Mindset Shift to Change your Habits
We all get stuck in our habits. Behaviors that don’t serve us, harmful ways of coping, and unhealthy lifestyle patterns. Maybe you really want to get fit, see friends and family more, and stop drinking. But instead, you end up sitting on the couch (or desk chair) all day, ghosting family and friends when they call, and downing a bottle of wine every night. The problem is, once habits become ingrained, they get harder to change over time. Unless there’s a wake up call, or maybe a handful of wake up calls.
What next? We have the power to transform our lives. But it is easier to believe we don’t. So we don’t have to change our behaviors. Let everyone else change their attitudes to accommodate our toxic behaviors (or suffer through them). Without accountability, we get stuck, and never have to grow and evolve.
So how do we gain this accountability for our actions? Do we have good friends that follow through and call us on our Bad Service Behaviors (BS behavior)? Or do they simply suffer through it politely and then gradually distance themselves instead of informing you that they were hurt or offended. Change can only happen once self-awareness has occurred. And self-awareness can be a hard practice to cultivate when we are used to “masking” our problems and “getting on with it.”
Having an accountability partner is key: a reliable friend, partner, or therapist/ coach. If your accountability partner is good, they will not just “listen to you complain” and be a “kind friend.” They will challenge you, they will push you, they will help you set goals for transformation that are realistic and achievable. And they will follow up, they will check in, and they will care enough to call you out when you fall off the rails. Because we all fall off the tracks of becoming our best selves, and we only have to witness it, and course correct so we can achieve our greatest transformation.
In order to change, we first have to acknowledge that we are not perfect. Nobody is, and we need to move past that fantastical image that we hold about ourselves (that is not in line with how our closest friends see us). They love us for who we are and not who we appear to be. So remember this when you have a good friend who calls you on your Bad Service. They are doing you a favor.
