Forging New Habits

[Gyakuto]

I put this together for my dojo mates during lockdown and thought you might find it useful too. It was based on some scientific research by Phillips Lall.

Making Your Iaido Training a Habit

‘Habits are actions that are triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that have been associated with their performance.’ Dr Philipa Lally, UCL.

For example, the cue may be getting into a car, the habit is reaching for the seatbelt. Or waking up in the morning, walking into the bathroom and getting in the shower.

What forges that habit is repetition. There are stages to forming a habit-

1. The initiation phase is the toughest stage, where you are essentially working against the grain of your previous behaviour .
2. The learning phase where one develops automaticity where the habit builds momentum.
3. The stability phase is where you have a full blown habit. This is the point where it feels strange not to do something than to do it.

There is a myth that a habit takes only 21 days to develop, however research shows that habits actually take, on average, 60-254 days to develop. Missing the occasional day’s practise seems to not be a problem but missing consecutive days or even a week derails the whole process.

Situational contexts are stronger than timing contexts, thus walking into the bathroom and showering is stronger that showering at a certain time of day, but temporal and spatial contexts are synergistic.

See if you can use these findings to turn you Iaido training, even at home in this lockdown, a real habit that will keep you hooked for ever!