Crossing the threshold: How to make resolutions become reality.
Maybe it has happened to you that your resolutions pass from one year to another without achieving almost nothing, generating great dissatisfaction and frustration. If so, I invite you to keep reading because we will see four laws that will allow you to intervene your brain and build new and better habits.
When it is about to dawn there is a moment when the sun has not yet risen on the horizon, in which we perceive that something is changing, the sky is not so black and the shadows of the night, somehow begin to recede. The light begins to the battle to impose itself on the night and the cold is getting stronger, getting into our bones, as if it resisted for a few last moments to disappear. This is twilight, the moment of transition, the threshold that marks the beginning of the cycle of a new day.
We humans need to recognize these thresholds of transformation in nature, make them our own and make sense of the inner world in the process. We take advantage of the elements of the environment to understand, interpret and accommodate the events that occur and those that affect our inner selves. And boy, this 2021 has had events that have affected us! We live wave after wave of the pandemic, hopes and fears, anxieties and backwaters of peace, gains and losses at the individual, family or social level. It is essential for our mental health to take stock of all the changes we have gone through in order to unload our backpacks, rearrange our experiences and move forward.
In this spirit and with a fresh year we usually set goals or resolutions to be better, to get closer to the best version of ourselves that we can be. Sadly, however, they often remain just that, good intentions. Perhaps it has happened to you, dear reader, that you pass a resolution from one year to the next without achieving almost anything, generating great dissatisfaction and frustration.
You see, big changes always start with something small, this is the force of habit, of habits. It is, as James Clear explains in his book Atomic Habits, about making small intelligent improvements, just 1% of improvement in each element of the process to get to that place you want to go. I thought it appropriate to share with you my summary of the book along with my comments. If you like it, I highly recommend you read it in its entirety.
Generally personal change begins when we are uncomfortable with our personal situation. We consciously choose to improve, but then laziness, daily activities, procastination lead us to procrastinate more and more until we give up. Could it be that we are lazy by nature? I don't think so. What happens is that your brain, your most primitive and essential part, is designed to seek the most immediate pleasure, to prefer a small reward now rather than a bigger one tomorrow. It's as if it's saying, "better one take than three I'll give you." Our deepest mind gives preference to what feels good now over what might come in the long run.
The trick is to make the long-term goals we set for ourselves "look" like immediate results so that your whole mind works for you.
Let's go back for a moment to what generates change. Let's say the way you've been eating your diet doesn't satisfy you. So you go to the nutritionist and make a super nutritious and healthy and you decide to stop eating what you shouldn't eat. However, on its own, this approach is wrong because change requires going to a deeper level than just action. You need to change who you think you are, the elements of your identity that have brought you to the point of breaking your diet and gaining weight because your brain tends to congruence and resists doing anything that is not aligned with your identity.
A different point of view would be to focus not on what you want to change (behavior) but on what you want to be. Thus, a person who wants to quit smoking might say when offered a cigarette, instead of saying, "No thanks, I'm quitting," he or she might say, "No thanks. I am not a smoker."
It is then a two-step process to change those aspects of your identity that do not drive your development:
1. Decide what kind of person you want to be.
What do you want to be? What values do you want to uphold? Who do you want to become? What kind of person doesn't smoke/loses 20 kilos/would exercise in the morning?
2. Prove it to yourself through small, continuous victories.
It is very true that identity shapes habits, however, this is a two-way street: habits also shape identity. That is why and to change the feedback loop the focus must be on the kind of person you want to be and not just on the goal itself.
Now, on the one hand, the primitive mind wants immediate pleasure over the long term and also doesn't want to change habits because doing so consumes a lot of energy. It is much easier to do what is known than to experiment, it is much cheaper to repeat than to innovate.
You have to give the brain the idea that you are already the person you want to be and, for that, James Clear's Four Laws of Behavioral Change are useful:
1st law: Make it obvious.
No ambiguities or abstractions, for the new habit to be installed and for your primitive mind to grasp it, it has to be clear and tangible. A simple formula might be:
I will do [conduct] at [time] in [place].
That is:
"I will study English for 20 minutes at 6:00 pm in my bedroom" or.
"I will exercise for 45 minutes at 7:00 am at the gym in my neighborhood".
It is important to be clear and positive, avoid "I will not do such a thing", say what you will do.
2nd law: Make it attractive.
We like dopamine. And how not, it is the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure and relaxation and our brain does everything it can to get it. This substance causes us to seek immediate gratification, in good measure.
The trick here is that it is not only released when the action is performed but also when the reward is anticipated. It is then a matter of interconnecting behaviors and associating them, an already installed behavior with the new one. This means that you link it (associate it) to a behavior you already like so that it is easier for you to carry it out.
We can follow the formula:
After [current habit] I will do [new habit].
For example, "After I pour my morning coffee, I will meditate for 5 minutes"
After I take off my work shoes, I will immediately put on my exercise sneakers.
Habits can accumulate and expand. So we could join, if you are looking to read more at night: wake up>turn down the bed>put a book on the pillow>bathe. This way, when you get into bed at night, there will be a book on your pillow waiting for you.
3rd law: Keep it simple.
Habit change will come with practice, not planning. It's about actually acting on a concrete step that takes you no more than two minutes. In this way you will be able to start a process of habit formation in a progressive way achieving that, through repetition, you will be able to make it more automatic.
It is about taking the minimum initial action with which "reading before going to sleep" becomes "reading a page" or "running three kilometers while tying my tennis shoes" and then increasing it.
Virtually all of our goals can be transformed into two-minute actions as in: I want a good long life> I need to get fit> I need to exercise> I need to put on my workout clothes.
The key to being able to make the actions simple is to become present. Becoming aware and remembering the impact of this simple two minute action on my life plan and focusing on that step, that action and going from there.
4th law: Make it satisfying.
We tend to repeat our behaviors when they are satisfying. The key then is to feel successful immediately we do our two-minute behavior, even if it is a moderate success.
It's about finding the developmental space where we find balance between not being able to do things (which leads to failure) and it being so easy to obtain success that it's not funny to take action. This zone is where the flow state is and that's where the magic happens. It's like the point in the wave where the surfer stays in dynamic equilibrium, it doesn't last forever, but ultimately there are more waves, right?
Consider that the state of flow, which is very similar to happiness, is that experience of "being in the zone". In order to achieve it, the challenge needs to be no more than 4% above your current ability (Kotler, 2013). The challenge is to work on challenges of manageable difficulty that push your limits and keep you motivated.
Habits in companies
Maybe you're a team leader and you're wondering, how could I apply all of this with my team? Well, this is a great time of the year to do it.
Think about the goals you are setting and put them through the filter of the four laws: Is this goal that I have set for my employee, is it obvious what I want to achieve? Is the result attractive, that is, is it clear how it connects with the company's mission? Is it simple, can it be broken down into two-minute actions? Is it satisfying, do I celebrate small successes with my people and motivate them?
This is an opportunity to set objectives as best you can and help your team focus on those hard-won changes by putting their deepest minds to work for them.
These laws of change are practices that allow us to have a better chance of overcoming the restrictions that we often impose on ourselves unconsciously. Knowing yourself remains the maxim of development. This technique of changing habits can work so that next year, we do not have to pass the same resolutions to the new agenda. Daring to try and learn is the path to development.
How much time are you going to invest this year in your own growth? I'd love to know what you thought of this article and what you think of it. I invite you to write me at fmonterrubio@icloud.com
CLEAR, J. (2018). Hábitos Atómicos. México: Paidos.
DUHIGG, C. (2012). El poder de los hábitos. España: Urano.
KOTLER, S. (2013) The rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Boston: New Harvest.