Resolutions – and broken dreams.
The challenge of changing old habits and making better ones!
We’re one week away from February – and I wonder, how many of your New Year’s Resolutions have bitten the dust?
The theatre of the New Years resolution! We are always so attracted by the power of the fresh start. So full of good intentions.
The more resolutions we make, the less merry…I have learned over the trail of broken imperatives of many years, that quality of our focus on change is far better than the quantity of our aspirations for self-improvement.
I have one resolution for this year: and that is to write a book. I am currently about 50000 words in. That feels quite good. My problems are twofold: the pangs of imposter syndrome, and the sneaky pulls of procrastination…
The world of parenting, the world of self-help is crowded. Who am I to think I have anything to offer? I am not a Doctor or a clinician, I am not a therapist or an academic with research papers to unpack… I am an educator – but who cares for that? I bring a mongrel wisdom from working with thousands of young people and their families over close the 30 years…but, but but…
Next there is procrastination. Low hanging tasks and busy work…checking my facebook feed and online shopping. When I pay attention, I can track how I feel a contraction in my chest, an armouring of fear, when I sit down to the blank screen and it’s time to write…
What are your resolutions? What changes do you want to make? When might you have succeeded? And which changes constantly seem out of reach?
Maybe you are parent of a child or teen who needs to make some changes in their lives. Maybe they need to and want to manage their time more effectively, work more productively, get better grades? How do we avoid becoming their nagger-in-chief?
Maybe your child or teen wants to and needs to make changes in how they manage their worries, or their anger so that they can live more freely and enjoy friendships or homelife better? How can we help them create better habits of mind, or learn how to manage their emotions with more skill?
Maybe as a teacher in school, you are mentoring or supporting a pupil who is struggling and you want to know what you can do to help them? Especially when there are repeated gaps between what a young person says they say they want, and what they actually do.
There is often a huge difference between what our heads say we should do, and what our hearts really want. Especially when there is something fearful going on. It might be fear of failure. It might be fearing disappointing other people, letting ourselves down, letting our parents down, letting our teacher down.
The higher the stakes, the harder the path…
Unfortunately at times of great importance, like the start of the new year, or after reports, appraisals, or exam results, we tend to go large with grand gestures. And we tend to play to the gallery of our own internal inner critics. All the voices that tell us we ‘should’ be this or we ‘should’ be that…
This means that the command and control aspect – our mind and our mindset – tends to go for sweeping change, and set all-or-nothing templates for success. The thing is – we’re not built to stay in boot-camp mode.
When we tell ourselves we will get fitter, or when a young person says they will work harder in their studies, and then we turn that into something that is a ‘smart’ target, there are problems in how we seek to make that measurable.
Often the design of the resolution is not made with sustainability in mind. Going to the gym five times a week, and doing an hour’s intensive work out at a time is not sustainable. Saying you’ll do three hours of homework every night, is going to result in a burst effort rather than a long-term change.
And yet, 5 minutes of desk yoga, a brisk 10 minute walk at lunch, or starting with 2 bite-sized study sessions using the Pomodoro technique and building those up over time, is infinitely better than doing nothing.
If only we could understand and ease the inward resistance effectively, and make a better alliance between head and heart?
Behaviour change is hard. The brain does what it finds rewarding. It creates habit loops because it is designed to keep us safe , not keep us happy. Our system is rigged to run on as little energy as possible. So it likes familiarity. The brain is an expensive system in terms of our energy resources. When we have to think, learn, integrate new ideas, and learn to become fluent in new ways, there is resistance.
The high path takes a lot of stamina we don’t yet have…the lower path of self-soothing familiarity is quite literally the no-brainer.
What the research shows – setting ourselves up for success…
- Set the right goals. What is it you really want and why. With warmth and the kindest, best intentions, what is it you would truly wish for yourself? Try to engage the intrinsic desires you can connect with this goal. Filter out extrinsic motivation that is more performative, or competitive. Lasting change is more likely when we are making choices based on our autonomy. So knowing the whys of the change are vital – and will have a vitalising effect when tims get tough.
- Create the enchantment – the pull that draws you towards that goal. What will it look like, feel like when you are starting to live the change you are designing? What will be the impact on you? On your work? On your sense of fulfilment? On other people? When you think of the outcome, there should be a sense of engagement, zest, enthusiasm, purpose. It should be meaningful to you for its own sake.
- When we say ‘will power’ – we often mean won’t power. And this comes from deficit motivation which is not as effective as a motivation you are drawn towards and enchanted by. ‘I must stop scrolling or streaming and not stay up so late’ is less attractive than ‘I am going to wake up energised and refreshed’. Hard goals that work, are set up with an ‘Aaah’ in mind rather than an ‘Urghh’. Really clearly visualising the rewards and framing a habit change in terms of reward prediction is really helpful.
- Manage self-criticism and self-shame – it’s not fertile soil for learning and new growth… If you’re supporting someone making change, look for those self-sabotage scripts. ‘I’m just lazy / stupid / distracted / unfit / unhealthy’…Try to encourage leaning towards peak moments when you felt effective, engaged, focused, powerful…
- Set the right goals in the right way. Instead of starting with impatience and grandeur -where by some punitive miracle, you’re going to bully yourself into suddenly practicing your instrument for an hour every day, start small and build up momentum. Momentum fuels motivation. As Bill O Hanlon wrote in Do One Thing Different – ‘find the pebbles that will start the landslide’. And of you are supporting someone through behaviour change, you need to support them seeing that every small effort is valid and counts.
- Replace the old habit with something manageable and enjoyable that also moves you towards your goal. For instance, substituting your cooking aperitif with a tasty non-alcoholic alternative reduces your intake by 1 or two units straight away rather than doing the whole dry January thing…
- Make the change easier and more friction-free. Having a grab-bag ready packed by the door for you to take for the gym. Making friction at the start of the day in busy family life easier by getting the kids to set the table for breakfast…Anticipate procrastination gremlins and keep your phone or ipad in another room when starting homework or revision. Turn notifications off. Screen-time creep comes from checking and re-checking messages and responding to notifications. These are designed to help us stay glued and connected to our devices rather than connected to who we are and what we really want.
- Plan for friction points. Don’t go into behaviour change with your eyes shut and your knuckles white…Create contingencies. This is how I am going to encourage myself to stay on track…this is what I will do differently if I get off-track. Deliberately apply self-compassion. If you get off track it does not just prove you’re useless and can never change. It proves change is hard, and you are only human. You can have another go and make adjustment to help make your next steps more manageable. We can’t shame ourselves or others into making positive change. Research shows that shame triggers old habits and fuels a cycle of acting out (Marshall Rosenberg – Non-Violent Communication).
How do these ideas for creating a mindset around resolutions and behaviour change strike you?
For me, I knew that I would hit the buffers with my book, that January would be busy and life would get in the way. I organised structures that would support me in becoming a writer. Yes, I’m dipping away from my big book for a few weeks. But I am collaborating with other writers and pulling together a chapter in a parenting book that is due to be published in April.
It’s manageable, it’s step by step. I’ve had support and training for editors who have given me encouragement and helpful frameworks to break it down and find a focus. I’m doing this in community with others – so there’s a supportive accountability process.
I am starting to visualise a new identity as a writer. Something that I would have squirmed to write previously (irony!). And this is another thing…identity based change. Moving from ‘I’m giving up smoking’ to moving into ‘I don’t smoke’. The language we use focuses our intent. Heidegger reckoned that being preceeds doing – and research around behaviour change lends weight to that idea.
To be a writer, I don’t need to be full time writing 8 hours a day. Or being a perfectionist, going on retreat and only feeling able to write when I’ve somehow cleared my diary to do it. No – the stakes are too high. And the higher the stakes, the harder the task.
This is the key to success with change, and to tackling procrastination which is often not a laziness problem or even always an issue with focus…It’s not a lack of work ethic or ambition. It’s more often a sneaky self-regulation problem to tune into and work around. The head is saying ‘Do the work! Write the essay or the test paper! Write the chapter!’ The heart is saying ‘This is big, this is scary. Soothe me.’
Our publisher recommended setting a timer for writing 25 minutes at a time. How good is that? Manageable – certainly. The shopping will always need to be done, the dishwasher emptied, the towels dried. Little and often is a thousand percent better than not at all.
I have also find that changing where I write is helpful too – not always in the performative space of my desk. Taking my laptop and sitting by the fire on a sofa helps me take a different view and before I know it, I’ve written something…
Momentum builds motivation. Design – and compassionately redesign the pebbles that will create the landslide that will get you, your child, your pupil, where they want to go.
I hope this helps you expand your toolkit for promoting the changes you want to make, and making those changes stick.
With love and gratitude,
Emma.
