 to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, and handouts, and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Good morning and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. Today we're going to be talking about developing momentum in the change process. Sometimes when we start to change it kind of lags out a little bit and then we end up forgetting our goals. Other times it's hard to even get started so we're going to look at some of the reasons that this might be and what you can do in order to develop and maintain momentum in your change process. It's important and I'll say this at the beginning to recognize that every change is going to have some plateaus. That's when your body and your brain are just kind of solidifying everything but if your plateau goes more than a week or two then you might want to look at what's going on if you've lost some momentum, if you've lost some movement and we're going to talk about thinking about a train or a car going uphill and that's what change is. Change takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of energy to change and if you start losing momentum it's harder and harder to go up that hill. So we're going to talk about how to avoid some of those problems. We'll describe the ideal momentum in the change process, examine causes of stuckness, review the phases of readiness for change and appropriate ways to increase readiness and explore issues that may lead to stuckness and some interventions. So think of a time that you've tried to change. What causes you to get stuck? What causes you to kind of stall out in the change process? You know most of us have made new year's resolutions so think about new year's resolutions that you've made and you've done really well for a week or two or maybe even a month and then it started to peter out and by the time you got around to march you weren't even trying anymore. What does stuckness look like for you and depending on your your goals, depending on what you're doing it may mean a return to old behaviors or maybe you were trying to learn something completely new and you get started and you get to a certain point and every time you try to change you just get to a certain point and then you quit. You don't finish anything. And what do you do to keep your momentum going when you start going you know what I don't know if I really want to do that. How do you keep it going? For example one of my hobbies is crocheting and if I don't have that in front of me, if I don't have the visual cue of my crochet basket I'm probably going to pick up six other things to do instead of working on my crocheting a little bit every night. So what can you do to keep your momentum going? If you're trying to start going to the gym maybe you can keep your gym bag in front of the door so you have to pick it up and walk out of the door with it. Another thing for me with the gym and I'll just tell you this at the outset, if I plan to work out in the afternoon, which is when my energy is normally low anyway so it's not the best time, but if I come home with the intention of changing and going to the gym I never make it back out the door so I know that from my momentum if I'm going to work out in the afternoon I need to bring my gym stuff with me. So these are the things that you want to think about. What is keeping you from keeping the course? So stuckness versus a plateau. You want to like I said expect to experience plateaus and gains are going to seem to stall a little bit. This is when you're solidifying things. Think about when kids are growing up. They go through a growth spurt and then they stall out for a while while everything catches up. They get a little bit more coordinated. They you know whatever happens depending on their growth spurt. With my kids when they were learning I would notice that they would do really well in either math or English type subjects you know it's either right brain or left brain and the other subject would either stall out or even maybe backslide a little bit while they were making gains in the opposite subject and then it would switch. You know they'd be doing really well in English all of a sudden and their math skills would suddenly hiccup but it all would catch up in the end. So the brain was kind of giving energy if you will to what they were working on at that point in time and then backing off so everything could kind of solidify. Think about if you're building a brick wall you know you put the mortar down and it's kind of wet and you build up all these layers of bricks and then you let it set for a little while before you continue to put additional layers of bricks on which might cause it to topple over if it gets too tall. A plateau lasting more than about a month in which you've not reached maximal gains should be explored and maximal gains means you've reached your goal. You are happy as you define it. You are going to the gym five days a week if that was your goal. You have reached your your goal weight. You've stopped smoking. Whatever it is you have achieved that goal. If you haven't achieved that goal then you're at a plateau and if it lasts more than about a month some people get impatient at the two week mark. Then you want to start exploring kind of what's going on what changed and maybe you need to adapt a little. Is something else going on and you don't have the energy or resources to devote to change right now? So maybe you were you know starting to learn a new hobby and gardening is another one of my hobbies and it takes a lot of time because I organically garden so there's no pesticides. There's lots of weeding and I will get my garden going and then something will come up at work or with the family and I won't have as much time to devote to it so my gardening will seem to stall out for a little while and that's because I've chosen to divert my resources to this other stuff. I don't have the time to devote it. Now if it's your change goal is something that's really important to you like lowering your cholesterol or dealing with your depression or your anxiety then you need to think about you know why are you prioritizing these other things over your own happiness and Covey refers to this you know kind of tangentially as sharpening the saw. You need to be 100% you need to be your best you you need to be sharp in order to function effectively. So if you are neglecting tending to your own depression or anxiety then everything else is probably going to get neglected a little bit too it's not going to be the product that you would hope it would be. So look and see is something else going on you may need to back off a little bit you know some people go into substance abuse treatment for example and they go into residential and residential is 24-7 for 30 days and you know people are thinking about recovery they're working on recovery they're doing activities that is all they've got to do and then when they get out you know obviously they've got life to deal with something else comes on and they can't keep doing treatment stuff for five eight hours a day they have to back it off a little bit it doesn't mean that they're stopping it means that they've had to choose you know look at what makes a rich and meaningful life for them and they've chosen to divide their energy and they've got to slow down a little bit now if you're in once a week counseling or if you're making a small change you know look at what's going on if you're trying to get in shape and most of us have tried to go to the gym and get in shape so you can relate to this you know you maybe you can't devote two hours a day to lifting weights and running to get ready for the next Iron Man maybe you've got to back off and you can only go to the gym three days a week because you have other priorities you need to look and say is that adequate progress and you know sometimes it may be yes and if the answer is no then you need to figure out what do you need to cut from the rest of your priorities so you have more time to train for that Iron Man the other reason that you may be stuck is you've just lost steam there were no rewards you know when you're going to the gym you're going to the gym you're working out you may see some improvements in your cardiovascular fitness or something but you haven't dropped a dress size or a pant size or you haven't when you go home you know you're tired and you get up the next morning and you're sore and you're like why am I doing this again and it can kind of suck the steam right out of it so you need to look at why did you want to do it in the first place what rewards are you getting for it and how can you put rewards in place so it keeps you going for example going to the gym with a friend you know it's still going to the gym but it's a little more fun um and then looking at what else you can do to reward that behavior to get your energy get your motivation back ask yourself if your goals or objectives need to be changed you know maybe training for an Iron Man Iron Man that's in three three months is a little bit too over the top because you just don't have the time to do it just like when I work with people who are recovering with depression or anxiety um you know if I'm seeing them once or twice a week then their progress is going to be slower than somebody that I'm seeing five days a week in group for intensive outpatient but you know the people that I'm seeing an intensive outpatient have made that goal that they want to or they need to have significant improvement in 90 days the people who are coming once or twice a week um are going to change at a slower pace but it doesn't impact the rest of their life near as much so you want to look at do you need to kind of change what your goals are if you're going to the gym to lose weight you know we know muscle weighs more than fat and yada yada yada but is losing weight the appropriate goal or is getting in better health going to be a more rewarding and more stable goal and most of you are going yeah losing weight that's why I go to the gym so I can eat more um and for me that is one of the big reasons I go to the gym I don't I won't argue with that um but look at your goals and objectives and see if you're trying to reach a goal that's unattainable causes of stuckness competing priorities like we just talked about if you've got um maybe it's football season and your kids on the football team so you have to drive him to football practice every single day or pick him up and then you've got football games to go to and those away games are really long drives that takes a lot of time plus you've got housework to do you know it doesn't matter if you're a mom or dad um and and you've got work that you've got to go to and then you've got the yard that needs to be tended and you know all these things start piling up and you've got all these priorities and sometimes recovery or change seems to just kind of fall to the back side so again you want to look at that change goal and say if I let go with this goal for right now so I can focus on the other stuff is it going to negatively impact how well I can enjoy everything else that's going on in my life is it going to negatively impact other things if you are clinically depressed and you stop working on that so you can focus on the all the other stuff then you're probably going to be going to those football games in sort of a fog and barely making it you're probably going to not have joy in other things you're probably going to be communicating this aura of when you're doing things if you can even get out of bed and it can it may make your depression worse because you keep pushing yourself and you're not feeling good and it just feels like you are never going to ever feel good again so you start to feel hopeless and helpless so my point is sometimes you have a lot of other stuff that's really important but again you got to sharpen that saw if you are not healthy then you are probably not going to be able to fulfill those priorities as effectively you also may not be motivated to abandon the old behaviors I mean think about it whatever you're doing has a benefit and we'll stay with the gym for right now I don't want to pick on smokers all the time when you go to the gym that's hard work you get sweaty it uses a lot of energy and a lot of times you're sore the next day now some of us look at that look at that and we see soreness as a reward we're like if you don't hurt you didn't work and that's not necessarily the best attitude but sitting on the couch watching tv after work is certainly a whole lot more rewarding after you've had a long hard any cases than going to the gym for a lot of people so you want to look at what's your motivation for this new behavior and why did you engage in the old behavior because sitting on the couch watching tv decompressing that's how you relaxed that was how you said you know no more input and you were already you already felt like you were out of energy so you know it's a lot more rewarding when you're out of energy to not move and so you know maybe if you want to start getting start getting in shape and working out you need to start working out in the morning before your energy is really low but look at the reasons what is calling you away from your new goals what things do you do wrong or incomplete problem or cause identification and you know we'll we'll stick with using with going to the gym and losing weight sometimes people go to the gym and lose weight because they think if I lose 30 pounds then my spouse will love me again if I lose 30 pounds maybe my relationship will be better you know it may help a little bit because you feel better about yourself and you know there may be some dynamics there but but if a relationship is on the rocks it's likely for a lot of reasons besides just weight gain so you want to look at what am I hoping to get out of this and is it realistic that I'm going to achieve this goal goals are too broad poorly defined or complicated if you say I want to be happy well that's wonderful that's awesome but how do you know when you're happy you got to define it what does it look like in counseling when we write treatment plans we say I want to be happy as evidenced by that way any person coming off the street any of your friends could look at you and go you know what I see this I see this you're laughing more you're not crying you're getting out of bed you're coming out with us on Saturdays it seems like you've met your goal and you're happier there are objective observable things so you want to define those so you know what you're doing and not make it too complicated keep it simple you know if you want to try to make changes you don't need to do 17 things at once do one you know make one small change get that integrated into your lifestyle and then make another small change when people for example start trying to eat more healthfully a lot of times they just abandon the way they were eating and go completely other end of the spectrum and start eating a completely different way which is very complicated if they're trying to track macro nutrients and micronutrients and follow a specific diet and it can be very complicated and overwhelming and they spend more time trying to figure out if they're doing it right instead ease into it and your body will generally like you better for it too unless you have a medical issue that's causing you to to change your nutrition start drinking more water for example and then maybe cut out wheat if you think you're gluten intolerant and then maybe cut out high fructose corn syrup and simple sugars once a week or once every two weeks make another small change that you can accomplish that's not complicated that way you're not just completely overwhelmed with trying to make this change if you don't feel heard or understood by your supports the people who are supposed to cheer you on and you'll notice this because when they make suggestions you'll yes but them but if you don't feel like you're getting the support you need to make the changes maybe you're trying to eat healthfully and your roommate keeps bringing junk food into the house you know there's cookies and potato chips and ice cream just everywhere and you're just like oh my gosh I want to eat that you know that can cause you to get stuck because you've got those temptations right there and you don't have somebody else going you can do this you can get through it you don't have to give in you may get stuck because you don't understand the importance of daily practice or the connection to recovery mindfulness is a perfect example when I have people start doing mindfulness it's important for them to understand what the point is you know why am I sitting there asking myself three times a day what I need how I feel well so you can figure out what you need and how you feel and how to meet those needs instead of being on autopilot because a lot of times we function on autopilot and we suppress our needs which leads us to feeling stressed out depressed unheard unloved whatever but it's important you understand why these things are important if you're going to start working out for example why is it important that you do weight-bearing exercises and resistance type exercises in addition to cardio and not everybody does those but for a full if you're trying to get in shape and in better health it's important to do both so you want to understand why it's important to strengthen the muscles in addition to just doing cardio don't chat don't challenge yourself through Socratic questioning to arrive at solutions retrospectively or in the present and we're going to talk about Socratic questioning but you really need to ask yourself why didn't I do this if you don't challenge yourself if you don't ask yourself what the heck happened then you're not going to be able to learn from your plateaus you notice I stopped short of calling it a failure you can call it a plateau you can call it a slip you can call it a relapse whatever you want to call it but when you hit that place you want to ask yourself what can I learn from this instead of going oh crap well I'll wake up and start again tomorrow well if you start doing the same thing you were doing that didn't work guess what's going to happen probably not going to work repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity so you've also got to figure out if you're ready for change pre contemplation you're not ready we're not going to talk about that because you're thinking about change right now so contemplation you're realizing you there may be a problem you're getting up in the morning and you're going oh I don't feel so good you know I'm kind of flat nothing seems to make me happy anymore I'm just you know maybe I'm stressed out maybe I'm burned out I don't know all right at that point you may not be ready to start making changes that are going to support your health and happiness but you're starting to realize that you're off you know you're having b days more than you're having a days preparation is when you're trying to figure out what to do and decide if you're ready to change your behavior you know this has been going on for a while you're still not feeling better you're like okay I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired let me think about what can I change in order to start feeling better now some of you might think well that's treatment isn't it no that's not treatment that's thinking about treatment treatment or change is when you say all right I know what I need to do and I am ready to do it and this is some people think you know it's impossible I've been this way for all of my life I've tried to change before it hasn't lasted there's lots of negativity that comes up in your head that may keep you from trying to change but you can do the impossible focus on your prior successes you know even if you have started going to the gym for a week or been addressed your depression and started feeling better for a day what did you do and build on that those are successes and also figure out if you've tried to change before and it hasn't stuck or you hit a plateau and you couldn't seem to go further ask yourself what was going on what happened what needs to be different this time and then maintenance is when you've reached your goal but you have to keep doing the behaviors and you know people who get depressed or anxious because they're burning the candle at both ends and they're not getting enough sleep and they're drinking too much coffee and they're just burned out they start to feel better and that's great and you know they're doing all the right things they've cut out the coffee they're getting more sleep and once they start feeling better they go back to those old behaviors what do you think happens they go back to feeling depressed and burned out again so maintenance means keeping those same behaviors that helped you start feeling good or that helped you meet your goal and then if you want to make another change start from there but you've got to maintain those other new changes when you go on a diet a lot of people do this and this is why I hate the word diet you want to change your nutritional habits because it has to be a lifelong process so when you change those habits you need to ask yourself is this something that I can do forever you know if I look at what I eat and I think can I give up coffee forever now if I had a major life health issue sure I could but barring that no I love my coffee I drink decaf but I love my coffee same thing with chocolate I couldn't give up chocolate to save my life well to save my life I could but there are things that I look at and I go you know that would not be a happy place for me if I could never have pizza again if I could never have you you can hear some of my vices so if I'm going to change my nutritional habits I need to look at how can I integrate that into my eating pattern in a way that makes sense to help me meet my goals of being healthy so pizza is a once a month thing for me not a once a day like it was in college um and I try to eat healthfully the rest of the time and some people like to have chocolate some like to have chocolate every day so we look at getting those fun size snack bars like you can get it um especially at trick-or-treat time so you can have a little Snickers bar instead of a 280 calories Snickers bar so you're not destroying your you're not eating too many calories you're not destroying all the good work that you've done um by gorging on something and a lot of people when they quit dieting they when they're dieting they change their eating plan completely and then when they are not dieting they go back to how they were eating before and what do you think's going to happen you're going to put that weight back on so again doing the same thing and expecting different results is insane so we need to look at how can you maintain this change lifelong how can you integrate this change which again means looking at what's rewarding and simplifying so it's not too difficult to maintain think about a change you wanted to make that lost its momentum what happened and again new year's resolutions huge ones to look at other times that you may be thinking about a time you went to counseling to deal with your depression or maybe you tried to do self-help to address your depressive issues or maybe you tried to be more patient and address your anger issues so you weren't irritable with people so much whatever your goal was if it lost its momentum and you find that you're back to square one what happened why were the benefits of the new behavior not rewarding enough so if you were trying to be less irritable and you find you're back to square one why wasn't patience and tolerance as rewarding as you know being angry and what are the benefits of being angry and sometimes you may say well it gets things done okay well anger gets things done patience and tolerance can also get things done but we need to look at how to do that how can you get things done and be patient and tolerant and a lot of times that comes to effective interpersonal skills creating win-wins and effective communication you also want to look at what did you miss about the old behaviors if you if you're giving something up for example smoking or maybe you decide that you're not going to eat wheat anymore because you're gluten intolerant but despite the fact that it really messes up your belly you still eat a lot of wheat so what are you what are you missing and I'm thinking of a commercial that I hear frequently on tv it's Oprah it's a commercial for Weight Watchers I think and she's talking about how she loves bread and she just can't do without bread and and that was one of the reasons she identified for her relapses because she was cutting out too many foods that she really loved so how can you eat bread for example if you're gluten intolerant and there are ways there are non-gluten breads that you can get but you want to look and really ask yourself what happened and if I want to do this change again how can I keep it from happening again if you're not totally ready for the change you also may get stuck because change causes crisis and crisis causes change when you start doing something different you're upsetting the apple cart you have this routine you have this kind of what we call homeostasis this balance in your life and when you start doing something differently it upsets your routine you know if you decide you're going to start practicing mindfulness before every meal well that disrupts your routine a little bit so you need to make sure to schedule in you know two or three minutes to do that it's not a big change but it is something that you need to remember it causes crisis because it can make you a little bit uncomfortable it can get you frustrated if you forget to do it but crisis causes change if you get if you go to work on monday and you forget to do your mindfulness activities before lunch and you get frustrated about it that's a little bitty crisis but you're probably going to be more likely to do something to remember it tomorrow so you don't keep getting frustrated with yourself so that little bitty crisis of getting frustrated you're like okay let's figure out how not to do that because there's no use wasting energy getting upset over for getting my change goals and you make changes examine the benefits of the old behaviors and ensure the interventions or the new behaviors meet the same need to a similar degree if you're trying to eat healthier and you know cut back on chocolate not even say give up but cut back on chocolate and when you feel a craving for chocolate you eat celery probably not going to do the trick now if you eat an apple that's something that you're chewing and it's also sweet so that may do the trick so there may be some fruits that you can replace for it if you're dealing with a craving now you also have to remember that you may be eating for comfort so if you're eating for comfort instead of taste probably need to figure out a different way to address your stress or anxiety issues and you also want to develop discrepancies between your current behaviors and your goals so for example if you're trying to eat healthier and you find yourself stress eating on chocolate and junk food multiple times a day you want to look and say well my goal is to eat healthier this is not eating healthy what can i do differently so until i develop stronger coping skills and deal with the stuff that's causing the stress and anxiety i'm not completely blowing my nutritional plan and that can be keeping fresh fruits or you know nuts and seeds around that you can munch on explore and address the drawbacks to the interventions if you don't like it you're probably not going to keep doing it if you're going to the gym to get in shape and you're just sore as all get out and this is what the main reason my mom used to quit going to the gym when she would try to work out was she would start and she would go in full bore and she'd get too sore and it just wouldn't work she'd be like okay that i can't do this i just don't see the benefit so you want to look at why don't you like this new thing you know if you're eating more healthfully maybe you are not exploring all the options if you're just eating sand and you're not exploring all the different flavors and options you have even if you are eating a Mediterranean diet or a vegetarian diet or something so make sure that whatever you put in place of your old behaviors is pleasurable and and whatever the drawbacks are because there are probably some figure out how to address those and increase the frequency and or intensity of the rewards for the new behavior so just going to the gym and knowing that you're getting in better shape may not be enough of a reward so what can you do maybe you can set aside one day on the weekend that you can just take three or four hours of me time if you go to the gym every day of the week or whatever your goals are but increase the the rewards so you have something to look forward to and even when your brain goes i don't really want to do this the rewards are going but i want whatever that carrot is at the end of the stick for me when sometimes some mornings i just won't want to go to the gym i'm tired but i know when i get out of the gym i have more energy and my head is clearer and my day goes a lot easier so that in and of itself is a reward but sometimes you need to bribe yourself and that's the only way to get through the initial phase and that's okay if that helps you get through if you have the wrong choice wrong problem identified you want to examine the problem from what we call a biopsychosocial perspective so for example if you're depressed look at all the reasons that things that might be causing your depression now likely there are some thoughts that are going along with it but if you're on counseling and addressing your thoughts and you're not starting to feel better we want to also look at what other things might be triggering your depression that's keeping you from getting to your happiness place that has stuck you with this plateau are there physical causes such as hormone imbalances like thyroid hormones or estrogen or testosterone are you not getting enough sleep that can contribute to depression are you dehydrated that actually contributes to depression or eating a poor diet so your body can't make the neurochemicals that will help you feel better cognitively we've talked about you know if if you're not feeling happy a lot of times there are negative thoughts and things that can be addressed and sometimes this comes on after the physical stuff has triggered the depression and your thoughts start turning more negative because you just feel so crappy uh and think about when you get sick I mean I tend to look at life through a more negative lens when I'm sick because I'm grumpy so when you're starting to feel depressed you may start looking at things through a more negative lens so addressing your thoughts can help you start feeling a little bit better but it may not do the whole thing interpersonally are there relationship issues that are causing your depression causing you to feel hopeless and helpless and are there environmental or situational things that are causing you to feel hopeless and helpless and when I work with people in in counseling I really want them to look because most of the time for most people there are triggers or causes for their depression or anxiety and or addiction in every single one of these areas so full recovery means looking at what triggers that emotion or reaction in them in every single area and addressing it one by one you know picking what's the most important to change or what they think they can do right now and working from there examine what you hope to get out of the change by asking yourself what we call the miracle question if I woke up tomorrow and I wasn't depressed anymore what would be different and you know you want to look for a realistic outcome if you go into treatment for depression you're probably hopefully going to achieve the goal of happiness score if you go into treatment for depression if you're really depressed and you want to feel better and you're hoping that by treating your depression your relationship is suddenly going to improve that might not be an accurate goal because again there's probably a lot more stuff going on in the relationship than just you being depressed if your motivation or readiness seems to wane interventions may have been implemented too quickly or too many at once don't get overwhelmed and give yourself time to solidify the change don't make one change on monday and another change on wednesday you know if you can wait 30 days between each change that's ideal so start going to the gym get that down before you start trying to change your nutrition or vice versa if your interventions target the wrong issue and you start doing it and like i said you start going to the gym to lose weight in hopes that your relationship will improve and you're going to the gym and maybe you are losing weight but your relationship is not improving then you may not want to go to the gym anymore you're like well screw it what's the point interventions may be incomplete so if you're not targeting all of the things that are causing that emotion or reaction then you may not have a complete recovery you may not completely achieve your goal because there are other things that are still kind of holding you back you want to do what i call homework and some people hate that word so daily application if you want um to monitor your progress because just like you don't notice on a day-to-day basis that your children are growing a little bit and then all of a sudden your in-laws come over and they're like oh my gosh they've grown so big and you look at them and you're like you know what you are big you're looking me in the eye now um the same thing is true for your own behavior and physical changes so get a baseline when you start how often are you doing this or not doing this so if you're depressed and you're having difficulty getting out of bed and you're sleeping 17 hours a day that's a baseline you probably want to get that down to something closer to nine or ten um so you want to look and see are you starting to improve where you're not falling asleep at 4 p.m and sleeping until 11 or i can't do the math in my head but whatever that would be um regular use of new tools to strengthen memory connections and effectiveness is also important so if you decide that you're going to use mindfulness or distress tolerance skills using them once every blue moon is like me trying to use woodworking tools you know every time i go down to use the circular saw i've got to remember where the switch is and you know it's a little bit confusing because i use it once every six months at best so you need to use those tools every single day because the more you use those tools the more it strengthens the memory pathways something that you did yesterday and the day before and the day before is going to be easier than something you haven't done in six months so use those tools especially when you're learning them at least once a day every day and prioritize doing the work to achieve your behavior change or recovery as you define it look at why do you want to make this change how does prioritizing other things in life over your change help you achieve your ultimate goals and it may but a lot of times whatever this change you want to make is important to helping you achieve a rich and meaningful life so you may need to divide your energy a little differently and what needs to happen so you can remember to use these tools and you know do whatever you're doing to make your change you can set alarms to remind you to do you know mindfulness activities for example or worksheets in a self-help workbook you can have scheduled text messages you can set those to come to yourself to remind yourself if you're trying to drink water more frequently you can also set visual reminders if you're trying to eat more healthfully you can get the junk food out of the house or only keep it in one cabinet so when you open the cabinets you're seeing healthy foods you can put if you're trying to go to the gym put your gym bag by the door so you need to set reminders in your environment for this new behavior because it's not second nature yet and it's going to be generally a month to two months before it is second nature and that's a month to two months of doing it every day tailor the work to meet your learning needs so if you're doing introspective work self-help work some people like prose writing like writing in a diary or a journal other people like me prefer lists so don't force yourself to do something that you dread doing every day some people like free form again like writing in a journal or a diary where they can just kind of free associate other people prefer worksheets that you know complete the sentence answer the question about which helps prompt them to work on what whatever they're working on and some people prefer videos like this versus books i'm a visual learner so i would prefer to read any day then watch a video or listen to a lecture but what is it that works for you and keep it short one of the biggest mistakes people make is doing too much they decide i am going to make this change so it is going to dominate my life well that means everything else that's a priority in your life starts falling to the wayside that can only happen for so long and it also gets especially if you're doing depression or anxiety or PTSD work or something like that it gets exhausting and depressing so try to keep it to one hour each day which includes any logging or charting or list making that you do throughout the day so one hour of your time is not you know insurmountable work it into your daily routine if you're trying to do journaling or complete worksheets maybe do them while you're drinking your morning coffee or just before bed put it put it on your pillow so you see it and you do it just before bed or listen to an audio recording on the way to work or at the gym i have a lot of people tell me they listen to my podcast while they're walking on the treadmill score if that works for you awesome we talked earlier about socratic questioning and by using socratic questioning you strengthen the memory pathways to trigger using the skills on your on your own and you know make it more second nature so when something happens stop as soon as you notice that you made a mistake and ask yourself why do you think this happened look for vulnerabilities and why the old behavior is more beneficial like i told you in the evenings if i plan on going to the gym i usually don't make it out the door if i go home to change so i know why i didn't make it out the door i was exhausted and i just didn't have the get up and go to get up and go so my solution is either to meet somebody at the gym because i feel obligated if i tell someone i'm going to meet them there or to go in the morning what skills do you have that you think might have been useful in this situation so if you're trying to be more patient or intolerant and you lost your temper think about what could i have done differently what skills do i have that i could have used um and how might it have helped to use those skills if you would have used more effective communication skills and practiced the pause taken a breath and approached it from a more calm patient approach how might that have changed the situation in a positive way what's the benefit to that and likewise what's the downside to getting irritable with people and how do you think you can help yourself remember to use that skill in the future you know when you've got adrenaline coursing through your system it's hard to remember take a breath be patient but you can do it so you got to figure out what's going to help you remember to be patient i tend to i have my crucifix with me and when i start to get stressed i reach in and i grab on to that i usually have it in either on on a bracelet or in my pocket um and that can help me remember to be patient but what works for you so three steps to a breakthrough define your goal and make sure each step is rewarding more rewarding than the old behavior develop your change plan learning from prior experiences so if you've tried to change before you know what you stumble over eliminate those hurdles and increase and regularly refresh your motivation cognitively look at how well you're doing and remind yourself how well you're doing and look at the benefits of your change refresh your motivation environmentally you know what can you put in your environment that reminds you how well you're doing and where you're where you're going and refresh your social motivation make sure that you've got a cheering squad make sure that you've got um somebody that knows what you're doing that can um congratulate you or ask you you know how's it going there because it'll keep you on task more they say misery loves company well misery loves company but company also spurs competition if you and your friend are both trying to get in shape then you're probably not going to be the first one to drop out and go you know I don't want to go anymore you're probably going to if sally's going then I'm going to go so regularly look at ways to increase your motivation because those may change as life changes but it's important to have motivation if you're going to make a change and maintain it and everything we do and everything we do even after we've made a change when you're in the maintenance phase everything you do today is motivated by something so you want to increase your motivation and maintain it change requires a certain amount of momentum so if you're trying to change examine why prior attempts at change have failed explore why and what you can do to address it make sure your goals are specific you know you can answer the question I am I will be happier as evidenced by or I will be in better physical shape as evidenced by measurable you know you can look and either say yes or no you didn't achieve that accurate you chose the right goal realistic it's something you can you can actually achieve you know I am never going to run a six and a half minute mile again so if I set that goal I would be setting myself up for failure so is your goal realistic and make it time limited make sure that you put an end date on it so you have a goal to achieve not just you know eventually I'd like to that'll help you stay motivated as you learn new skills and ways of responding it's vital to practice them on a daily basis and not expect immediate perfection you've been doing the old way for 20 30 40 50 years so something that you learned today if you remember to do it once this week that's awesome that's one more time than you did it last week if you remember to do it five times next week you know again that's awesome but don't expect yourself to be perfect you're going to forget you're going to fall back on that more comfortable second nature behavior so it's going to take a while to learn this new stuff but it's okay progress not perfection sometimes motivation and compliance can be increased through social support so get friends if you need to join a support group for whatever you're doing whether it's depression or anxiety or weight loss or addiction there are support groups for everything put in environmental reminders about your changes so you know put a little sticky note on your bathroom mirror or you know for me I don't carry cash with me because that keeps me from going to vending machines because I tend to do that identify and regularly review the benefits of change as well as the drawbacks to the old behavior so if you're trying to eat healthier or you know be less anxious or whatever it is what are the benefits to all the effort that you're putting into this and so you can always answer the question yes this is worth the effort but also what are the drawbacks why do you not want to go back to that old way because that'll increase your motivation doubly and review and keep track of your progress on a daily basis you know if you're talking about feelings like depression I want to be less depressed use a Likert scale so one you are can't get out of bed you're so depressed five you're happy as a school kid three is it was a good day it wasn't great but it was good and rank yourself on that five point scale each day you know overall today my mood was and shoot for a four a four is a really good score if you can have a four you know five out of every seven days that's pretty awesome don't expect perfection none of us is deliriously happy every single day so but review your progress so you can see small incremental changes the ability to launch docsnipes.com and the happiness podcast is in large part due to the sponsorship from our sister site all ceuse.com providing continuing education and pre-certification training to addiction and mental health counselors around the globe since 2006 if you are a mental health counselor or addictions counselor needing ceuse or if you want to become an addictions counselor peer specialist recovery residence administrator or certified recovery coach please visit all ceuse.com unlimited ceuse starting at $59 and specialty certificate tracks starting at $89 go to all ceuse.com to learn more