Stop What You Are Doing

(Even though I can't.)

Dear Friends,

What I know to be true is that stopping a bad habit can be just as powerful, and often times even more so, than starting a new one.

I wish I was doing exactly that. 

As my 101-day elite training program comes to a close, where I set out to achieve the ONE thing that will most powerfully change my life, I admit that I didn’t pick the thing I should have chosen: Staying off my phone at night in bed.

Waking up tired every day, I’ve known for months and months and months that I have this Pavlovian response to “unwind” in bed, by scrolling through Apple News, bypassing Trump and our world coming to an end, and beelining directly to fashion. What are people wearing right now? That’s my algorithm.  

I absolutely know better.

Digital technology use within an hour of going to bed, with it’s blue light and dopamine stimulation, disrupts the production of our sleep hormone, melatonin, delaying us from falling asleep. And, just like our body must metabolize everything we feed it, so too must our mind process everything we take in. Do I really need to have my sleep cycles hijacked by what Hailey Bieber wore to dinner with Zoe Kravitz?

Many people don’t know that I’m a Certified Optimize Coach, having for years rigorously studied and practiced moving from theory towards mastery of implementing ancient wisdom, modern science, and the fundamentals of optimal living into my own life, that of my family, and with C-Suite executives in my previous professional life.

I know everything I’m doing, as it pertains to using my phone in bed until I set it down to go to sleep, is completely wrong.

Consider this…

Typically when we have a goal we want to reach, or a desired outcome we want to work towards, we think in terms of what we need to start to do.

For example, “I want to be healthier so I am going to eat more leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables each day,” or “I want to be more productive so I am going to complete a 90 minute deep work block each morning before engaging in reactionary emails and texts,” or “I want to have more energy so I am going to go to sleep by 9 pm each night.”

Knowing what our goal is, instinctually leads us to begin to identify the steps that we need to take to achieve it.

Essentially, we orient our strategy into one of habit formation, that once installed, a routine or set of actions become autonomous.

However, often the most powerful way to change our life is to stop doing the number one thing that is negatively impacting our life or getting in the way of us reaching our goal(s).

That number one thing could be glaringly obvious, as it once was for me after waking up day after day with a hangover: “I must stop drinking.”

Or it could be something subtly insidious, as it is for me now, after waking up day after day poorly rested: “I must stop using technology late into the night before going to bed.”

Intuitively we know what that number one thing is that is holding us back from who we want to be, how we want to feel, or what we want to achieve. That thing that makes us feel anxious when we consider cutting it because we’ve tried before and weren’t successful or we’ve been too scared to try, thinking there is no way we could do it.

In architecture, a keystone is the central, wedge-shaped stone at the top of an arch that locks all the other stones into place, establishing structural stability. We all have a keystone habit. It’s the one, most important habit, which if we do it, we are the most powerful, energized version of ourselves ready to create a masterpiece day. (If you could wave a wand and create your best most fulfilling day, that is your unique masterpiece day. I’ll be writing about this soon.) And if we don’t honor our keystone habit by doing it each day, we are not as strong and steady as we could be. We may even begin to crumble in how we show up for ourselves, our loved ones, and our responsibilities.

So I ask you, what is the one thing that, if you stopped doing it, would most support you in nailing your keystone habit each day? It is precisely that thing you must stop doing. And when you do, it may just be the most powerful step towards becoming who you want to be.

My husband’s keystone habit is working out. Yours might be meditating, taking a daily hike in nature, or eating clean. Getting restorative, rejuvenating sleep is my keystone habit. I’m a worse mother, wife, writer — you name it — when I wake up poorly rested.

To that end, today I (re)commit again, not to starting something virtuous, but rather to stopping the very vice that is most negatively impacting my day to day life.

So I ask you again, what is the one habit or one thing, that if you STOPPED doing, would most positively impact your life?

xoxo - Francesca