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The Magic Formula For Strengths Based Habits
G’day. I’m Michelle McQuaid, and welcome to Thank God It’s Friday! This week’s
letter comes to us from Charlotte who writes, “Michelle, I’m noticing
little ways to use my strengths more, and it’s really helping
me at work. But what can I do to make sure I’m using my strengths every day, rather
than just in the moments that I remember?”
Well, Charlotte, I hope you’re sitting down, because the answer I’m about to give you
won’t be easy to hear, but I promise I can show you an easy
way through it. Are you ready? The answer to creating most
behavior changes in your life all comes down to habits.
Now if someone had told me that was the answer to living more of the life that I wanted a
few years ago, I would have been running for the hills. Who
wants to live a life full of habits? What happened to freedom,
and spontaneity, and living in the moment? What surprised me most though was that once
I learned how to effectively create habits, it freed up
more of my time and energy for the spontaneity that I loved.
So how did I do it? Well after a lot of research, and a fair bit of trial and error, I discovered
the art of creating 11-minute strength-based habits that
were able to change my life. Now why 11 minutes? That’s
pretty specific. Well firstly, 11 minutes was excuse proof. No matter how busy my day
was or what was going on, I could always find 11 minutes to
start working on my habits. Secondly, I discovered a formula,
breaking my habits into three specific parts that made them much more enjoyable and much
easier to build.
Turns out, the hardest part about building a habit is getting started, because our brains
aren’t wired to support these new behaviors, so it takes a
massive amount of activation energy to get those neurons
firing and our bodies moving. So I like to use the first 30 seconds of my habit to make
it easy to get started. Now I can do this in a couple of
ways. Number one, I can anchor it to a habit I already have. So
when I wanted to use my strength of curiosity more each day at work, I anchored it to the
habit of turning on my computer reach morning. Secondly, I
like to try and use my environment to make it easier to
almost fall in to the habit, so I set my browser window to automatically come up with different
sites where I could find research or new journal articles.
Thirdly, I like to preprogram my brain by using a when/then
statement. So when I get to work, then I will find one new thing that I can share with my
team. By programming these statements into our minds,
it makes it easier when we find ourselves in the situation
to know what choice we should be making.
Once I’ve got the habit started, I like to spend about 10 minutes just practicing
it, and if I can, I’ll even go longer than that. Because of course, the more
time you spend practicing, the more you’re building those
neural pathways up. But even 10 minutes each day starts to make a difference.
Now what I learned about the importance of how you finish a habit revolutionized the
way that I created change in my life. It turns out that it’s
really, really important that you celebrate what you’ve achieved
when it comes to building habits because it releases a lovely hit of dopamine in our brain,
which helps us to feel good so we’re more likely to want
to repeat that behavior next time, but also consolidates the
neural pathways in your brain, making that habit much more easier and effective as you
start to perform it.
So how do I like to celebrate? Well I’m a little bit ***, so often for me it’s
crossing it off the list, or putting the big tick beside it gives me a boost of
joy. Sometimes I’ll post it on social media or call a friend and
share what I’ve done. And when I’m feeling really wild, well, like you, I like to dance.
So does it really work? Well, I’m renowned for my ability to create habits. In fact,
it’s one of the things my friends, family, and colleagues most comment
on and ask me for advice around. So, my experience is
that 11-minute habits are a great way to start to integrate your strengths into your everyday
work.
So by now you know that knowing without doing is a waste of your time. So I want you to
take this week’s challenge and step it up. What’s one 11-minute
strength-based habit that you can create this week to help
you get ahead at work? Which strength would you work on? How would you use the first 30
seconds to make it easy to get started? What would you
do for 10 minutes to build up that strength? And how would
you celebrate in the last 30 seconds to make sure it was something you wanted to do again?
So for example, if I wanted to build my strength of curiosity, I might make it easy to get
started to whenever I turned my computer on this week
at work, I headed straight to a website with something new I
could learn. I might spend 10 minutes reading the information there and getting curious
about how I could apply it at my work. And I might use the last
30 seconds to email what I’d learned to one other person so
that I could share the outcome and feel like I was doing something to help a colleague.
When you’ve got your habit figured out, head on over to michellemcquaid.com
and tell us what you’re trying. You’ll find
heaps of ideas from other viewers about how they’re using their strengths at work.
Now if you like these videos, be sure to subscribe and share them with your family and friends.
Don’t be selfish and keep it to yourself. And if you
want more great ways to make your work more rewarding, then
visit michellemcquaid.com and sign up for our free email updates where you’ll get
heaps of ideas about how you can use positive psychology at work.
In the meantime, stay strong. You are good enough, and
the world needs you to shine your light in the way that only you can. Thank you so much
for watching ChelleMcQuaid TV. I’ll see you next week
where we’re going to introduce you to our first legendary lady
who’ll inspire you to step it up. Take care.
What’s that? You want to see more of the dancing? Cha, cha, ch-ch-cha, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch
ch-ch- cha! How’s that?
The Magic Formula For Strengths Based Habits 1