Lesson 5:
Tipping Habits
Hey there rebel,
So far we talked about habits and your most crippling limiting beliefs, and then we looked into your core challenges, the reasons why they're there, and how to tackle them. We also touched on your natural ways and how if you want to be in flow, you must bet on your strengths rather than focus on your weaknesses.
And now we're going to talk about my favorite thing:
Tipping habits.
Most habits are inconsequential.
Sorry, but that’s the truth.
For example, whether you change your habit of washing your teeth after every meal or just leave it for morning and evening (or one or the other), it probably won’t change more than the health of your teeth.
And if that’s your main goal, do it!!!
However...
“If you want to make truly big and meaningful changes in your life and creative work, you’ll have to dig deeper.”
It’s a lot easier to change things by adopting a couple of habits that directly address your core challenges, rather than randomly change everything and spend all this time and energy on things you might end up reverting on.
The goal here is to make it EASY and to make it STICK.
What is a Tipping Habit?
You know that book by Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point?
Basically this is why I called them tipping habits, because the tipping point is where everything changes. When something reaches the point of overflowing after consistent change. For example, if you post consistently on your blog, there will come a day when it will explode. That's the tipping point.
“A tipping habit is when you do something seemingly small, but after you do it a while, it changes your whole life. ”
And that's what we should aim at here.
I don't mean that you shouldn't create habits that are tiny and specific, but I do believe that we don't have time to spend all of our effort and energy into changing every single bad habit we have and trying to make it stick.
You'll just go crazy if you do that!!!
Rather, I propose focusing our efforts on those tipping habits that will affect not only the thing you want to improve, but everything.
Let me illustrate...
Imagine you suffer from perfectionism, and it’s really bad.
It’s ruining your flow, it’s making you exhausted, and it’s not doing you any favors or even making your work better, so it has to go. But before you tackle it, you think about what could be causing it. You do some soul-searching and it turns out that you’re not certain that people need what you create!
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat.
You definitely want to change that and stop wasting time, so…
You brainstorm some possible things you can do to change that habit, some behaviors that could replace it, etc. Your list of better habits includes:
- hitting publish right after you create it,
- establishing a rule of no editing more than 30 minutes,
- talking to people and asking them why they’d buy what you create,
- repeating loving affirmations to overturn your damaging mindset
“What you notice immediately is that some of these ideas address the symptom and some of them the cause. ”
For example, when your head hurts, you can take a pill for temporary relief, but if it hurts every day, you go to the doctor so they can treat the underlying cause. And same goes for your perfectionism and its underlying cause. If you only "treat" perfectionism, the underlying cause will manifest in other ways.
On the other hand you also notice that some of your ideas go so deep, that they can probably fix some other problematic habits that you have. With the loving affirmations (or whatever your alternative is), they might not just help your perfectionism, but also boost your confidence and make you share your work more, not to mention create with more zest and more flow.
Basically, if you attack the root cause, you’ll be more successful and your “treatment” will last longer. Also, if most of your bad habits stem from the same 3 core challenges that you have, then you just have to address those, instead of coming up with a million different solutions to just 3 problems.
Finally, some habits are indeed more powerful than others and can just overturn everything. Some habits are so powerful, they trigger major change.
And those are the tipping habits. So lets start there.
My 2 major tipping habits.
- Learning to create every day and—
- Loving affirmations
On one hand, learning to create every single day completely removed my self-consciousness around my writing and there was no more writer’s block. There was also no perfectionism because I wrote so much I didn’t have the energy to be precious about my sentences or anything that didn’t matter. Also, writing every day improved my skill and gave me confidence to do it even more.
Who knew one little habit could change everything?!
I also do loving affirmations, which means:
- Repeating a statement to yourself that is loving.
- Reacting kindly when things go wrong.
“Think of it as planting a cheerleader in your brain to negate, and eventually become louder than, your inner critic.”
You can repeat affirmations:
- when you meditate
- just as you fall asleep
- when you wake in the morning
- when you do something repetitive
- as you wait in queues
- etc.
When you repeat "loving affirmations," you're accessing that part of your brain that forms your beliefs, so your new beliefs can override the old ones.
You can also REACT in a more positive way, and I don't mean the situation, but to yourself. We tend to be very hard on ourselves and beat ourselves up, and this eventually corrodes our confidence and creates all kinds of limitations. Instead, you can build the habit of being kind to yourself whenever possible, which, in time, is going to override your critic's malevolent influences.
Being kind to yourself is the best habit, ever.
For example:
You suck! - can become - You rock!
You're so slow! - can become - You're doing great, keep at it!
Ah, you fucked it up. - can become - It's OK, we'll do better next time.
And so on...
TAKE ACTION.
2. Then focus on it every chance you get – for me it's mostly before I fall asleep (I explain why here) and when I meditate.
3. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.
“Picking a strong affirmation that addresses your core fear will change everything because it works on such a deep level that it overturns your limiting beliefs & mindsets.”
And it happens pretty quickly. This one time it took me only 3 days to already feel better after starting my night affirmation. It was so powerful that my brain went from thinking awful things about me to being more compassionate.
One of my tipping affirmations:
I deserve to be happy and successful.
The wording of your affirmation matters a LOT because your brain just accepts the words you throw at it. And the more you repeat them, the more it believes you. Which means that you cannot throw any negatives at it, ever. Even if it's something that makes sense, like "I'm not worried about money," your brain is going to hear "worried" repeated to it, and that's the word that'll stick.
You may feel weird repeating things to yourself that are not 100% true (they probably are, but you don't believe them) at first, but trust me, your overall mood will shift to a more positive level, you'll operate on a higher frequency and attract amazing things, and finally, your own bad mindsets will no longer be in your way. Because they will be replaced by better, healthier mindsets.
So, the reasons for my wording are:
- My core fear is that I don't deserve things.
- Happy is just as important as successful, and now I’m focusing on the balance because previously I acted like successful was not a part of happiness, but actually it’s a very big part of it.
“If you want to find your tipping affirmation, make sure it addresses your biggest creative fear/core challenge.”
And make sure you include your current priority/goal in there because if you don’t, you won’t get the results you want. So if your goal is to complete a project but you can’t because you get bored, go ahead and explore WHY you get bored, and then use the answers and the words that come back to you.
(Just don't use any negatives because then you'll just get negative.)
Now let's answer some key questions:
- When it comes to creativity, what scares you the most? What are some of the biggest fears that run through your head as you create, as you share your creations, and as you think about your creative dreams?
- What is your current goal? What's the most important thing you have to do right now? (Choose immediate over ultimate.)
- Is there anything from your Lesson 3 lists that raises red flags?
- What could you do right now that could potentially tackle those fears, get you those results, and become a better/tipping habit?
- What kind of wording can you use (in your affirmations, quotes on the wall, etc.) to keep the limiting beliefs at bay?
And finally, I want to ask you to do something difficult:
Pick ONE affirmation and stick with it for a while. Or pick ONE tipping habit and stick with it for a while before you work on another one. Think of it as a habit - it will take some time to solidify, which means you can't change it every day or use a ton of affirmations, or else your brain will get confused.
This is why I pick my wording very carefully and why I focus on tipping habits, because you need to devote some time to each, if you really want them to work.
Step 3: How do I know if it's tipping or not?
Good question, smarty pants!
I would say that you can never know for sure, but here's what I know:
When you do something to change a really bad mindset that you have, whatever you do will be a tipping habit. If you meet your biggest fear half way, it's going to be a tipping habit. Basically, anything that goes DEEP within your psyche has a tipping potential because it doesn't just treat the symptom.
It treats the cause. :)
All of those bad habits and mindsets have their origin points in your brain, so it make sense to get to the source, as they say.
Another way to make sure it's a tipping habit is - if it makes you feel good, exponentially good, then it's a tipping habit/affirmation. For example, when I choose affirmations for my "loving meditation," I don't just go with anything, but rather, I try a few and whichever makes me feel good, that's the winner.
“If you get an emotional reaction to your loving affirmation, a positive one, that’s a guarantee that it’s the right one. ”
And finally, just try something! You're not going to figure things out by thinking about them, but by doing and trying and experimenting. Fortune may favor the brave, but life favors DOERS. For those of us who stand still, frozen in terror, there will be no treasures and no rewards and no progress.
Those things are reserved for the action takers.
Story.
Listen to this story about how a tiny habit turned HUGE in time.
P.S. Let me know how you're getting on in the comments. :)
