Power Tool: Daily vs. Sometimes

A Coaching Power Tool Created by Sherri Lukac
(Health Coach, UNITED STATES)

Our daily decisions and habits have a huge impact upon both our levels of happiness and success. Shawn Achor 

• Daily-  Happening, done, made, used or existing everyday. Acted upon every day.
• Sometimes - Occasionally, rather than all the time. From time to time.
• Time ill defined - not sure if even will or will not occur

Daily is a word that  implies something will happen in a 24 hour period. Sometimes, on the other hand, leaves things up in the air.  Maybe happening, but maybe not.

What stops someone from completing a task today or holding off to tomorrow?  Procrastination does.  Procrastination means putting off tasks to a later time, sometimes to the last minute before the deadline.

Lets start with a person that has a very common problem: She  wants to get healthier by losing weight and start an exercise program. She  wakes up the first day of her  program, eats a healthy breakfast, walks thirty minutes, and lift some weights.  The next day she get on the scale, notices little progress, and looks in the mirror and sees the same old person. Unfortunately, she hasn’t noticed any instant results, and she soon feels frustrated. She gets discouraged and maybe decides not to pursue her routine anymore. She is a fairly common SOMETIMES practitioner rather than a DAILY practitioner.

The problem is that most of us expect to see results, and we expect to see them now. Instant success does not just happen. Doing simple disciplines DAILY and changing bad habits to good habits over time and not SOMETIMES will create success. Results will only happen with a conscious DAILY awareness  and not a SOMETIMES awareness. The problem will only SOMETIMES performing a good habit, is that the lack of consistency will not produce those positive results a person wants to see.

This is where the idea of  “power tools” needs to be applied. As a coach I want to instill in my clients the need to use a positive DAILY action plan vs. a SOMETIMES habit.  Any new habit a person wishes to implement requires time and effort in order for our brains to accept the change in routine, and make it easier for us to govern our actions and avoid the SOMETIMES mindset. As a coach, I can provide some positive reinforcement in those crucial early days of habit forming so my clients develop a habit of small action steps to reach their agreed upon goals.

Furthermore, you would have to be doing these new DAILY habits for a while in order to see any significant results.  It’s so easy to do these little things everyday and yet it is so easy not to do these little things every day. So what does it take to do these things DAILY and not SOMETIMES? Why does procrastination sink in? Is it willpower? I dont think so.  Willpower can be overrated.  Willpower will only take a person so far before a person feels themselves rebelling. If you want  to keep yourself on the upward path, the path of growing, improving and seeing results, rather than deteriorating, spiraling downward and failing,  then you need an ally.  An ally is a force that will unite or form a connection .

I believe that if you want to direct your life on a path of continual positive change, then you need to tap into time, the most powerful force of change around. The secret of time is the force that magnifies those little, impossible to see, seemingly insignificant things you do every day into something you can see, something powerful and unstoppable over the course of a significant amount of time. Change does not happen overnight, but consistently repeated DAILY actions + time =  unbeatable results.

Self Application

The key for my ABC coaching model, Acknowledge, Breathe and Commit  is to encourage my clients to focus on some DAILY activity that will enable them to develop  a positive habit of forward thinking and can-do capabilities. Thus, DAILY vs. SOMETIMES is a key enabler that can be used with my ABC coaching model. It is quite often that a client is able to quickly grasp what needs to be done, but a failure in reinforcement leads to a failure to bring about change. By focusing on DAILY and de-emphasizing the SOMETIMES,  I believe I can elicit a positive mindset in my clients to affect change in their behavior.

Coaching application

So by committing to applying these DAILY  habits over time and following through with the right choices, the clients  goals can and will be accomplished.  It seems very easy to make the right choices and take the right actions in order to succeed, but remember that oftentimes it is even easier not to make these right choices.  And if you don’t do them right now, it might not make any difference today or tomorrow  in your health if you didn’t eat healthy, or exercise, but what  consequences  would exist in several months? In a few years?

Remember their is a success side and a failure side. In order to stay on the positive, life changing, uphill battle it is essential to add one small, simple positive action to your everyday life.  This may or may not be something that you can see right away. But what happens if you add one more, and one more and one more….? Before too long, you see the scales shift, ever so slightly, and then eventually that heavy failure side starts to lift and lift and the scales start to shift in your direction. The key here is to remember you need to find what choices and goals work for you.    This is your life and you are in the driver’s seat. A client can choose to make  smart choices , apply simple disciplines DAILY and can start the journey to positive change, or a client can wait and apply simple disciplines  SOMETIMES  and never see the results they are looking for.

Reflections:

1. What does the word DAILY make you think about?
2. Do you find time is an enabler or a constrictor – if the latter why?
3. You cannot control time but you can control what to do Daily Sometimes –  Do you agree?
4. Ill- defined goals often lead to partial accomplishments – Do you agree?