The Unicorn Living Podcast

Ch'eghwetsen Point System: The Gentle Habit Building Method That Doesn’t End in Self-Criticism

Episode Summary

Are you your own worst critic? You need to take a rest day, but beat yourself up because you aren’t exercising? Are you always kind of beating yourself up for not doing your best? The Ch'eghwetsen Method is a habit building system Meredith built in 2016 to build healthy habits and not be self-critical. Ch'eghwetsen is a Koyukon Athabascan word for true love. Taking care of yourself, taking care of your health, and being gentle is true love. 🧡 By tracking the overall trend line of your habits, you can begin improving not only habits, but also behavior. 💪

Episode Notes

The Ch'eghwetsen Method is a habit building system Meredith built to encourage healthy habits without being self-critical. Renee Warren, founder of We Wild Women, is to thank for getting this system out in the world. ✋

For Meredith, she noticed that hunger and drive to always be doing her absolute best were in conflict with each other while training for a long distance mountain bike race. There was a lot of hurtful self talk and never feeling good enough while preparing.

In an “aha!” moment, Meredith realized that all days are meant to be equal. She built a system to stop beating herself up. The Ch'eghwetsen Point System is a habit building system that is gentle. It’s not meant to be self-critical. Instead, it builds sustaining behaviors that make you feel healthy and happy. 😊

It looks like two columns of habits you want to build. Even weird ones like putting lids on things! Then, track that trend line. 📈 You’re looking for the trend line to be generally tracking up. If it’s going down, that’s an indicator to course correct.

Often, there is one keystone habit that influences several others. 🧱 When you know what it is, you can prioritize it.

Like audiobooks and podcasts? Listen to Meredith’s book, “How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn” for free here: https://www.learngrantwriting.org/free-audiobook

How to Build Your Own:

Write out habits you want to build on a piece of paper.
Wait until you’re happy with the list and then laminate it.
Get yourself a simple journal where you can use a half page to track.
Give it a go!

This only takes 5 minutes to do! If you have a strong morning or evening routine and your day goes bananas, these AM and PM routines function like a reset. Remember: progress is better than perfection!

Having a checklist allows you to save critical thinking brainpower for activities that actually move your life forward. 🚵

Recently, a huge awakening about health, lots of transition, and an episode of The Ezra Klein Show helped Meredith to see that we can’t keep working at the pace we’re going. 🙅

Two key takeaways from the episode:

We’re all working a second, unpaid shift.
Henry Ford’s innovation in manufacturing the Model T.

Ultimately, the way we live and work is overdue for a system overhaul 🔧 like Henry Ford completed for the Model T.

Meredith’s wake-up call was when she lived through a tiny house gas leak explosion. We all have wake-up call moments in our life. What have those moments been for you? If we’re paying attention, we can do something about it before it becomes a full-fledged disaster.

This accelerated this drive for a slower way of operating while still delivering an amazing experience to members in the Collective. The first experiment was Deep Work Wednesday. 📅

Ultimately, achieving success in your life has less to do with the technical aspect and more about becoming the person you need to become to have the thing you want.

Let us know if you apply the Ch’eghwetsen Point System or any Deep Work experiments!

Resources and links:

🔸 We Wild Women

🔸 Ch'eghwetsen Point System Checklist Template

🔸 “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande

🔸 “Stop. Breathe. We Can’t Keep Working Like This.” :// The Ezra Klein Show

🔸 YouTube video: Living through a gas leak explosion. Walk through it with co-founder, Meredith Noble. 🤯

🔸 Podcast episode: Co-founder Meredith Noble Lived Through a Gas Leak Explosion. Here’s The Story.

🔸 Global Grant Writers Collective

Want to learn more about the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective? DM us on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/learngrantwriting/