I take for granted the coaching mind-set: if something isn’t working I have been trained to identify the action which will resolve the problem.
In that period between Christmas and New Year, I reflected on the things that weren’t delivering the results I wanted in my work-life; I decided to give up my personal Facebook page. Have you ever noticed how bad habits creep up on you? What started out as a bit of fun – looking up old school friends, had turned into something negative for me; it was starting to feel like a job.
In previous blogs I have written about our minds being like factories. The following is a useful model, but it isn’t the law; there can be other contributing factors:
- At one end we have inputs through the senses: see, hear, (which includes conversations with other people and ourselves), feel, taste and smell: e.g. seeing and hearing a peer talk about a work colleague in a derogatory manner.
- The unconscious mind then processes those inputs based on experience, values and beliefs: e.g. the judgement made by the unconscious mind could be: ‘that statement was disrespectful’, (‘respect’ being the value – the thing that is important).
- The output is state of mind, which leads to behaviour, actions, decisions, performance etc.: e.g. an angry state of mind, which causes blunt communication with the peer.
I’d noticed that I’d started to feel irritated by what I was seeing in my newsfeed and had begun un-liking various pages. The final straw came when another celebrity died and there was a never-ending stream of posts about their death. Don’t get me wrong I was sad to hear the news too, but I didn’t want to focus on it for days on end.
As I began to think objectively about my Facebook habits, I realised that I had wasted a lot of time – 8 years! I would use Facebook to fill any ‘boring’, (code for peaceful), moments, which included whilst: eating breakfast; family members watched TV programmes I didn’t like; travelling or on holiday.
Additionally, I’d begun stockpiling books and was maintaining a waiting list on Amazon. I love reading. I was also taking a stupid number of pictures to ‘share’. This took time, not to mention digital storage space. Come on – who is really interested in the fact that I’ve just done my washing up in a bucket?
So, to adopt a coaching mind-set and achieve big change from small steps:
1. Identify what’s not working and the impact it is having on your state of mind – your state of mind could be the trigger for your change.
2. Notice what, how, when, where and with whom you carry out this habit.
3. Establish what you stand to gain e.g. clear book piles, expand knowledge, extra physical chats with family, more peaceful state of mind.
4. Decide what small change you could make to your ‘inputs’ within the next 24 hours, e.g. not look at Facebook feed by deleting app from devices.
5. There are various theories on how long it takes to embed a new habit; try it for a month.
