Wednesday January 6th, 2021

Date to Remember: Sherlock Holmes' Birthday

Check In (5 min)

Theme of the week and Skill Builder 

Today we’ll focus on habit tracking 

Recap yesterday’s topics 

Show & Share (5-10 min)

Your current knowledge or memory of what is in your current ISP. Do you have a copy of it in your home? Can you remember what’s on it?  

Tomorrow‘s Show & Share 

Your most cherished achievements. What have you accomplished that you are so proud to have others know about. Share your memory of the moment you reached that achievement or knew you had.  

Covid Mitigation Moment (5 min) 

PRESENTERS: Read the situation aloud and ask folks what is the right thing to do. Touch on the idea of not hurting Roger's feelings but still doing the right thing.

Wellness and Manners

Lane lives in a board and care home. Their roommate, Roger, was away for the weekend with family and just got back. 

The board and care home has an RV in the driveway and when someone comes back from being in another home, they live in the RV for two weeks until they are sure they aren't sick. Lane just got a text from Roger saying he brought presents back for Lane and if he will sneak out to the RV, Lane can have them. 

• What should Lane do? 
• How should they tell Roger what they have decided? 

Thematic Activity 01 (10-15 min)

What is a habit? 

Get everyone's input on what a habit is. If it didn't come up, offer this idea.

It's a path in your BRAIN that has been used many times and it becomes like a groove in your brain. 

How Do We Create Habits?

We are always trying to meet our needs:

• Get food
• Be safe
• Have friends 

Habits either meet our needs, or they make us feel better when we can't meet our need. For example, sometimes we eat when we're nervous, or sleep when we're lonely. 

When our needs are met we feel good. When something we do feels good IMEEDIATELY, we do it again. It's the habit loop. 

Watch the video

So when it comes to habits, it's much easier to REPLACE them than to REMOVE them, and much healthier for us if we can use them to meet our real needs.  

Thematic Activity 02 (15-20 min) 

Positive Self-Acceptance

Here are some examples of habits. Discuss the results you get from these habits IMMEDIATELY and the results you get from these habits in the far future. 

• Eating lots of sugary food while watching TV late at night
• Doing 100 situps every morning
• Drinking a lot of coffee right before bed
• Vacuuming your house once a week
• Smoking cigarettes every day
• Taking walks for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week.
• Saying hello to your neighbor when you see them outside
• What is different about the immediate results versus the long-term results? 

When a habit creates long-term results people don't want, they call it a "bad" habit. But, they ignore the fact that they LIKE the IMMEDIATE results. Just the long-term results are the problem. 

To replace habits effectively make everything about changing them feel GOOD. When we get critical or angry with ourselves about a habit, we are making ourselves feel bad. That may motivate us to change for a little while, but it doesn't last. 

So the FIRST habit loop to get into is to  replace your self-critical messages with self-accepting messages. Practice some self-acceptance messages. 

General Self-Acceptance

I accept myself, and my habits. Whatever habits I have are just ways I try to meet my needs. I know that some of my habits can be better and I trust myself to be able to learn NEW habits. 

Self-Acceptance for Slow Going

I am learning to change my habit. It's not completely gone yet, but I have a new thing I'm starting to do and that's good. I respect my own efforts. I'll get there.

Self-Accptance for Mistakes

Oops. Oh well. That sure wasn't perfect. Thank goodness I'm not perfect or I'd have nothing to do. Looking forward to the next chance to practice. 

Skill Builder (10 min)

A man named Richard D. Carson wrote a book called "Taming Your Gremlin:  a Guide to Enjoying Yourself" 

(audio link not necessarily useful, depends on your group and their level of ability to track audio narration—you can just show the page to get the idea of a gremlin across with the picture.)

PRESENTERS: We will use the idea of the gremlin to represent the inner critic and work with managing self-critical thoughts from the gremlin. Sharing is always optional but nice if you are willing to add your experience as a human. 

We all want to be good at things, be admired and respected for our contributions. Most of the time this is great and it makes life really fun. But sometimes, especially when we start something new, the part of us that wants to be good at stuff starts sounding like it only sees bad. When that happens we can't enjoy life. Let's pretend that part of us can turn into a Gremlin. 

• What does your Gremlin say when it's being critical?
• What would your Gremlin look like? Is it big? Small? What color is it? What does it's voice sound like? Does it wear clothes? 
• Does your gremlin have a name?
• If you want to draw a picture of your gremlin, feel free. 
• If you want to imitate your gremlin for the group that could be interesting
• If the gremlin were near you somewhere, where would it perch? 

As we work on planning, dreaming, goals and habits, we will be taming our Gremlins too, so that we can enjoy all the new things we want to accomplish and experience. 

Just for Fun

Hocky Word Search

Which item would continue the pattern of the line before the empty square?

Christmas Patterns

Pattern Answers

______________________________

What did we learn today? 

______________________________

What are we doing this afternoon?