Smashing Through Barriers

The past two weeks I have been working hard at changing my behavior and fighting against any barriers in my way. To remind myself of why I am doing this, I have now changed the background of my phone to an image of an overcrowded landfill. If I can cut down on my food waste, then I know I’m making that picture look better. This is how I have been keeping myself motivated the past three weeks and how I will continue to over these last two weeks.

Another motivating factor for me has been the benefits I’ve granted myself for doing a good job controlling my consumption throughout the week. That reward has been going to a restaurant or somewhere off campus for a meal on Saturday or Friday night for dinner. This has helped me have something to look forward to at the end of the week, and has given me the incentive to really take conserving my food waste to the next level. However, I have come to find out that increasing the benefits doesn’t always help maintain consistency in changing behavior. The real struggle has been and will continue to be finding a way to fight the barriers (as seen below).

Being tired early in the morning, or late at night,  can really be a tough barrier to overcome.

The barriers, as I stated in the previous post were being tired and sitting with friends during a meal. These two barriers have continued to be a problem in my goal of changing my behavior. For the first barrier, being tired, I have fought it by going to bed at a decent hour. I have made sure for the past couple weeks that I get eight hours of sleep or more. The second barrier, sitting with friends, has been difficult to fight. To get around this, I have made the point, for one meal every two days, to go somewhere such as Campus Pizza, Wawa or lower Farinon, where my friends are not. I then take my food to my room and eat it there. I like eating with my friends so this is why I have made the decision to only do it once every couple days. While I am with my friends I just trust my loyalty towards this assignment, which has also worked out!

All in all, creating benefits has worked very well for me in changing my behavior by providing me with extra incentive to get the job done. The biggest struggle I am facing as I stated in the proceeding paragraph, has been sitting with friends more so than being tired. This is mainly because it is very boring to eat by myself or with people I don’t really know.

Every day that goes by I ask myself the question of whether or not I am going to continue this behavior when the five weeks is up. I think that if I do I would feel like I’d be making a difference and doing it for a good cause. If I don’t continue this behavior, I would almost feel as though I did it all for nothing. As of right now I can see myself continuing this behavior and maintaining it as time goes by.

 

Image reference:

http://homeimprovementbasics.com/black-and-white-cartoon-of-tired-kid-eating-breakfast-royalty.html