How many of you have habits that you're always struggling to change?
I'm willing to bet quite a lot of you are nodding along right now,
and that is where The Kindness Method comes in.
The Kindness Method is a book of exercises and guidance that help you change your habits
in a way that shines some light on why they came about,
and helps you to be kinder to yourself in general, in the way that you speak to yourself
and in the general approach that you take to your habits.
I have been giving this a go.
I've been doing The Kindness Method for the last two weeks, and filming it.
So I'm now going to show you how I've got on.
The habit that I would like to change is I would like to check my phone less often.
I've just reached the part where we have to do our own exercises,
all about the things that we like about ourselves, the things that we're proud of,
and Shahroo's got really great guidance throughout, because this kind of exercise is not always
easy to do.
So you might want to do these slowly in your own time, over the course of about a week
or so.
Buy yourself a nice clean fresh notebook, and then complete these in the evenings after
work.
I, however, am going to do all of them in one go now.
I got my colouring pencils just to make this even prettier and more fun.
OK, so I am half way through the book, and already I've got this notebook full of inspiring
maps about myself!
This is great; it's doing wonders for my self-esteem.
I thought it would be a lot more challenging than it actually was.
Shahroo's guidance was really helpful here.
So now there is nothing left to do but actually get on with making these changes.
But I'm now equipped with this notebook full of maps and guidance all about who I am as
a person, and why I believe in myself, and why I am making these changes.
And the first step you have to do in actually making the changes is set yourself an initial
realistic goal.
So, my initial realistic goal is going to be that my phone is not allowed in my bedroom
at all, and I'm going to say that on my lunch break,
I have an hour lunch break at work, so for at least half of that,
my phone has to be firmly in my bag, not in my hand.
In the book, Shahroo gives you a little format for how to write down that realistic first
goal, so I'm going to write those down now, and then I'll check in with you soon.
OK, I'm ready to make my changes.
And the first thing I need to do is move my phone charger away from next to my bed.
It's happening!
This is my first major change.
Good morning!
It is the first morning, I've just woken up, and my instinct, I instantly got up to go
and grab my phone and bring it back here and lie in bed playing on it, because that's what
I always do.
And it's been like a serious fight to not do that.
But, great result, now that I'm just awake and I'm lying here not playing on my phone,
I figured I might as well get up and go to the gym.
So great start to morning number one!
My phone stayed firmly in my bag all through this lunch break, while I practised being
engaged with my surroundings, which was a great result because otherwise I never would
have noticed the doughnut stall!
It is now Wednesday afternoon, so I get to add to my 'Things that I'm proud of' mind
map, the fact that I've done seven whole days of sticking to my less social media challenge.
Shahroo recommends writing a daily journal, and I've had so much fun this week having
so many things to write in it, now that I've been observing the world so much more.
So, having now done this for two weeks, I can tell you that was such a great experience.
What I would love to know now is what are the next steps?
SHAHROO: I would say just keep reviewing it every three weeks or so, and keep tweaking
things according to how your last plan went.
EMMA: I was using The Kindness Method to help me use my phone less.
Does The Kindness Method work the same way if you're dealing with something a lot more
serious like addiction?
SHAHROO: Yeah.
The core principles are that if you believe in your ability to change, and you believe
that you're worthy of making changes, then the plan itself just becomes administration.
I've been in the position where I can have these conversations with people in lots of
different capacities, and a range of different people who have different issues, and they
all seem to think that they're the ones that, you know, everyone else is deserving of being
nice to themselves, and everyone else is deserving of owning their strengths and the parts of
their character that they really like, but I'm not.
And I realised that after 100, 200, 300 people that, surely we can't all be the exception.
EMMA: And I found it really reassuring, I think, hearing you say that, because it made
me realise I'm not the exception.
I'll say, 'OK, but Emma, noone knows quite how bad you are.
Noone knows quite how terrible the things that you do are.'
And those terrible things that I'm talking about are like, I ate three packets of crisps,
and I didn't go to the gym.
SHAHROO: What would you do if I came up to you and said, 'I've eaten three packs of crisps'?
Would you be horrible to me?
EMMA: I'd be like 'great!
I hope they were nice!'
SHAHROO: Exactly!
EMMA: So there's a lot of exercises throughout the book.
The first kind of chunk of it, you go through before having to make any changes, and doing
all of these mind maps and stuff.
SHAHROO: Oh good for you, you coloured them in!
EMMA: Oh yeah, I got very excited about it all.
What would you say, of these exercises, if you had to pick one that was the most important,
which one would it be?
SHAHROO: There's two maps that you do back to back.
One of them is called Conversations with Me.
And the other one is called Someone I Love.
The Conversations with Me map is the sorts of things that you say to yourself when you
fall off track with the plan.
The Someone I Love map is where you fill out a map full of things you would say to someone
you really care about, who's struggling to keep up a change.
And then when you compare them, if someone was yelling this stuff at you, or yelling
this stuff at you, which one do you think would be more likely to get you back on track?
The stuff in the Someone I Love map is enough to get you going straight away!
EMMA: Great, well thank you so much for talking to me.
The Kindness Method is out now.
I really recommend it, it just will make you, even just doing the exercises, makes you feel
so good about yourself, and then you get to finally change the habits that you've always
wanted to.
So do give this video a thumbs up if you liked it, and leave a comment below if you have
any questions about The Kindness Method.
And of course hit that subscribe button for new videos every Thursday.
See you next time!