Do You Want To Change Something About Yourself?
Contents of this video
Most people strive to be better, do better, live better. I see teachers striving to be better, wanting to change their behaviour, wanting to work with students rather than doing things to them and I also see teachers and schools still doing things the same way. Or reverting to the same patterns of behaviour and then seeing that those ways don’t work and trying to find another way yet again.
If you want to change in some way, either in your personal or your professional life you need to understand how change works and what effective strategies will help you change.
If you want to improve your self-care so that you cope better with stress, or you want to improve your time management so that you work more effectively how you think about change will contribute to your success or failure.
People don’t change. Unless they do!
1. Statistics On Behaviour Change Are Quite Depressing
- 1 in 7 heart attack patients change eating or exercise.
- 25% of people give up New Year’s resolutions after one week. 60% within 6 months.
- Same resolution 10 separate times without success.
- 70% of organisational change initiatives ultimately fail.
In this video, I share the reasons why people don’t change so that you understand how you can incorporate teacher wellbeing strategies into your day.
Understanding the obstacles to embedding positive change can support you to deal with the challenges and help you grow in your personal and professional life.
Having a better understanding of how habits are formed and reflecting on what works for you in changing habits will give you a greater chance of success. If you want to adopt teacher wellbeing strategies, you need to understand how change works and what effective strategies will help you change.
When you improve your self-care you cope better with stress and when you improve your time management you work more productively. How you think about change will contribute to your success.n this video, I share the reasons why people don’t change so that you understand how you can incorporate teacher wellbeing strategies into your day.
Understanding the obstacles to embedding positive change can support you to deal with the challenges and help you grow in your personal and professional life. Having a better understanding of how habits are formed and reflecting on what works for you in changing habits will give you a greater chance of success.
If you want to adopt teacher wellbeing strategies, you need to understand how change works and what effective strategies will help you change. When you improve your self-care you cope better with stress and when you improve your time management you work more productively.
2. There Are Many Reasons Why People Don’t Change:
- They try to do too much and then get overwhelmed.
- They try to change too quickly without having a strong enough ‘why’.
- When things don’t work, give up or say that the process is no good.
- When you don’t do it, give up completely rather than learning from the experience and giving yourself a hard time about it. For eample, having a bad day of eating and then throwing the whole diet out the window rather than just beginning again the next day.
- They don’t understand the implementation dip, plan for it, and develop contingencies for it.
- They don’t know how change works, assuming that it’s an all-or-none process, that isn’t incremental and doesn’t involve setbacks.
- They are demoralized, often because of repeated failures that make them feel stuck.
- They are too busy defending their behaviour, by denying it’s a problem, rationalizing, withdrawing into a protective stance, or lashing out at others.
- Often, they note, the process is non-linear and people encounter psychological barriers—like fear of failure, doubt about the effectiveness of programs, worry about finding the perfect route to change, or the desire for certainty—that keep them from moving forward.
3. The 3 R’s of Habit Change
- Reminder (or Cue): the trigger that initiates the behaviour
- Routine: the behaviour itself
- Reward: the benefit you gain from doing the behaviour
This is such a great book that I highly recommend: Charles Duhigg in the POWER OF HABIT
4. The Most Common Triggers Fall Into 5 Categories:
- A place
- A specific time of day
- Other people
- An emotion
- A preceding behaviour or action
So, if you are trying to start a new habit you need to use triggers and reinforcers to support your implementation.
5. Change Your Habits Successfully By Following These Strategies:
- Start small. Look at the habits that are holding you back in life. Make a decision to do something simple like every time you eat, you wash the dish. That dish must be washed, no ifs buts or maybes
- Build self-trust. Once you get used to making small things happen, begin to recognize and embrace the truth: What I say to myself is what I do. Remember, to cultivate a capacity for self-trust, you must succeed. In order to guarantee success, don’t challenge yourself with a pledge that you’re not sure you can handle. If, for example, you’re not sure you’ll stick with going to the gym five times a week, then don’t promise yourself. Better to do the best you can than to fall short and wind up jeopardizing your growing capacity for believing in yourself. When it comes to building trust, it’s better to lose the battle than the war.
- Invent challenges. Invent various challenges throughout the day to strengthen your ability to believe and to do. Don’t allow yourself to procrastinate; make yourself finish your paperwork before turning on the TV; decide not to spend too much at the mall. These are all trust-muscle builders, and you should view them as you would an actual muscle. Just as you would do repetitions at the gym to develop a muscle, so too must you get your reps in each day. Like a muscle, the more you workout, the more your capacity for personal success will grow
- Link it to something you already do and provide a visual reminder (choose something from a list of things you do every day and things that happen every day). ‘When an ad comes on I do 5 push ups’ ‘when I sit down for dinner I say one thing I am grateful for’ ‘after I have a shower I meditate for 5 minutes’
- Make it easy. Make new habits incredibly easy to start. Make it so easy you can’t say no. If you are going to floss, floss just one tooth!
- Always reward yourself. Tell yourself, ‘Good job. You made progress today’. You could tell yourself, ‘Victory!’ ‘Success!’
- Identity based habits: Make your goal and identity based goal. Rather than stating, ‘I want to lose 10kg’ say ‘I am the type of person who eats a healthy breakfast’ or ‘I am the type of person who values my own wellbeing’.
- Don’t worry about the results. Focus on completing the action and let the results take care of themselves.