Mostafa Zaeyin
Photo Credit: https://medium.com/@karindk/gtd-e-a-arte-de-fazer-acontecer-7ef212e6c920
It was late in the evening, and as usual you were thinking of making a change in your life. You decided you were going to lose weight by doing exercises daily, and you were highly motivated at the start, but since it was 9:00 PM and you had to go bed in order to wake up early and not miss your morning lecture, you decided to start the following day.
The next morning you woke up late and missed the lecture as usual and found yourself not the same person you were before sleeping, with no motivation to start anything new.
I bet that each one of us had experienced a similar scenario so many times, and each time we wake up regretting and guilty of failing to do what we were telling ourselves we were going to do.
We all have goals, and the first thing most of us think about when we consider how to achieve them is Motivation.
But, motivation is not the thing we need, maybe it plays a big role, but it’s definitely not the key to achieve our goals. What we truly need is a highly practical strategy, like the one called Implementation Intention.
Implementation intention is a self-regulatory strategy in the form of an "if-then" (“if situation Y is encountered, then I will initiate behavior Z in order to reach goal X”) that can lead to better goal attainment, as well as helping in habit development and behavior modification.
While goals specify what you intend to achieve (In our example, losing weight is the goal and doing exercises is the behavior), Implementation Intention specifies the behavior you intend to take and the situational context in which you intend to implement that behavior (as soon as my alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m. each morning I will wash my face, brush my teeth, get a glass of water, and start doing exercises for 30 minutes).
That is, implementation intentions specify the what, when, and where.
Most people talk about making a change and achieving goals. Words like ‘motivation’, ‘willpower’, and ‘desire’ get tossed around a lot. But the truth is, we all have these things to some degree.
If you want to make a change, then you have some level of “desire” and what transforms that desire inside of you and turns it into a realistic action isn't your level of motivation, but rather your plan for implementation.
What really stands between you and achieving your goals is a lack of clarity, not a lack of motivation or inspiration. You don’t need to wait for the time to be right to make an improvement, once your implementation intention has been set, your goals will be achieved and you will no longer wait to be motivated to start.
And the simple way to apply this strategy to your habits is to fill out this sentence:
I will [Behavior] at [Time] in [Location]…
For example:
I will work out for 30 minutes at 7 a.m. in the gym.
I will study 2 lectures for forty minutes at 6 p.m. while setting on my desk.
I will learn Spanish at 9 p.m. in my room.
With it being the new year and all, it’s time to achieve your goals and start by approaching them with new strategies.
Start by planning out when and where you will perform the specific behaviors that lead to your goal, and let your environment trigger your actions and assist you in achieving your goals, do not just depend on your level of motivation.
Commentaires