Brain Training For Success – Lesson 3.4 – Substitute Positive Habits For Your Negative Habits

Welcome to Lesson #17 of the Brain Training for Success course!

You learned about the negative effect that poor habits can have on your success.

Imagine being able to replace those negative habits with new, empowering habits.

In this lesson, we’ll find out how to accomplish that. You take the express lane to success when you can simultaneously eliminate poor habits and build effective habits.

To interrupt a negative habit, you could substitute a positive habit.

Those positive actions will then aid you in achieving the results you want in life.

Considering Tom’s scenario in the last lesson, let’s apply this information.

Tom’s best hope is to realize the effects these habits are having on his entire life and health.

Once he consciously connects with the damage he’s doing to himself by practising these habits and that he truly wants to change his physical self, he can then begin work to build the health and life he truly seeks.

He can replace his negative habits with positive ones.

To do this, Tom can:

1. Set his alarm on Saturdays for 8:30 a.m. He’ll still get an extra hour and a half of sleep.
2. Choose to eat a smaller breakfast of one piece of sausage, one biscuit, and one egg to experience the flavours he truly enjoys.
3. Show up to play basketball with the guys on Saturday mornings at 10:00 a.m.
4. Allow himself a couple of hours to rest after he shoots some hoops.
5. Repeat this behaviour every Saturday consistently for 66 times. At the least, Tom should avoid skipping Saturdays during the first months of his new behaviour.
6. Ensure he’s home on Friday nights so he’s in his own home (the same location) on Saturday mornings.
7. Establish situational cues to trigger him to perform the positive behaviours that will lead to habit formation. For example, Tom can lay out his basketball clothes and shoes so they’re the first things he sees when his alarm sounds.

Apply this type of thinking in your own case. Read the next hypothetical vignette and review the steps to changing behaviour from a negative habit to a positive one.

Case Vignette #2

Maybe you want to be healthier and lose a few pounds.

But for the last several years, you’ve taken the no-fuss, easy way out at breakfast time. You started your day with a cinnamon roll or doughnut. Let’s face it, it’s an easy breakfast and you can just reach for it and go.

How can you change this continuous loop of starting your day off all wrong just because of a negative habit to doing something that leads to your good health – a positive habit?

1. Acknowledge to yourself that your cinnamon roll / doughnut habit is a negative habit. It’s something you do over and over again, even though you feel you shouldn’t.

   Somehow, you’ve got to consciously connect what you’re doing to its negative effects, which in this case could be high cholesterol, excess pounds, and late morning headaches due to a lack of protein and overload of fats and carbs in your morning “meal”.

2. Consider ways you can replace your negative habit with a more positive habit. Ask yourself, what could I do instead?
3. You could stop buying cinnamon rolls and doughnuts. If they’re not in the house, you won’t engage in this unhealthy eating habit.



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