When you start Tiny Habits in your writing life, it helps you reach your goals faster.

What are Tiny Habits? Dr. BJ Fogg – a Behavioral Scientist and originator of the term – says that a Tiny Habit is when you do something very, very small. Like floss one tooth, do two pushups or drink one sip of water. In his inspiring TEDx talk – Forget Big Change, Start With One Tiny Habit – BJ Fogg shares tips on how you can change your behavior for good.

Let me share with you what I’ve been learning…

3 Steps to Start Tiny Habits…

I’ve needed to get out of what has seemed like a pattern of fear and procrastination. I felt like I was in Psychology 101 again, but this time I was Pavlov’s dog stuck in a repeating habit pattern.

Here’s what I’ve been learning and have come to realize about myself: Fear can be a habit. Left unchecked, fear can become a unconscious loop that goes round and round in our heads.

Many of our habits get triggered by things outside of us(smell, sounds, etc.). Each trigger in your brain results in a behavior and every behavior results in a reward. From a neuroscience perspective this is called a Habit Loop.

In other words, chances are very high that the fears holding you back from achieving your goals are possibly 10, 20 or even 30 years in the making. These fears have become a unconscious pattern that repeats itself over and over again.

Most of the time we have these fears and don’t know how to get out of it, which has definitely been my struggle. I had a elementary school teacher who told me that my writing was like chicken scratchings, and since he was the teacher I respected his opinion. I believed and accepted his words to be truth.

Since that time(many years ago), I’ve literally struggled and battled everyday to get words on the page. I’ve worked hard to push past resistance that showed up in the form of my inner critic. My negative habit loop has gone something like this: my writing isn’t good enough; nobody will read my books; maybe I should quit now, I’ll most likely fail anyway…. and much more.

I’ve had to consciously work toward getting out of this destructive habit loop.

Fear – whether conscious or unconscious – causes you to procrastinate and stops you from achieving your goals.

I didn’t want to continue to let procrastination or fear win, so in the last few months I’ve been learning more about how to get rid of both.

I have taken steps to understand how to change my unhelpful habit loop. I’ve been choosing everyday to take work on Tiny Habits, and it’s been so encouraging. I hope it helps you too.

Here are 3 Steps to Begin Tiny Habits to Help You Reach Your Goals:

1.Take a sheet of paper and write down One Fear you realize that has been holding you back from reaching your goals. Write down whatever the biggest fear is for you that you feel stops you from achieving your goals. For example: For this step I wrote down my #1 fear: I have a big fear that my writing won’t be good enough and that readers won’t want to read my romance novels. 

2.Write down One Tiny Action that you can take immediately – in the next 24 hours – that will move you AWAY from the fear you have and TOWARDS the goal you want to achieve. Think about a tiny step you could take that would move you in the direction of your goal.  Since my big fear has been that my writing won’t be good enough, it has caused me to procrastinate on writing my romance novels.

For example: My One Tiny Action that I’ve chosen to work on, is to write 250 words every single day – without judging my words, and writing those words wether I felt like writing or not. I’ve chosen to just do it.

Also, don’t forget to Celebrate your One Tiny Action 🙂

3.After you have done that One Tiny Action for 7 days, then ADD One More Tiny Habit to your daily goals. Just add something really small to the habit you’ve already started developing in your life. For example: When these 7 days are finished I will add another 250 words to the words I’m already writing everyday.

That’s all there is to it. Simple right?

Some Keys to Remember with Habits.

• You can stack Tiny Habits on top of each other.
• What puts most people in the fight, freeze or flight mode is when they think of the Big Goal and they think of all the things they have to do – and then feel overwhelmed. When we feel overwhelmed, our brain switches to fear of success, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of shame, etc.
• What will happen as you build these Tiny Habits, is that you’ll start to become a person who feels the emotion of fear and then you take a little action anyway towards what you want to achieve.

Remember: Everyone feels fear. It’s normal. It’s how you handle it and what you do with that fear that matters. So take one small step anyway, when you feel fear.

You’ll be amazed and what happens as you take action on One Tiny Habit for 7 days. I hope you’ll be so inspired by your results, that you’ll want to repeat the process for another 7 days, and so on.

What’s One Tiny Habit you can begin in the next 24 hours that will move you toward your goals? Please comment, I’d love to hear your thoughts!