All About You FRIDAY – The Power of a Tiny Habit

In 2019, BJ Fogg, founder and director of Stanford Behavior Design Lab, authored a book called Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. His studies revealed there is a painful gap between what people want and what they actually do. We want better relationships and more sleep. We want to make more money and be more productive. We want to exercise more and eat better. And when we fail, we internalize that failure.

Good news. He says we are not the problem, our approach to change is.

He recommends three things:

Stop judging yourself
Break aspirations into tiny behaviors
Embrace mistakes and use them to move forward

I heard about a study done with a group of beginner runners. They were divided into two groups and given the same training plan. One group was told to track their workouts. The other was told to simply track when they put on their running shoes. The second group was more consistent and successful in completing the training program than the first.

This started me thinking about a tiny habit I inadvertently started a little over three years ago. I have been writing my mentor Bob at 5 a.m. on most weekdays since the spring of 2004. It is a habit that has helped me navigate the complexities of my life.

When I met my partner three years ago, I realized I needed to explain that habit. How do you tell the one you love that you dump your thoughts, dreams and problems into an email every morning to a man who you rarely get to see in person?

“What do you write to him?” she asked me.

“Everything.” I replied.

In the quiet darkness of each weekday morning, I empty my brain, express my joys and fears and ask any questions I need to ask. I immediately realized the unspoken question: “Why wouldn’t you just tell ME those things?”

“I’m not going to stop,” I said, describing the benefits of using my morning hour in that way. “But I also have nothing to hide,” I added. After all, I wanted her to know and love ALL of me.

So, I began cutting and pasting my Bob email to her every morning in a text. It seemed a bit impersonal to just leave it at that, so I started adding a one to two sentence text right before it.

What do you say every morning to the one you love? This is where my accidental tiny habit started forming.

“Thank you for making a great dinner last night. Thank you for being a great face to come home to. I love you with all my heart and soul.” And I always sign it with the typical British “xo”. Well, I add my Asian flare to it. It is more like “xoxoxoxoxoxoxo”.

My morning text has served to remind me of all the things I am grateful for in our relationship. The little things. The things in the every day that often go unnoticed. Sometimes when we’ve been so busy, I have to dig deep to be original. “Thank you for smiling at me when I walked into the gym.” But my daily text of gratitude to her has served as a constant reminder of how lucky I am.

We are coming up on a year of being married. It’s been one of the best years of my life. Maybe my tiny habit has contributed to that. I’d like to think so.

(Someone once asked me if Bob was a real person or a figment of my imagination. I’m posting this in honor of our wedding anniversary. Things do come full circle.)