daily, and he didn’t want to throw all of that away on one donut.
So here’s the lesson: The habits that we form in our life are there for a reason. They are predictable actions that fill a need that we have in the moment and they become almost involuntary. Here are a few steps to replacing poor habits with beneficial ones!
- Be curious about them. Ask yourself if they are increasing your health or taking away from your health.
- Have a profound reason for wanting to change the habit. Make the reason guttural and weighty for you so that when you are tempted, you can draw strength from your reason to change.
- Recognize and be proud of your effort to change. Noting all of your intention to make a healthier choice will propel you to continue down that path.
- Have compassion for yourself if you mess up. Bad habits are difficult to overcome, but it can be done! Don’t berate yourself for returning to an old habit, as they say, old habits die hard 😉 Create strategies to help you stick with your new habit. Just like my client decided to have coffee in his office instead. That change of pattern aided him in not being around the temptation, which is critical when you first begin the process of change.
“Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as bad habits.” ~Robert Puller
