A Touch More Awesome
Why is change so hard? I’ve often contemplated this. Usually after an epic fail. Is it because of the newness? The possibility of failure? The difficulty involved? Maybe. But we do new and difficult things all the time. Failure is always an option. So there has to be something more to it.
After listening to Joel and Vince on this episode of Charged Up Conversations, I think I have the answer:
Setting a goal (i.e. making a change) is intentionally inviting stress into our lives.
This is it. The brass tacks reason change is so damn hard.
From the beginning of time, our brains and bodies have been wired to avoid and/or resolve stress. So when we invite stress in and tell our brains, “Ok brain! New year, new me!” the only response it can actually give is…”um, no.”
Vince clarified for me so much mystery around how our brain really works. He is super smart so I’m going to quote him alot. By the way, Vince Fowler is an Entrepreneur Coach & Performance Psych Nerd, TEDx Speaker, Retreat & Workshop Facilitator, Crayola Ninja, and a Veteran (thank you for your service, Vince!).
And, he quoted a lot of other super smart people. So at the end of this article, I’ll summarize all the folks referenced here, in the hopes that I don’t mistakenly rip anyone off.
Whether we actively choose a stressor (e.g. setting a goal) or not, Dr. Huberman says our brains respond to stress in 5 ways. Our brains will:
Sense
Perceive
Feel
Think
Act
Achieving goals and forming new habits is simply taking an action and making it reflexive. New actions (#5) take deliberate thoughts (#4) and those thoughts are based on how we feel about the actions (#3) and how we choose to feel about them is influenced by what we perceive (#2) and sense (#1).
Ok so that’s how our brains work, but what do we do with this information?
Here are the most important suggestions I took from their conversation:
Just Start - Remember, we don’t need to wait until January 1st to make our lives better. Statistically, “beginnings” are usually when inspiration moves us to change. New year, new quarter, Mondays...But Wednesday August 5th is just as good a day as any to decide to be more awesome.
End Date - Lots of folks, collectively known as ‘the Google,’ tell us that this process can take anywhere from 3 weeks to 8 months. But Google is wrong. It takes what it takes, because each brain is unique. So let’s take time stamps out of the equation all together.
Be Choosey - Turns out I’ve been choosing the wrong goals. According to Charles Duhigg there are Keystone Habits that will trigger secondary habits. A common habit we like to focus on is healthy eating. Surprisingly, this is not a keystone habit! It dovetails exercise. So if you are concerned with your eating habits, make movement the goal and over time your body will crave more nutrient dense snacks and meals to support the movement. This honestly blew my mind, because nutrition is so important. Another example is procrastination. Did you decide 2021 is the year you would ditch procrastination? Turns out it is very hard to quit that cold turkey. The keystone habits that resolve procrastination are actually: Following A Morning Routine, Sleep, and Planning Your Day. Pick the right goal and you are far more likely to succeed.
Touch Yourself - Not like that, pervert. From what I gather listening to Vince - and I hope I got this right - by patting ourselves on the back/pounding our chests gorilla style/or giving ourselves a self five, we can trigger a release of Dopamine. Dopamine is a powerful, feel good reward that we crave. In fact, we are far more likely to choose to do hard things when there’s some reward (Dopamine) at the end of said hard thing. So when you put in work forming new habits, pat yourself on the back...literally. And do it often.
Consistency - If you are like me, I like to psych myself up when I’m making a change. My self talk gets aggressively positive and intense. But over the years I’ve noticed that this is actually really tiring. I thought I had to maintain a high level of intensity to conquer a new habit. It’s never been sustainable. When Vince said, “consistency over intensity,” my mind almost exploded and I immediately thought of 2 things.
First, and I’m going to butcher this - Newton said something along the lines of, “an object in motion will stay in motion until something else stops it.” So the simple act of getting up and moving means it’s highly likely that you will stay moving. I am famous for searching YouTube for a 15 minute workout because I’m feeling tired/lazy/uninspired. I choose the absolute easiest option because I can’t imagine lacing up for anything more than that. Most of the time I get going and end up doing it twice, or adding on a 10 minute ab session, and then a 10 minute stretch. Almost an hour later I’m like, “damn, look what I just did!”
Second, if you have kids you’ll appreciate this, sleep begets sleep. I remember when the kids were tiny I would get so upset when people suggested skipping a nap, or going to bed late. If you are a parent you know that disrupting the precious sleep routine requires days of hard work to get back on track. Turns out, rested babies fall asleep easier than tired babies. Backwards but true. And it applies to exercise. You think after an intense workout you would be tired but turns out the more you move the more you will move and so on and so forth. Consistency!Meaning - We don’t do anything unless it means something to us. Choose to change habits that are meaningful. For example, we are far more likely to commit to better sleep if it’s because our goal is to be more patient with our kids. That is so, so, meaningful! If we pick a goal and end up deciding to quit, it’s not because we are failures or quitters, it’s because that goal didn’t actually mean anything to us. And that is more than okay! There is suffering involved in change. Our brains don’t like uncertainty and absent data. It wants the familiar. To get past your brain, you need to choose a habit you are willing to suffer for. Susan David likes to say that, “suffering and set back is the price of admission to a meaningful life.” Full stop. No need to expect ease or perfection.
For me, these were the most important takeaways from this podcast. There is a lot more I could have reflected on here. But I will add that micro journaling is something that I plan on implementing this year. I’d like to run a trail race in 2021. If I register and pay, that will make the goal a touch more sticky. But what if flash floods wash out the course and the race is cancelled? How will I know I achieved something when the end result is out of my control? Tracking the date and time of each practice run and supporting work out in a tiny booklet like Vince does, means I will have something tangible to hold on to. Proof I am now a touch more awesome than I was in 2020.
Author: Alisha