Nov 5

Nov 5 What are Keystone Habits?

Hi, I'm Liz Moser, a Mayo Clinic and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach.

When I first meet with my clients, we kick off our coaching with a 2-hour call where we explore three things:
1- What’s important to them? What motivates them? Or why do they do what they do?
2- Their strengths. Or how do they achieve their definition of success?
And lastly,
3- What do they want out of coaching? What are their current goals? What do they want more of or less of?

To assist them in fleshing out the third piece, what they want out of coaching, I ask my clients to fill out: The Health and Wellness Domain Satisfaction Scale worksheet.

With this exercise, my clients rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1-totally dissatisfied to 7-totally satisfied in several areas of their health and wellness.

These areas are overall health, eating habits, sleep, physical fitness, energy level, spirituality, weight, resiliency, support, and body image.

In general, my clients seek coaching because of one primary goal. Usually, their goal revolves around their food, and typically they are looking to adopt a similar plan to my own: three meals per day without sugar, flour, or processed foods. However, the domain satisfaction exercise grants them a more comprehensive look at their overall wellness.

After our 2 hour call, I synthesize our conversation and interpret their wellness vision.

A wellness vision is a powerful statement that describes your most actualized self. It defines what you truly desire and how you live when you're at your most aligned with your values and purpose.

The vision may include behaviors, actions, strengths, feelings, relationships, or a metaphor or visual image for comparison. My goal with my clients’ wellness vision is to give them give them confidence, energy, and authentication in their desired changes.

Fundamentally, a wellness vision is a combination of three things: your values or what’s important to you, your strengths, or how you achieve your definition of success and your desires or what you want more of in your life.

My clients read through and sit with my interpretation of their wellness vision, and then usually, they make a few changes. Now and again, I hit the ball out of the park, and they think it’s perfect as is, but usually, they want to alter it somehow and make it their own. From there, I ask my clients to come up with three goals total that they want to focus on over the next three months.

The three goals tend to derive from the Domain Satisfaction Scale.

For instance, if a client rates their sleep a 2 – dissatisfied, and their energy level a 3 – slightly dissatisfied, one of their goals might be turning off their computer and phone earlier and subsequently getting into bed earlier.

Or if the client rates their physical fitness and resiliency a 4 – neutral, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, and they want to start zooming into a yoga class.

You get the idea.

So, my client has a wellness vision, one main goal (usually food-related), and then two, let's call them, sub-goals, and then they usually want to tackle everything on day one. No! Ha! I don’t recommend that!

Typically, I ask my clients to focus on their primary goal, build some success, and some automaticity, and then I coach them around their supporting goals later.

Also, I don’t explain this with my clients but what I see happen is the food or their other main goal; the reason they sought coaching, is a keystone habit.

What Are Keystone Habits?

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life and Business, defines a keystone habit as “changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.”

Some other possible keystone habits are:
exercising regularly, practicing gratitude, sleep, sticking to a routine, journaling, and meditation.

Think of a keystone habit as a pebble thrown into a pond that creates multiple ripples or additional benefits in your life. For my clients, getting their food in order is a keystone habit that automatically carries over to other areas of their lives.

Take my previous examples:

Is your sleep out of whack? Well, when you quit snacking after dinner, you won’t go to bed on a full stomach, and subsequently, you’ll sleep more soundly.

Not moving or exercising as much as you want to? When you eat healthier food instead of junk food, you will automatically have more energy and you will invariably want to move more. My clients end up on hikes, bike rides, or on their yoga mat just because they feel like it.

Healthful eating is a keystone habit.

Furthermore, research shows that one habit established at a time is the most efficient way to do it. And I don't want my clients to “should all over themselves.” Sometimes my job as a coach is to hold them back from too much too soon. I want to set them up for success, not stumbles.

When the primary goal feels established, maybe at the 4 or 5-week point, we set some action steps for the other two goals, but usually, they have already inadvertently moved in the right direction, given the primary goal was a keystone habit.

At the 3-month mark, whether the client decides to continue with another three months of a Daily Coaching Plan, or graduate to the Masters Plan (1/2 time) or move forward without coaching, I ask them to repeat the domain satisfaction scale exercise without looking at their numbers from 3 months ago.

They are surprised every time! Even if an area wasn’t specifically addressed in a goal, it invariably increases on the scale. Hmm, do they have a more positive outlook in general? Sure they do! When you feel successful in one area do you then feel more successful in others? Yes! Or maybe they’ve made real significant changes. Either way, keystone habits ripple out into other parts of your life and perhaps this isn’t that surprising given that we are wholistic beings, and changing one aspect of our lives touches the other areas.

I'm Liz Moser, a Mayo Clinic and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and thank you for watching this video. If you have any questions about keystone habits about health and wellness or wellness coaching with me, please reach out via my website at lizmosercoaching.com.