Happy Spring Reader,

I wanted you to know that I have chosen to end my newsletters using this platform. I’m choosing to do this as a way to keep my costs down for new and existing clients. I am grateful for this opportunity to connect and I look forward to reconnecting in the future using another platform.

It's been a while since our last Newsletter. I have been focusing my time writing my first book, updating my clinical skill set and seeing lots of new clients. I apologize for not prioritizing our connection and I hope that you find this last newsletter helpful. If you have any questions or concerns, I invite you to send me an email at Sherian@BestSelf.Today

I thought I would share a little bit of the chapter I just finished writing on "How to Remodel Your Habits" as a way to help you spring forward and live your best life.

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How to Remodel Habits

I invite you to use the Living SMART Goal formula to help create new habits or to remodel existing habits. SMART stands for set a goal, monitor your progress, arrange your environment, recruit your support system, and treat yourself.

Set a Goal

Set a goal that is observable and measurable and broken down into small targeted steps. The most important aspect of a goal is how reachable it is. Nothing kills motivation and willpower faster than falling behind on your goal. Instead of shooting for the stars, reframe your intention to build a habit by doing the tiniest step possible to help yourself be successful. The idea is to build motivation and confidence while slowly building a sustainable healthy habit. Here are ideas to make your goal more reachable:

• Only do the first step of the goal
• Do the habit for two minutes
• Cut your goal in half and double the estimated completion time

Your overall goal is to train yourself to do new behaviors and take small steps towards your goal because building and remodeling a habit takes a lot of repetition. The more you do a habit, the more you will build it.

Monitor your Progress

When you are down or having a bad day, your mind will probably tell you that you are not doing enough or not making progress as a way to sabotage your success. The best way to counteract your negative self sabotaging criticism is to have tangible visible data and facts to prove your progress. Monitoring and tracking your behaviors plays a key role in increasing motivation, willpower, and confidence. For example when I was 50 to 55 years old, I competed in figure bodybuilding competitions against 35 year-olds and up. This was a bucket list item and I did not think I had what it took to win. As a matter of fact, I was secretly scared I would be booed off the stage for not having enough muscles, posing or walking poorly. Knowing that this goal was out of my comfort zone and knowing that it probably would not get easier as I get older, I created many specific goals and multiple ways to monitor my progress. This helped me feel like I was winning when I had fears and doubts. At my first show, I thought I would get last place and it turned out that I was in first place but at the last minute they moved a more experienced competitor to where I was standing. I dropped my trophy and broke her legs in shock when I realized that I was so close to winning first place and becoming a pro bodybuilder! If I had not been monitoring my behaviors and progress, I would have probably given up because I thought this goal was so far out of reach.

I encourage my clients to only monitor keystone habits such as exercise, nutrition, sleep, relaxation, time in nature, and mindset goals because these habits will remodel your brain and help you thrive. I recommend using a habit tracker by creating a spreadsheet on your smartphone and tracking your habits every night before you go to bed. Then setting a calendar alarm to remind yourself to do it. If you forget to track, you need to track as soon as you remember to build this habit change. If you want to remodel and build new habits, you have to monitor your progress because this helps you prove your inner critic wrong and doing new behaviors is a keystone habit that remodels your brain.

Arrange Your Environment for Success

Arranging your environment has a powerful and immediate effect on your behavior without needing to rely on a lot of motivation and willpower. Your environment will either increase or decrease the chances that you will do your target behavior.

Creating New Habits

For example, let's say you want to train your nervous system daily. You would need to do the following to arrange your environment for success:

1. Figure out the best time of day for your habit
2. Tie your habit to a time and location
3. Linking new behavior to something you already do such as going to the bathroom
4. Cue your environment if you want to train your nervous system while you are on the toilet by making sure you can see your biofeedback device or place a note by your toilet. If you have to get off the toilet to get your biofeedback device, you are more likely to skip it.
5. Create a contingency plan. When you go to the bathroom you will train your nervous system.

Remodeling an Unwanted Habit

You can also use the above strategies to help you remodel your habits by replacing unwanted habits with wanted habits and you can do more to remodel an unwanted habit.

For example, let’s say your goal is to get off your devices and get an extra hour of sleep so that you can feel refreshed, focused and on-task the next day. You could arrange your environment by reducing temptations and removing cues for the unwanted habit by doing the following:

• Set up environmental cues to remind you of your goal such as your sleep goal or sleep tracker on the homescreen of your devices.
• Track your sleep goal. You might invest in an activity tracker or a bed that tracks your sleep.
• Habit stacking - Take an inventory of your nighttime routine. Delete things to get you closer to your goal.
• Contingency implementation might look like: when the show is over, I will go to bed.
• Using a time commitment to restrict your future choices to benefit you. For example you can use website blockers such as Block Site and an automatic timer that turns off your internet and TV.
• Priming the environment by removing your device chargers from your bedroom into another room.

Arranging your world for success is my favorite tool for breaking an unwanted habit or creating a new habit. I invite you to look at what you can take out or add to your environment to help make your habits obvious and easy.

Recruit a Support Team

People in your life can either help cultivate healthy habits or get you off track. This is why it’s important to recruit people to support you. Here are a few ideas to recruit support from others to help you quit drinking.

1. Take an inventory of who is in your inner social circle
2. Get more people from your outer circle into your inner circles. For example, join a support group
3. Reduce contact with the people who drink a lot of alcohol to reduce cues and cravings.
4. Practice assertive communication.
5. Tell the people about your goal.
6. Get a sponsor, a therapist and a wellness coach to provide non-judgemental support and help getting back on track.

Remodeling your habits is hard work. You can’t do this alone. You need the support to help you thrive. When I was pursuing my bodybuilding goal I had the support of my wellness coach and psychotherapist to help me track, look at my behaviors and most of all help me get back on track after I had a slip up.

Treat Yourself

If a habit gives you fast rewards, your brain remembers it. This is dopamine at work, creating a reward system to create a habit. It automatically creates a negative feedback loop where cues and rewards unconsciously make you crave the behavior. For example, if you typically use wine to wind down your day and if you see a wine bottle or wine glass after a long hard day at work, you will subconsciously want a glass of wine. The relaxation felt with the wine creates the dopamine which creates a reward system of remembering and desiring the relaxation again the next time. We can apply this understanding to consciously creating healthy habits as well. In order to create a conscious healthy habit loop we need to pair a good feeling to the end of your new habit/behavior. Here are some things that can produce a good feeling to help reinforce the remodeled habit. If there is no dopamine, there is no habit.

• Reward your actions immediately after you complete your habit.
• Create a rule that you need to earn rewards. This means that you can not do the behaviors on your reward list without earning them. For example, I was telling my friend that I need to update my website, however I am holding back on doing that because I am using that as a reward for finishing my book.
• The More You Don’t Want To Do the Behavior - The More You Reward The Behavior. When you are feeling stuck, in a rut, or off-track increase the amount and frequency of your rewards. For example, the more I do not want to write, the more I create mini-rewards.
• Create a Reward Menu - brainstorm a rewards list and rate how much pleasure you think they will bring on a scale of 0-100 with 100 being a lot. After you write down all your ideas for rewards, classify them into the following groups: Things that cost money, things that cost time, and things you can just do.

In closing, good habits are not automatic. They must be driven into practice with awareness, rules, backup strategies, courage and patience!

It was a pleasure to connect with you!

Thank you for reading this long email and I hope it was helpful. You might be wondering what my book is about. It's about remodeling your brain using psychotherapy and lifestyle. It's about the latest research, getting motivated and creating keystone habits that help you thrive. I am super excited to be closer to my finish line. Again, I apologize for not writing newsletters consistently. I believe that we are all overwhelmed by the amount of emails we get in our inbox daily and I believe in offering cost effective psychotherapy and coaching.

Wishing you all my Best,

Sherian Lee, LMFT, ADHD, Wellness Coach

*I acknowledge that Best Self practice is located in Rancho San Antonio Park, in unceded Ohlone territory, now known as Los Altos. I honor and support the ancestors and present Ohlone people. ​
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