Do you want to know the best system for changing bad habits? I'm Nicholeen Peck,
and I teach habit training through the lens of self government. I've been teaching parents and
children all over the world for many, many years starting way back when I was a young mom into
treatment foster care for troubled teens how to govern themselves using certain skills and
principles of self government. And that's what we're talking about in this video.
So in this video, we're going to talk about habits and what makes a really great habit and what is
needed to form a new habit and then I'm going to tell you what I have to offer to make your habit
training for you and your family easier. Habit training is very powerful. In fact, all of your
people who really do great in sports, or in any of their academic pursuits, people who are constantly
finding new solutions for the world. Those are people who usually create very productive good
habits for themselves. In fact, I think I am kind of naturally drawn toward habit formation because
of my strong willed nature. Many people who are strong willed like to get in a routine, they
like their habits they like to follow through, it does become difficult when a strong willed person
wants to change their habits, however, because then they have to come up with a new system.
But if they like systems like I do, then they probably get excited about pushing themselves
in a new direction. Well, I started reading about habits and just very recently, someone referred
this book to me called Atomic Habits and it's by author James Clear. The person referred this book
to me because they said, Nicholeen, you would love it. You would absolutely love it, because
you are doing it, you are teaching people how to change their habits. So hopefully one day,
I can meet James Clear, and we can have a nice little conversation about habit training and
about self government because it is true, I have been teaching people how to transform their habits
for a lot of years now and the stuff that he teaches in this book actually aligns with my book
and my courses really well. So what does James say that you should do? Well, Mr. Clear says that,
what you should do is you should first get a firm understanding of who you are, and make sure that
you tell yourself all the right messages about who you are so that you don't damage your identity
because as you are deciding to form a new habit, this is formed out of identity. He also talks
about the importance of systems and creating a system that is workable that can replace the
old system. Every habit is part of a system that you create for yourself and that's totally true.
Whether it's a good habit or a bad habit, it's a system and what you have to do is you have to
pick up the one system and say, I'm not going to use that anymore, and put another system in its
place. That's the only way to make a habit truly stick. How do you create great habits for you and
yourself, create systems that work? Now for many people, it's kind of a burden to come up with
the new thoughts, the new words, the new systems, for solving all of their behavioral problems, or
those habits and relationships that seem to get in the way. But that's where I come in,
because I actually have all the skills and principles that have been tried and tested
for habit formation for many, many years. Years ago when I was a teen and I was very strong
willed, I didn't get along with my parents and a trusted neighbor said to me Nicholeen, have you ever
thought of just saying okay to your parents? And I thought she was kidding me? I told her.
No, that would never work. That's what they want me to say because remember, I'm strong willed,
slightly oppositional? Right. And so she says, No, Nicholeen really, how about every time they tell
you to do something or not to do something, just say okay, and be okay. She was telling me I could
choose to be okay. That is a very hard thing. I told her it would not work. She told me to go home
and try it and she challenged me. So I went home and I decided to say okay, and be okay every time
my parents told me to do something or not to do something, and you know what, my life changed.
I got to go to parties. I got to go out with friends. I got to do all kinds of stuff that I was
not being allowed to do because my parents didn't have trust in me. I wasn't understanding cause and
effect in our relationship and I thought it was up to them to give me freedom when in reality,
I could take the freedom myself if I change the habit of the way that I was communicating
with them and my wise neighbor knew that and I will forever be grateful for that. So anyway,
I changed my habit and then what I started doing treatment foster care for troubled teens
for multiple years, I learned multiple other hands habits and some of those skills or habits
or skills that had been used at high level places of care like Boystown where they're working with
really troubled youth. Now, my therapeutic treatment care home was actually used for
children that would have to go to a place like Boystown if they did not succeed in my home first,
and I was very successful, which is why people started asking me to be on TV programs, and to
fill my family and to have me write books about parenting, what did I learn what key skills? Well,
they gave me a whole book of skills or habits that I could adopt. But I recognize that it all started
with just four basic skills and a couple of these skills were skills that I had taught myself
when I was young, thanks to my neighbor. There are four basic skills that I teach in my teaching self
government or TSG parenting course for parents to teach their children but just so you know,
the skills are for everyone. Those skills are how to follow instructions, accept "no" answers
and criticism, accept consequences and disagree appropriately. Now, I'm going to teach some of
those skills to you. But before I do, click the subscribe button now. There are so many videos
on this channel dedicated to learning the systems of self government and habit training, and for
understanding more who you are, and the people around you are as well, so that you can better
change your habits and your relationships. So let's talk about some of these four basic skills.
These four children's books each teach one of the four basic skills to children. Now I know an
adult might not get too excited about reading for children's books and I do have an adult book
called Parenting A House United that you could look at that will also teach the four basic skills,
because they really are for everyone. There are so many parents that don't know how to follow
their own instructions. They keep making the same mistakes when they tell themselves not do.
That means they're not following their own instructions. There are also people
who don't accept "no" answers. Well, they get upset every time things don't go their way,
or people who don't accept consequences of their own behavior. They get mad, or they make excuses
when they were the ones that woke up late, or people who can't disagree appropriately,
they don't know how to express themselves or seek understanding with other people who might
think differently than them. In fact, if you think of the majority of the problems in our society,
they actually all come down to one of these four basic skills. So let's talk about some of these
skill sets. Let's talk right now about accepting "no" answers and criticism. This is a very common
one that leads people to anger or frustration, or maybe even making excuses. In order to accept a "no"
answer, that means you look at a boundary line you won't cross or maybe something you hoped for
the you didn't get or maybe somebody gives, you know, whatever it is, those are all no answers.
Now what you do is you look at the person or situation, you keep a calm face, voice and body
and then you say okay, or ask to disagree appropriately, and then drop the subject,
those are the four steps to accepting a no answer or choosing not to cross over a boundary line that
we know we don't want to. Say you have a habit to, you know, viewing something like pornography or
maybe taking a substance or drinking too much, then you are going to want to master accepting a
"no" answer so that you do not cross over that line. You give yourself a no and when you see the no
is there, you keep calm about it, you say okay, I'm not crossing over that line, and then you drop
the subject, you don't think about it anymore. That's how a person changes the habit. Now,
another thing that you're going to want to do is you're gonna want to give yourself an instruction
right after the "no" answer. This is going to replace the action step you would have done if
you engaged in that troubling behavior. How do you give yourself an instruction? You say, Okay, now
I need you to go over here away from the alcohol, or go over here away from the cigarette counter,
whatever it is, that happens to be the thing that plagues you,
right? So you give yourself the instruction, then comes the skill how to follow instructions.
So now I'm looking at the person with the situation. I'm getting away from this thing,
right? I'm walking in a certain direction, I keep a calm face, voice and body about
it and then I say okay, are I asked to disagree appropriately, I guess with myself,
and then I do the task immediately. So I actually walk to wherever it is that I need to walk to.
And then I check back. So I tell myself, I did it. I actually walked away from something that was
tempting to me and now I am doing something else and you can even praise yourself and
reward yourself for doing the right thing. So this brings me to other skills of self government. So
there's the four. We've talked about two of the four, but there are five skills that I also teach
in my TSG parenting course for parents that would be applicable to also have to training yourself.
One of those is correcting yourself. So when things don't go right, you may want to correct
yourself in order to bring yourself back on track. In fact, a person who is truly ready
to change their habits is usually humble enough to accept correction from themselves and from other
people as well. Hopefully you can choose to have that humility and choose to accept a correction
from yourself or from other people, maybe somebody who you're asking to check up with so that you
can accomplish your habit training as well. There are more things that I could go into but I think
understanding the nuts and bolts of these skills could be, the first most important thing
the teaching self government parenting system is actually just communication skills for life,
and everyone needs to know them. In order to find out more about some of these skills and principles
that might help you in your communication and your habit training, I suggest this full length class
that I have created for you. The full length class is called the expectation trap versus the cycle
for success. In this class, you will learn how you fall into traps of habits that you do not want to
repeat again and again and then also what skills you can utilize to create a cycle for success
instead of that expectation trap. Go to the video, the expectation trap versus the cycle for success
now, and I will see you there.