April 2, 2015
By now the New Year’s resolutions are starting to become, well, a little less resolute. Some of us bit off more then we can chew. Others are becoming discouraged from lack of results. Perhaps mostly we just got bored, and tired of doing that same little thing we promised to do over and over and over again!
What if -like a salesman in a cheap suit and stereotyped voice- I told you I could change all that? You wouldn’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me. In fact I can’t really change anything about your success with those resolutions you made. What I can do is suggest you rebel against the status quo. There are lots of reasons we make new years resolutions from wanting to look better, to wanting to feel better, and often because it’s what all the cool kids do. What if instead of resolving to make these sweeping changes, just once a day you rebelled against your typical lifestyle, and just did one thing -one choice, one activity, one change- that is good for you?
When asked, most people admit there are things they would like to do differently to be healthier, and happier. However, change is a very hard thing to do. Instead of changing your whole lifestyle, I’m asking you to defy it. I want you to join me, and once a day complete one act of defiance against your typical bad habits, and see the difference it can make!
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Change is all around us. Life grates at us uncomfortably as it forces us to transform, and adapt to its incessant changes. However, despite the ability of the cosmos to do this almost effortlessly, we mere humans often find change incredibly difficult to accomplish. We decide to lose weight- we gain it. We decide to exercise more- we watch people pick out houses on the television.
So why is the universe so good at something we are so bad at? The universe is a cheater! Yeah, I said it- whatcha gonna do about it universe!? (Karma settle down. Play nice.) The world at large changes on a massive, and rapid scale. However, it also gets to make these changes without purpose, or predetermined goals. If not all together random, or unpredictable, life around us doesn’t play by the same rules you have to. Namely, you want to change for the better. You have to name a goal, and try to get there. However so many times, we all fall right back into the same routines, habits, and bodies we were in to begin with.
3 Pitfalls to Building New Good Habits
1) Busyness: We have too many goals, or to much going on.
Basically we are just too busy. I know for me, often, the death of a great idea is the idea that the great idea is sitting next to. They are both vying for my attention, and there just isn’t enough to go around. There are a limited number of hours in the day, and more importantly, we have a limited amount of emotional reserve to tackle hard things. (Most new things are hard things at first.) While you may have only picked one new years resolution -be honest- you have at least 3 other things you think you should be working on too. We say we want to go to the gym more often, but in the background we are also trying to eat a little better, sleep a little more, and cut down on stress. And that’s just the stuff you are trying to change! Forget all the other responsibilities you fulfill every day. Then again each of those ideas we have seem like good practices to work on. Is it best to focus on one to the exclusion of the rest? I don’t think so. However, if we aren’t going to avoid working on them, we have to be open with ourselves about what is actually on the to-do list so the work load is reasonable. We’ll get to what this looks like.
2) Boredom: we get bored easily.
We think we are weak. We aren’t. We think the workouts are too hard, and the chicken-every-night diet doesn’t let us eat the food we love. The truth is most of us are just easily bored. Its not a problem so much as it is human nature. We don’t like monotony. Variety is the spice of life, and all that. Don’t underestimate how hard fought a lot of our habits are. Teeth brushing is an inherently boring routine. (If you find brushing your teeth exciting, you sir need to check out extreme snail racing!) How many years did your mom force you to brush your teeth so it would be second nature now? It takes about 1-2 months for habit creation to stick, and for some goals that might as well be an eternity. Quickly we find excuses not to go to the gym. “The day was long, the kids were a nightmare, and I’m just too tired.” Sometimes that’s the truth. However, if you got free tickets to see your favorite artist play in town, could you go? Or if your son, Jason, really wanted to practice soccer kicks with you for half an hour, could you play? Maybe? Then maybe your excuse was, well, an excuse. Don’t feel bad. No judgement. This is normal. We are willing to put much more energy into activities that don’t bored us to tears. There is a big gap between how long it takes to build a habit, and our attention span. We are going to bridge that gap.
3) Bungling: We don’t feel the successes.
Whether you consider yourself a competitive person or not, we all enjoy winning. Likewise, we can all feel the difference between a real win, and a win by technicality. Inside, we know the difference between meeting our sales goal because we worked our ass off to do it, and meeting it because of a market shift that was neither in our control, nor any of our doing. The same goes for our personal lifestyle goals. The difference is while the sales fluke may have come with a sweet bonus regardless, often with our personal goals that win feeling is all we get. A lot of the time, we physically feel the benefits of healthier lifestyles much later, or not at all. So when we don’t even get that win feeling, it’s a pretty big deal. There is a lot to be said for determination, and delayed gratification. However, there is as much to be said for classical conditioning. The truth is if you can get some sort of prize, or benefit from your efforts on a regular basis, it’s a huge advantage.
When it comes to the personal changes we want to make, we become experts at self-sabotage. We decide to have a healthy salad at the buffet, but don’t quite feel the same satisfaction, because we can’t hide from ourselves that that salad had fried chicken and bacon on it. We went to the gym, walked the treadmill, and did 2 lifts, but did that count? Was it enough? We can’t get the win feeling if we don’t know whether we won. Likewise, we can’t know that, if we don’t know the rules to the game. Maybe that was a good workout for you. Maybe making a better definition of what a healthy lunch is for you, would have given you a chance at the win. You can’t feel the little successes if you don’t know what they look like. We are going to define these, so we can get that glorious win feeling daily
A Fish Named Fred
One day, there was a clever fish named Fred swimming through the lake, looking for his lunch. Suddenly, as if heaven sent, a shinny delicious looking morsel sunk down in front of his face. What luck! He happily bit on, but as he did he felt a piercing pain in his lip. The sullen fish realized the mistake he had made, thinking himself a sure goner. However, just then another shinny object sunk down a short way off. Fred immediately darted for the object, fighting the sudden pull on his lip, and bit onto the second rubbery snack. Then Fred gave up his struggle, letting himself be reeled skyward, out of the water, and onto shore. Two men stood there shocked to see the very large fish on both their lines. They took the hooks out of the fish’s mouth, setting it between them as they began to argue over who’s creel basket to put the trophy into. Seeing them distracted in their quarrel, Fred flopped himself off the shore, into the water, and swam away to find a better lunch.
If you can get your enemies to fight each other, you can get off the hook with both of them.
Pitting Pitfalls Against Each Other
It’s sort of the practice of many people to go about problem solving in a specific pattern. They identify a problem. Then they set out to counter that problem directly in some way. We are not going to be doing that. What we want to do is use these pitfalls against each other, and to our advantage. Here’s the basic break down of how I trick myself into improving my habits. (And it’s pretty simple.)
You have a lot of things you’d like to improve. And you get bored focusing on one thing too long. So we’re going to name, and focus on all the things we want to work on. We’re going to pick one different activity, or choice each day so we don’t get bored. Furthermore, we’re going to clearly define what this activity, or choice looks like so we get a win feeling every day.
This is the way I consistently, and progressively am able to realistically improve my lifestyle in terms of health and wellness. It is a simple concept, but it still relys a lot on proper goal setting. You’ll see what I mean because I’m going to go through all the steps to make it even simpler!
The Daily Act of Defiance 14 Day Challenge
Next week I will be posting my complete Daily Act of Defiance process, as well as how to complete your own 14 day Challenge. Additionally, I am very excited to announce the simultaneous release of the first piece of the Venture to Dream Toolkit, The Daily Act of Defiance 14 Day Challenge Workbook. If you would like to receive the workbook as soon as it is released, join me below. Otherwise, check in next week to read all about our rebellion.
-Michael Speck
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