Reframing Triggers: Establishing Successful Habits by Making the Most of What We’ve Already Got

‘Trigger’ is a buzzword in the personal development space today. Mostly it has negative connotations as it often relates to trauma. A situation, a word, or an image can trigger a memory of a traumatic experience or an emotional response. It is a catalyst - the cause of an effect. Fireworks may trigger a fear response in someone who grew up in a warzone. Watching a car crash scene in a movie might trigger memories of an accident a viewer survived, and upset them as a result. 

Triggers Can Be Positive Too

Triggers can have a positive interpretation too. Seeing someone propose to their partner might trigger the memory of your own marriage proposal, and fill you with fond memories and emotions about your partner, which in turn could trigger a much more romantic evening for the two of you. This is where triggers are powerful. They can be the catalyst for a chain of events, negative or positive. The negative ones aren’t something we always have control of. We can set ourselves up for a successful chain of events with the positive ones, however.

Let’s say your doctor wants you to establish a habit of posture exercise breaks in the day for your back pain - five minutes, five times a day. Well, you could set an alarm. However, if you’re knee deep in a document or a call, you’ll likely switch off the alarm, and hope you’ll remember after finishing your task. Not a great recipe for success.

How to Use Positive Triggers

One recipe for success is using positive triggers. Triggers that lead to something positive, in this case your exercises five times a day. Think about your day - is there something you already do a few times a day? Going to the bathroom is one. Taking the dog for a walk could be one too. If you're a coffee drinker, going into the kitchen to prepare the coffee pot is another.  Instead of trying to form a new habit, use a currently established one to help trigger the new one. 

Once you’ve finished in the bathroom, launch straight into your posture exercises before getting back to work. Leave a note for yourself in the bathroom if you need to. 

What better way to use those few minutes waiting for the kettle to boil, than by drinking a glass of water first to increase your daily intake, reading a few pages of your book, learning a new verb in Spanish or practising mindfulness? Especially when the alternative is usually scrolling social media - let’s admit it! 

Stressed out or bored driving your children to and from school or dance, sport, piano class? That’s a great time to listen to a course, an audiobook or podcast. 

In fact, the ultimate use of this is taking something negative or that you’re not so keen on, and reframing it as a positive trigger. I remember a wise colleague telling me about her ‘zen’ moments in work, before technology was quite so advanced. She was using a platform that was slow at uploading - but not so slow that she could start new tasks intermittently. There was just a lot of waiting time in between. So, instead of getting frustrated or wasting that time, she chose to accept those moments to relax and find her ‘zen’ as she called it - breathing, closing her eyes, being peaceful. Now, having the chance to find a zen-ish state several times in the workday, even for a few seconds or minutes, sounds like a luxury, but in fact it was simply a positive intention triggered by what would otherwise be an inconvenience.

We don’t have to start from scratch every time we want to establish a new habit. We can maximise the potential of what we’re already doing in life by building on it - and be grateful for the opportunity to do so. Mmm, I love my cups of tea throughout the day, and I especially love them after I’ve cleared out 50 emails from my inbox. Can you imagine even after just one week the compounded effect of that activity a few times a day? 

Learn to Redefine

Coaching teaches us that we get to define, and more importantly, redefine, what everything in our life means for us. If it doesn’t feel good, how can you reframe it? Negative triggers will always exist, but how can you find and focus on more positive ones - or make something positive out of a negative trigger?

How can you make your routines, surroundings and circumstances more comfortable, constructive, and productive for yourself?

Think now of five established activities or routines in your life, and how you can make them a positive trigger for something else. Share them in the comments below.

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Image by Erik Stein from Pixabay