Sunday, May 6, 2012

Daily Habits

The following are direct quotes from the book.

Krista Vernoff; Az Ferguson. The Game On! Diet: Kick Your Friend's Butt While Shrinking Your Own. HarperCollins.

The Rule: You earn 10 points a day by eliminating an unhealthy habit and 10 points a day by practicing a new healthy habit. You must declare you habit choices to your teammates and stick with them for the entire game. The Penalty: Each time you change your habit choices, you lose 50 points, so choose carefully! The Exception: You get a day off from this rule too—but be smart about it. If you are quitting smoking or something similar, don’t take a day off or you’ll destroy your progress.
we all have to take on one bad habit we’d like to eliminate and one good habit we’d like integrate into our lives.
Do you have to be extreme in your choice of which habit to give up? No. Can you start small? Like, one fewer hour of TV a night? Yes. But I will tell you from experience that the benefit to your life will be directly proportional to how big you go. Turn off the TV completely for a month and your life will improve radically compared with turning it off an hour early. And yet, turning it off an hour early is no small feat, and if that’s what you’ve got in you, then that’s what you should do. Just pick a thing. Pick a thing you want to change, declare it to your teammates, and change it. Don’t panic. It’s just four weeks. (Unless you like the change so much, you keep it for a lifetime. How cool would that be?)
Which brings us to part 2: choosing a new habit… You know all the things I listed above as things I don’t have time for? All good habits that I would like to integrate into my life. Feel free to pick from that list or to pick one of your own. The idea here is that you are trying to integrate a healthy habit. It’s something you are going to do every day for the next twenty-eight days. Make it a challenge—but it doesn’t have to be time-consuming (if time is a limitation in your life).
Some Common Healthy Habit Choices Take up cooking (at least one meal a day). Organize your house or clear clutter. Study a foreign language. Learn or practice a musical instrument. Rediscover reading for pleasure. Take up journaling. Take up yoga. Take up meditation. Floss daily. Call three people you like each day. Be of service to others. (Do charitable work.) The habits may seem small but the commitment to change is big. Think carefully about your options, because we are asking you to pick them once (one new habit you are integrating, one old habit you are quitting) and stick to them for the whole game. You can do it. You rock. Yay you.

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