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Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything

(I have highlighted what I think is particularly relevant to the Fitness challenge)

Change is hard. As you consider what you want to do for Lent, you may keep the following ideas in mind as they may help you be more successful; in creating an environment where you can get closer to God. At The Energy Project, they have developed a way of making changes that has proved remarkably powerful and enduring.

Not surprising, their method is grounded in the recognition that human being are creatures of habit. Fully 95 percent of our behaviors are habitual, or occur in response to a strong external stimulus. Only 5 percent of our choices are consciously self-selected. Therefore the more one’s behaviors are ritualized and routinized — in the form of a deliberate practice — the less energy they require to launch, and the more they recur automatically

What follows are six key steps to making change that lasts:
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1.       Be Highly Precise and Specific. Researchers call those "implementation intentions" (http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/BRP/constructs/implementation_intentions/goal_intent_attain.pdf)  and they dramatically increase your odds of success

2.      Take on one new challenge at a time. Computers can run several programs simultaneously. Human beings operate best when we take on one thing at a time, sequentially.

3.      Not too much, not too little. The most obvious mistake we make when we try to change something in our lives is that we bite off more than it turns out we can chew. sessions. It's also easy to go to the other extreme, and take on too little.
The only way to truly grow is to challenge your current comfort zone. The trick is finding a middle ground — pushing yourself hard enough that you get some real gain, but not too much that you find yourself unwilling to stay at it.

4.      What we resist persists. The only reasonable answer is to avoid the temptation. With email, the more effective practice is turn it off entirely at designated times, and then answer it in chunks at others. The less you have to think about what to do, the more successful you're likely to be.

5.      Competing Commitments. We all derive a sense of comfort and safety from doing what we've always done, even if it isn't ultimately serving us well. Researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey call this "immunity to change." (http://hbr.org/2001/11/the-real-reason-people-wont-change/ar/1)  Even the most passionate commitment to change, they've shown, is invariably counterbalanced by an equally powerful but often unseen "competing" commitment not to change.

Here's a very simple way to surface your competing commitment. Think about a change you really want to make. Now ask yourself what you're currently doing or not doing to undermine that primary commitment. If you are trying to get more focused on important priorities, for example, your competing commitment might be the desire to be highly responsive and available to those emailing you.

For any change effort you launch, it's key to surface your competing commitment and then ask yourself "How can I design this practice so I get the desired benefits but also minimize the costs I fear it will prompt?"

6. Keep the faith. Change is hard. It is painful. And you will experience failure at times.     The average person launches a change effort six separate times before it finally takes.

You can read the complete article at http://www.theenergyproject.com/blog/six-keys-changing-almost-anything.