Lessons from the Mini Habit Accountability Groups

Back in May, I put out a volunteer offer to help people who were looking to build new habit + break bad habits.

This was done to both:

1. Help myself overcome the anxiety and depression brought about by COVID-19.
2. Give back to the community and support others who were affected by the pandemic.

4 groups came out of it, each group was about 4-8 people. They met for an hour each week over the next 2 months.

What happened in the sessions?

• People would share progress on their goals.
• Celebrate achievements.
• Give insight into the things they learned about themselves.
• Share resources to help others accelerate their goals + form stronger habits.

Here are some of the key achievements that some of the members accomplished

• Getting hired
• Recruited to work for a startup
• Changing careers
• Starting kickboxing
• Getting a few journalism projects
• Finished reading a few books
• Losing 5lbs
• Started playing tennis regularly
• Learned a new language
• 1/2 way done writing a book
• Completing a fitness challenge

What did some of them learn about themselves? How did they feel about the experience?

• “I need to show up more, I have a lot to give but I hold myself back because of the impostor syndrome”
• “I was sleeping so much more before but still not having much energy in my day. Now I wake up early, work out hard, and still have energy to spare”
• “I feel A lot more empowered to protect my time and refine my focus”
• “I have better clarity on myself and my values”
• “Got lot of motivation to get more work done, significantly more productive”
• “Most of my goals started as professional goals, I realized I need to first work on creating space to take care and improve myself in order to excel in my workplace”
• “I am more successful when I am consistent”
• “I am more mindful of the way I live life”
• “I learned to build momentum through little wins”
• “I learned that I will always be busy, it’s now or never if I want to start something new. Also, many of my excuses were not valid”
• “I actually don’t need a lot of things I thought I was dependent on”
• “It’s not just exercise, I need to work on improving my diet to hit my fitness goal”
• “I learned how to learn with purpose instead of consuming content for the sake of it”
• “Nothing that I do will ever be perfect, I shouldn’t delay and should just get started and put things out there”

What did I learned about facilitating good groups?

• Habits are core to helping us achieve our goals in life.
  • Goals are not as important as we think, it’s more important to set up the right systems and lifestyle that will help put us on the right track.
• Having people work on similar goals together increases motivation and shared learning within the groups.
• Groups larger than 8 people became a little too unwieldy.

What’s next?

I’m moving to facilitate a more comprehensive Habit Accountability Group program for people who want to continue to support each other in this way over the entire year. More details here: https://classynarwhal.com/habit-accountability-groups/