Habit Evolution, Yoga + Ayurveda

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Habit Evolution, Yoga + Ayurveda

In Podcasts, SI by Cate Stillman

A few years into my career as an Ayurvedic Practitioner I awakened to the reality that my job was much less about giving people really useful information to help them feel better. I awakened to the reality that my job was to help people change their habits.

Fast forward a few more years, and I’ve created the Yoga Health Coaching Certification program. The program is entirely based on helping people who LOVE yoga to evolve their habits in line with their wellness goals…. and open them to the possibility of aging gracefully and not suffering the diseases of modern culture or the diseases of their ancestors.

In my exploration around habit evolution I came across a few cutting-edge thinkers who are well ahead of the curve on how we change our habits. James Clear has put his time in and his noggin to work on figuring out how to help people create better habits. I invited the Yoga Health Coaches into an interview with James. We all decided you should hear it too.

James (www.jamesclear.com) is a habit-evolving genius who enlightened us for a solid hour on how to cultivate better habits. You will learn:

Why you need to start with your Identity
How to change a habit
How to discover why you repeat an outdated habit
Why repetition beats performance every time
How to schedule your way to being superhuman

One of the big breakthroughs James points out is that to change your habits you have to decide and commit to the kind of person you want to become.

: Evolve your Habits by consciously choosing your identity.

This needs to be crystal clear in your mind’s eye. If you’re a smoker and you see yourself as a smoker and you like being a smoker… it’s going to be impossible to quite smoking. Much more so than the difficulty of plowing through the physical addiction, which James points out only lasts a few days, biochemically speaking. More on identity evolution for habit changing:

“Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a reflection of the type of person that you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself.”

– Foundations of Strength by James Clear

Decide the Kind of Person who Want to Become

Most of us haven’t been indoctrinated into habit change with this crucial step. To get it, answer this question: I want to the kind of person who ______________.
Here … do it as an exercise. I want to the kind of person who _____________________________.
I want to the kind of person who also _____________________________.
And, I want to the kind of person who _____________________________.

You need to decide what kind of person you want to be… and then you get to implement the kind of habits that a person like that has. Those habits are the 2nd order stuff: the strategy. But if you skip the identity… good luck with the strategy. It’s a cart before the horse thing, and when things are out of sequence… they don’t work so good.

Goals vs. Scheduled Practice

“The schedule is your friend.” James Clear Performance and appearance goals are great, but they aren’t the same as habits. If you’re already doing a behavior, then these types of goals can help drive you to the next level. But for most of us, they aren’t grounded in a scheduled reality. Scheduling in the behavior (the habit) that if done repetitively will guarantee the goal… now you have a plan. The general rule of thumb in this arena is to focus on scheduled repetition. Make your scheduled habits do-able…. so easy you can’t blow it off. In Yoga Health Coaching this is the four legs to the chair, so to speak. If you want to lose 20 lbs. for example… but you don’t schedule an early dinner for yourself repetitively, or most of the time, well good luck with the 20 lbs. Cutting out gluten or meat or whatever you decide to cut out this time won’t work if you continue to have the majority of calories at the end of your day.