Simplicity changes behaviour: the most important three words you’ll read today
WHY START TINY?
Challenging behaviours require a high level of motivation.
You’ve seen this in your own life. If there’s a tough task facing you, such as spring cleaning your entire home inside & out, you won’t do it unless your motivation level is high. As human beings, our motivation level for any behaviour goes up and down over time. This is natural; however, you can’t always rely on having a high level of motivation. Relying heavily on motivation to create a habit does not work.
Tiny gives you success.
When a behaviour is really easy, like flossing one tooth, you don’t need to rely on motivation. You simply floss one tooth, and you are done. The change process is simple, so you don’t need to worry about swings in motivation.
Instead, you can focus on making the tiny behaviour automatic — you can focus on creating a habit. Simple is powerful. You can grow your tiny behaviours later, for example, expand flossing one tooth to all your teeth.
Forming a habit is like growing a plant.
You decide to grow something new in your garden; you start with a seed or a sprout — something tiny to plant. You find a good spot for it in your garden; where the seed has proper soil, light and moisture.
You nourish your tiny plant, so the roots get established.
As you do these three things, your plant will take root and thrive.
Let’s apply the ideas above to how habit formation works:
You start with a tiny behaviour. You find a good spot in your daily routine for this tiny behaviour. You nourish your tiny behaviour, so it gets firmly established in your life.
As you do these three things, your new habit will take root and thrive.
With practice, you will form habits quickly and easily. Of course, you won’t be perfect. Just like with gardening, there is some trial and error — always something to learn and grow. But you will get better. You will learn new skills and gain confidence. And this, in turn, can change your life in big ways.
Just like with plants: You start small. It takes root. And then it can grow.
FOCUS ON TINY
With the Tiny Habits method, you always start with a tiny behaviour.
Some examples include:
Flossing one tooth
Reading one sentence in a book
Putting on my walking shoes
Take one deep breath
Write one sentence for my blog
A good tiny behaviour has these qualities:
It takes less than 30 seconds
It requires no real effort
It doesn’t create pain or negative emotions
Simplicity changes behaviour. The most important three words you’ll read today.
This article outlines the fundamentals of the ‘why’ to start tiny from the Tiny Habits© Method created by Dr BJ Fogg. I’m a Tiny Habits© Expert and Certified Coach, and each day of January 2020 I’ll be sharing tips or breaking down rituals, routines and strategies — into single actions and behaviours which you can do in 30-seconds or less each day.
More on creating Tiny Habits© Recipes and Behaviour Design© tomorrow!
Bonus Action: I encourage you to get a copy of BJ Fogg’s highly anticipated new book which just launched! Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything. You can use it to learn in-depth about Behaviour Design© and Tiny Habits©, then learn-by-doing all month with me!
Any feedback or questions? Feel free to comment below.
