Every January hundreds of thousands, millions, of people vow to “eat right and exercise”. We empty our fridges of Ben & Jerry’s, dig through our closets for our workout tights, and purchase a gym membership. By mid-February the tights are once again moldering at the back of our closets and the gym payments are quietly accusatory auto withdrawals from our bank accounts.
Momentum is awesome. Feeling charged up and ready to race up mountains is an incredible feeling. One that is rarely long lived. The likelihood of continuing even the most inspiring thrust of momentum to alter a behavior just isn’t very probable. Even the awakening of a near death experience rarely lasts forever. We make big, ambitious, vague plans. I mean, what does “eat right and exercise” even mean? Less fat? Less sugar? More protein? More leafy greens? Taking the stairs? Running a 10k? All of the above?
Too many Americans have a just do it, go hard or go home, no pain no gain, go big to win big, mentality. If we think we are going to storm the ramparts and take the castle on the first try when we fail, and we will fail because 1) the odds are astronomically against us on the first try and 2) failure is part of change, we’re going to take it as meaning that we just can’t do it. As a result of this type of thinking we spend much of our lives living in fear, worry, stress, and anxiety, dealing with negativity from others and, most damnedly, from ourselves. This is why I really hate this attitude. It sounds positive but all or nothing thinking is a trap of cognitive bias and distorted thinking. The opposite of being helpful it instead leads to feelings of defeat and hopelessness.
In a mind boggling conundrum we will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure yet are more likely to change our behavior when we look at the positives, when we think about what we are gaining rather than what we are avoiding. This means when we focus on guilt, fear, shame, as motivators we are in fact undermining ourselves. (Also when we fat shame someone because we are “concerned about their health” we are in fact making things exponentially worse on every single level.) According to Professor Paschal Sheeran from Sheffield University negative emotion causes us to think about everything we’re not doing, or feel like we’re doing wrong, instead of focusing on the things we are doing right and the progress we are making. As a result it rarely works in motivating us in making long lasting changes. We wind up both overestimating and underestimating what we can do and end up doing nothing.
As people, especially Americans, we try to build the building without bothering to build a foundation. We attempt to take leaps instead of small, measurable actions. We overthink things, try to take on too much too fast, and when we hit the inevitable brick wall, the stress, anxiety and fear, make it easy to revert back to what we’re comfortable with. We give up.
If we really want to change one of the first things we have to do is dump the just do it mentality.
Habits are powerful and difficult to reform, change, or break. The environments we create can make change easier or harder. Achieving a number of small success can go far to help us take action and defeat resistance. Make a set of realistic and specific goals, performance targets to measure ourselves against. Mark our progress against where we started, not against other’s successes or failures.
Since it takes so much work to establish a habit we should work on one that will do the most to help us get to our goals. One way to do this is to take our energy and focus on the formation of keystone habits. The term comes from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit. In the book keystone habits are described as habits that cause a chain reaction. In building and reinforcing our keystone habit we will attract other good habits while also subconsciously working to avoid the bad habits.
It took time to form our old habits and it takes time to form new ones. Take it day by day, week by week. Start small, keeping the commitment level low. If we focus on things like keystone habits, and just do a little bit each day, it’s easier to change our entire lives. The use of triggers can help us in this. Triggers are reminders or words of motivation or encouragement that we set up along our paths to reinforce our decision to change.
In our lives we can create triggers in a variety of ways. One is using the calendar in our phones. I use the alarms and the reminders to establish a routine for my family, particularly for LB, and to keep track of things I need to with the blog. We can also set up reminders in email.
Writing out our action steps on cards and placing them where we can see them is another mode of reminding us to get with it. The physical act of hand writing our plans will also help underpin them. Be prepared. Put the things we need where we can access them easily. Keep the gym bag, musical instrument, foreign language workbook or whatever it is we need close at hand. Have multiples if possible. Whatever we can do to reduce barriers and encourage repetition.
It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form a habit, with 66 days being the average. It takes time to etch new neural pathways. It won’t happen overnight. Nothing worthwhile ever does. But slowly, over time, progress will be made. If we are consistent and conscious of our efforts we can and will change and improve our lives. One small adjustment at a time.
Sources
6 Reasons Why Behavior Change is Hard…And How to Make it Easier