SEIKO Clear Mind, Clear Vision - Habits

Habits influence how we start our day, how we respond to pressure, and how we care for ourselves. By becoming aware of our routines and intentionally shaping them, we can create small behaviours that support both personal wellbeing and professional effectiveness. 

Some of our habits are obvious and some we may not even realise have crept in, some are positive and some could be changed. Its important we understand our own habits. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everyone, and welcome to this well-being bite-sized segment on habits. Today's session is going to be about understanding and having awareness of your own habits and considering and thinking about what those look like for you in your day-to-day life. Are they supporting you and serving you in a positive way, or do things need redesigning or changing maybe a little bit? So, as always, for wherever you are right now, just want you to take a couple of deep breaths in and out, just so we can settle into today's session, just being fully present. So being nice and comfortable, arms and legs uncrossed, and just taking a couple of nice deep breaths in and out. Just holding your breath and then slowly releasing in your own space and time. Just letting go of whatever your start of the day has looked like, letting go of anything going on in the afternoon where your mind might be wandering to, and just being fully present for this session right now, trusting that this is exactly where you are meant to be here, and right now focusing on you, focusing on your well-being, your mindset, and today's session, as I said, the purpose and theme being all around habits. Now, habits shape our day-to-day. Every single day, our actions and our reality, our situations, our responses to circumstances, to stresses, is all pretty much shaped around and based upon the habits that we have been employing in our day-to-day. And the biggest gift that you can give yourself is understanding yourself. And one of the things that is so vital to do is understanding your own habits. Now, James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits, some of you may have read Atomic Habits, he says that habits are your daily decisions and the actions that you perform on a day-to-day. So really it is about all those daily actions, the consistent actions that you do, behaviors that you do on that consistent basis. And when they do become automatic, then that is when it's becoming a habit. So thinking about why we do have habits, well, our brain is processing a lot of information day to day. If we think about everything that we are seeing, everything that we are hearing, everything that we are experiencing, that is a lot of information for your brain to take in. So if you imagine that your brain had to, you know, process all the information coming at it every single second or every hour of every day, that would be a lot for the brain to do. It will pretty much explode. It's not possible. So all the brain is trying to do every single day is to conserve and preserve energy. It's trying to find shortcuts and it's just really trying to make life as easy, effortless, and as convenient as possible for you. So it's looking at your past history, past experiences, past thoughts, and it's looking at your day-to-day and trying to do whatever it can to make things quick and easy as possible. And that's when some of these habits come into place. So, yep, your brain is trying to support you, but sometimes it can do that and actually not serve you in the best possible way at times, but it doesn't know that unless we try to reframe it and reorganize and you know replay some of these habits that we are doing to understand why we have them and think actually, are these actually helping me? And it's giving me a shortcut, or is there something that I can do to change it and still make it efficient and easy, but actually you'll make a positive difference in my life? So, the very first thing I want you to think about and really focus on is just having that awareness. So, hopefully, you've got a pen or paper next to you. If not, absolutely no problem at all. You can just make a mental note. But what I want you to think about is just the awareness of the habits that you have in your day-to-day. Now, some of them might be super obvious, and some of them you might think, oh, yeah, actually, that has now become a habit. So I want you to think about your day-to-day. Okay, think about maybe your morning routine. So, what is it you do when you first wake up? Do you get ready? Do you have a shower? Do you head straight for the coffee machine? Do you you know put alarm on snooze, you know, a few times and you do that every single day before you get out of bed? Think about your morning routine. What habits are in place at the minute and things that you're doing consistently? So, you know, the putting the alarm on snooze, does that become a consistent thing? Is that something you do daily, or is it a one-off? So, thinking about consistent habits that you have. So, think about your morning routine. Okay, just writing those things down, doesn't matter how big or small it seems, just writing that down, and then considering your workplace routine. So, when you go into your place of work, whether it's in the office, whether it's in practice, in your clinical settings, think about what you first do. Do you go into your consulting room and set up your equipment, maybe clean the area? Do you put the kettle on as soon as you walk into your place of work after greeting your colleagues? Do you check the clinic diary and see who's booked in for that day? You know, what are your habits when you first walk into your practice? What are your habits throughout your working day? So think about, you know, do you skip your lunch break or do you shorten your lunch break or sometimes do you overrun? And, you know, because you want catching up on referrals and things like that. Do you end your working day in a negative mindset? Do you know have that same narrative? Okay, it's been really busy, it's been really tiring. Do you have that same thought as you end the day? How about in your actual lunch itself? What habits have you got then? Maybe in the afternoon, do you have a ritual at 2 p.m.? You always have a cup of tea and those two biscuits that are in that biscuit tin every day. Has that become a habit now? Think about your evening routine. Okay. What's your evening routine like? Is it, you know, after dinner? Maybe you go and go to the gym, maybe on certain days, maybe you have, you know, your family meal and then you do a hobby or you put the TV on. What's your bedtime routine like? You know, are you scrolling on your phone? Are you picking up your book that's on your bedside table? Do you have a skincare routine? Do you have a meditation routine? So I just want you to think about and just having that awareness in your day-to-day. Okay. This is not about any judgment whatsoever. Okay, this is purely about awareness. Okay, purely about awareness. So thinking about your morning routine, your day-to-day routine, your eating routine and patterns. What has become habits? Like I said, some might be very obvious. Some you might think, actually, this is like developed in the last three to four weeks. So today really is about awareness. I'm just going to give you a little moment to consider your routine, your habits, your behaviours. Has it become a habit in terms of how you talk to people, how you respond to people, how you react to people, certain people? Maybe there's triggers with certain people, triggers with certain working environments. Maybe your mood is dependent on certain situations and you have a habit of becoming much more irritated in the afternoon, or maybe you notice when you first walk into your place of work you're already feeling overwhelmed. So just consider some of these feelings and actions that may have become habits. Maybe it's become a habit that you do run late to work every morning and that puts that overwhelm and stress in place. Maybe there's weekend habits. So just really, you know, honing in on your day-to-day because the only one that can truly control your day-to-day is you. So yes, there will be different situations and things going on. So I know you have to maybe go to work and there'll be family commitments maybe and other things going on, but ultimately, in terms of your mind spit and how you're responding to some of these things, your eating, your drinking, your exercise, your movement, your responses, that is all based on how you are dealing with certain situations, and that and ultimately that does come down to some of these habits that are in place. You know, are you skipping breakfast every morning? And that's making you maybe hungry in the morning when you're at work, making them more irritable. Maybe in you know, as I said, in your lunch break, you're still in your working space, so you're constantly just thinking about work from maybe nine o'clock in the morning till 5 pm because you've not actually given yourself a mental break by removing yourself from that physical working space. So just thinking about some of these habits, and then when you've got that list down written next to you, I just want you to think about maybe grouping some of these habits. So grouping some of these habits in terms of are they energizing you, supporting your well-being, or are they draining you, maybe setting you back a little bit? So just looking at that list of habits you've got in front of you, maybe just putting a little tick next to them, if it is serving your well-being. So maybe the first thing you do when you wake up is you know, you have that glass of water, you feel hydrated, so that's setting you up, and you maybe say a good intention for the day, so that's a good habit, you can put tick next to it. Or maybe you know you do put that alarm on snooze a few times, and then you're rushing, and then you're running late, and that's become a habit, and actually that's not really serving you because it's not setting you up for the day as much as you know positively as you would like. So maybe just put a little cross or a little line next to that as well, so that's not really serving you. So just looking at the habits you've got going on. I know in the evenings when my when I'm watching you know Netflix with my husband, if he's got the remote, he will always tempt me and say, Shall we watch 10 more minutes of the next episode? And I know that 10 more minutes um isn't 10 minutes, it's when I'm pretty much re watching that entire next episode. So now I noticed that was becoming a habit and making me tired in the evening, uh or in the morning, should I say, and so I changed it and I kept the remote. So the minute that one episode is over, I am turning it off without any temptation there. So you know, just sometimes just noticing some of these habits can creep into into place. So just you know, putting a little tick, putting a little question mark if it's supporting your well-being or if it's draining your well-being. Okay, so I'm just gonna give you a moment to think about that. And then what I want you to really do is think about the days ahead of you today, but think about the days coming up. Okay, now we just start noticing some of these habits that you have put into place. Okay, so every habit that we have put in is you know, like I said, the brain is trying to give us shortcuts and and make things easier for us. So, for example, maybe it's 11 o'clock in the morning and I'm getting packaged and I'm working from home. I know that if I go into the kitchen, the first cupboard in front of me, I open it, I open that cupboard, and there's a pack of crisps there. So I could easily open that, you know, that cupboard, open that pack of crisps, and within two seconds I can start eating something. So the brain's thinking, okay, Sheena's hungry, shortcut, quick and easy, bag of crisp, open in one second and start eating. Or I can start maybe preparing some fruit, which would then mean you know I've got to wash the fruit, I've got to then chop it up, and then I'm gonna wash the maybe the plates and the knife and things like that afterwards so the brain's thinking, she's hungry right now, that's gonna take time and effort, let's just stick to the crisps, okay? And then every day in the morning, when that same hunger happens at 11am, the brain now knows crisp, okay, because it's now become a ha a habit because I'm repeating that behavior every day. So what I then need to then change is maybe you know prepare that fruit in the morning or the night before, um, so it's ready so that I can just open the fridge and take it out as still the same amount of time. So it's really becoming aware of some of these patterns, actions, thoughts, feelings that you are doing in your day-to-day. And I want you to start thinking about these habits that you have instilled, maybe consciously but sometimes not realizing that they have become you know in place. So over the next few days, be aware of these habits. Notice if they are serving you, a positive purpose, serving your well-being, or if they are actually not serving you and helping you, and just consider things that you could maybe change. It's not about stopping them because that's really hard to do when you've got a habit in place, but maybe changing them. Okay, so what can you change? I can maybe change and you know have that fruit pre-prepared. I change the habit. I'm still watching that Netflix episode, but I'm keeping that remote. You know, I am in the morning being accountable and having one snooze instead of five snoozes on my halam, and then getting having something to incentivize myself to wake up. So that could be there's a coffee waiting for me in the morning, or something that I can use to incentivize myself that I can, you know, get up and go. Um, so just really thinking about what changes you can make. But the next few weeks, in the next week two, three, and four, we'll be talking a bit more about the habits you can change, things like habit stacking, um, reframing, and changing as well. But this week's session really is about your awareness of your own habits, understanding why you have them, and just thinking about your personal habits and where they are stemming from, where they are implemented from morning to evening, and what you can start considering in terms of making better changes for yourself. But otherwise, thank you so much for joining me in this very first segment on habits, and I really look forward to hearing your progress in terms of understanding your habits and thinking about changes. But as I said, the next two, three, four weeks, when you have your handouts given to you, they will be talking more about the changes you can utilize for yourself and how you can create habitual changes for you. Thank you so much.