If you’ve ever read the children’s story The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, then it’s likely you hold those tiny, furry, squirmy, creatures in a cozy place somewhere in your heart and soul. You may have read the book as a child in preschool or kindergarten. If you grew up somewhere in the Atlantic Northeast, you may have even performed a live adaptation of the book for stage (I received rave reviews for my rendition of the cupcake). The caterpillar’s incredible appetite and questionable diet is not what makes the book so lovable, though. Rather, it probably marks the first time you learned about the incredible transformations some creatures naturally make in the circle of life.
Welcome to the Caterpilly blog! Here, we’ll weave personal experience and testimonial with science to create a comfortable environment in which to learn about real change.
There are three keys to incorporating real change into your lifestyle: intention, meaning and small, daily behaviors. By identifying purpose in your life, you will begin to develop behaviors that allow you to reach your highest goals. The way to achieve success is to create a series of habits — a routine — that will inevitably lead to positive change, real living.
Your goals for positive change may not feel as natural or compelling as the fictional insect’s instincts to eat through everything in sight and wrap himself in a cocoon. This is good! That type of eating and over-resting are bad habits for humans, anyhow; and we can guarantee you wouldn’t wake up one day with wings. Your intention may be much simpler, like “I want to be healthier.”
It’s not quite enough to say you want to be healthier, though. Healthier means many different things to many different people. In order to create real change, it’s important to determine what “healthier” means to you and attach strong meaning to it.
Your meaning may be…
“To have more energy to play with my kids,”
“To be more productive at work,” or
“To feel more confident about my appearance”
Having meaning is critical to the effectiveness of your new routine for real change. The “Why?” is what you can always look back to in times of uncertainty to remind yourself of your intention. A series of small, daily behaviors is how you will create a meaningful route to your intention.
Through a combination of long and short-term goals, you not only forge a path for your overall goals, you also set yourself up for real change by developing positive patterns for behavior that are long-lasting.
Ever since a plastic surgeon named Maxwell Maltz applied the behavior of himself and his patients to the study of habits, some experts will say it takes three to four weeks for habits to form, while others dispel the notion of a true timetable altogether. Others still prefer to instead identify the stages through which change is realized.
While there are many different opinions on the best way to create impactful habits or how long it takes for a habit to stick, there is no denying how powerful habits are to achieving real change. Throughout this blog, you’ll learn how real change is less about the stats, studies and research that goes into finding out why you behave the way you do. It’s about asking those questions of yourself and developing daily strategies for success.
This is what the Caterpilly app aims to do. The more specific you are in identifying how and when you will practice these good habits, the easier you’ll find it is to reach your intended goal.
In the beginning, it may seem like your moving at a slow crawl to your achieving happiness. By creating good habits and sticking to them, your confidence will soar in no time.
Everyone here at Caterpilly thanks you for your comments!
Caterpilly sounds interesting. I’m going to sign up and see how it works for me. Thanks for offering this service.
Great first blog post. Very helpful!