My nephew had just died, my life seemed ready to fall apart, and flossing one tooth had made me feel better? That’s nuts. And this made me want to feel that way again.īut then I worried that I was losing it. I felt calmer and even a little energized. It was like a warm space had opened up in my chest where there had been a dark tightness. I smiled in the mirror and said one word to myself: “Victory!” I thought to myself, “Well, even if everything else goes wrong today, I’m not a total failure. One early morning, after a particularly bad night, I glanced in the mirror and thought to myself, “You know, this could be the day when the wheels totally fall off.” A day of not just setbacks but paralyzing failure.Īs I went about my morning routine, I picked up the floss and flossed one tooth. I was so anxious most nights that I would get up at 3 AM and do the only thing that calmed me down: watch videos of puppies on the Internet. Navigating the fallout of those events meant I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in weeks. A new business I’d started was failing, and my young nephew had died tragically. I stumbled on it at a time when I felt so much stress that I could barely get through each day. I discovered the power of celebration when I was trying to pick up a tooth-flossing habit. Celebration is both a specific technique for behavior change and a psychological frame shift. This good feeling wires the new habit into your brain. You can create this good feeling by using a technique I call “celebration.” When you celebrate, you create a positive feeling inside yourself on demand. Feeling good is a vital part of the Tiny Habits method. I want to show you how to gain a superpower - the ability to feel good at any given moment - and use this superpower to transform your habits and, ultimately, your life. We focus only on our shortcomings as we scamper through our days and trudge through our years. In my research, I’ve found that adults have many ways to tell themselves “I did a bad job” and very few ways of saying “I did a good job.” Like Linda, we rarely recognize our successes and feel good about our accomplishments. Unlike the woman on the postcard, Linda’s every thought at the end of the day was about all the things she didn’t get done or had done badly: the Cheerios on the back seat of the car (“I should have vacuumed it”) the dirty plates in the sink (“I should have washed them my mom would never left them”) her son’s face falling after she snapped at him for teasing his sister (“I should be more patient”), and so on. She loved being home and wouldn’t have had it any other way, yet she felt constantly underwater and overwhelmed. Linda was a full-time stay-at-home mom with six kids under the age of 13. It represented an attitude of self-acceptance that she badly wanted but felt was too difficult to adopt. It made her smile, then it made her think. Above the woman’s perfectly coiffed head was a talk bubble: “If the kids are alive at five o’clock, I’ve done my job.” It was a black-and-white illustration of a 1950s housewife talking on the phone. Linda had a postcard taped on her fridge next to her kids’ finger-painted masterpieces. Here, he explains how the power of celebration can wire new behaviors into our lives - and make us feel great in the process. In working with thousands of people, Fogg has found one thing really helps fledgling habits to stick: Celebrating them. After a while, you can increase the number of push-ups and expand into different exercises. Taking 30 seconds or less, a Tiny Habit is fast, simple and will grow For example, instead of having “get in shape” as a vague and intimidating goal, do two push-ups every time you make your morning coffee - that’s your Tiny Habit. If we really want to make lasting changes in our lives, Fogg believes we need to break them down into specific, easy behaviors (what he calls Tiny Habits), and find ways to trigger and reward them. His Tiny Habits method states that a new behavior happens when three elements come together: motivation, ability and a prompt. Psychologist BJ Fogg is the founder and director of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University - he’s coached over 40,000 people in his behavior change methods and influenced countless more. Celebrating is a great way to reinforce small changes - and pave the way for big successes. Sometimes, all you need is a shot of positive feeling and emotion, a dose of celebration. Krystal Quiles It doesn’t take 21 days to wire in a habit, says psychologist BJ Fogg.
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