ACT: How to Change Your Life in Three Simple Steps
By Michael Dangovian
May 31, 2016
These days, as a culture we have a skewed view of how to be healthy. Just take a look at your Facebook feed, or your email inbox, or watch a few minutes of television. You’ll be inundated with information about the latest fad “diet” while simultaneously being buried in ads for food that is—at best— the nutritional equivalent of cardboard.
We’ve gotten away from what true health looks like. We’ve lost the ability to even understand how health actually works.
Here’s the truth: Being healthy is a habit. It’s something you do again and again.
And again.
Here are three simple steps you can take to build that habit—and revolutionize your life in ways you probably can’t even imagine at this moment.
We call it the ACT method: Awareness, Connection, & Transformation.
Put simply, here’s how it works: Awareness is just knowing WHAT you’re doing and Connecting with those facts and behaviors on an honest level. Soon you do it again and again, and then it becomes a habit, and you create a Transformation.
Got it?
Great. Let’s dig a little deeper.
AWARENESS
Just knowing what you’re doing makes a huge difference in adjusting your unhealthy behaviors.
We live in a society that is addicted to distraction. Awareness is the opposite of avoidance. We all do it. It’s far easier to avoid thinking about the parts of ourselves that we don’t like than to confront them. It’s human nature. But it’s also one of the primary things that stands in the way of developing healthy habits.
But before you can make any changes, you have to be AWARE of what those things are. Meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, and goal setting are all fantastic methods for cultivating awareness.
Remember, we aren’t fixing anything yet. This first step is all about just identifying what’s going on with our thoughts.
CONNECTION
Once you’ve identified what you are thinking, the next step is to understand where those thoughts come from. Every thought you have is like a plant. It grows out of the soil up into the air, but it has roots you can’t see. Your thoughts are the same. They don’t exist in isolation.
So, by examining the WHY behind your thoughts—both the negative and the positive ones—you are able to begin to see things for what they really are.
Ask yourself how a certain thought makes you feel. Then ask yourself “why does it make me feel that way?” Look around that thought and try to identify its connections. Is it something from your childhood? Does it remind you of a certain person? Are the roots of that thought based on something negative or positive?
By first identifying a thought or a habit, and then understanding its connections, you can begin to understand why you do certain things without even thinking about them.
TRANSFORMATION
You’re able then to begin to replace that bad habit with a better one. Step by slow step, repeating that good action will literally rewire your brain.
And after a while, that good action will become something you do without even thinking about it. Which is what we call a “habit.”
Transformation comes when you have that connection with the why and how of what you do and why you do it.
I hope after reading this that you now have a better understanding how bad habits are broken—and new ones are formed.
Here’s your challenge: Follow these steps.
Don’t give into the ignorance.
And learn to listen to your body.
As you practice awareness, as you get to know yourself, you’ll be amazed at who you are becoming!
