A Miracle A Day

Archive for the ‘Perseverance’ Category

Achieving Your Goals – Negative Motivation VS Positive Motivation

Achieving Your Goals - Negative Motivation VS Positive Motivation

When it comes to motivation, it can be broken down into two categories:  negative motivation and positive motivation.  Negative motivation is "push" motivation… you are trying to push something you don't like away from you.  Positive motivation is "pull" motivation… you are trying to bring something that you DO want closer to you.

Each has an area where, generally speaking, it is more effective.  Negative motivation is good for getting you started, for getting that initial movement that is often the hardest part to achieve.  It does not, on the other hand, last all that well.  Positive motivation is just the ticket for that… positive motivation can be a lifelong thing, but in general is not as great for getting the first sparks together to "light your fire". 

Negative Motivation 

Negative motivation is very good for getting you moving.  It provides a sharp stimulus that is congruent with out instincts… that thing is unpleasant, get away from it.  Our instincts don't make a distinction, in this case, between physical unpleasantness and mental unpleasantness… either way, our instinct is just to get away. 

This can work very well… if your doctor tells you that you have cancer, and that unless you do what they say you are going to die, that provides some really strong motivation to change your ways and do what they say.  The motivation is sharp, strong, and focused… do what you need to (what the doctor tells you) in order to avoid something unpleasant (dying of cancer).   Since motivation is linked to action by way of a cost/benefit ratio, you can see that the cost (doing what the doctor tells you) is very low in comparison to the benefit (not dying).

Negative motivation has a very definite weakness, however.  It can be quite strong, enough to get you moving when other things wouldn't, but what happens when you take the negative stimulus away?  The motivation dries up almost instantly.

In other words, once you feel like you are safe from whatever the unpleasantness was, there is no more motivation from that source, though you may keep up whatever changes you have made out of habit.

Positive Motivation

Positive motivation is generally not quite as good at getting you moving.  The natural instinct to avoid unpleasantness is not triggered, thus leaving you without the added boost that brings.  Even if there is something you really, REALLY want, unless the path from here to there is pretty obvious, there may be some doubt, some fear, about your ability to achieve that thing, making it harder to get started.

On the other hand, positive motivation doesn't necessarily have a defined end, either.  If you lose weight because your doctor tells you that you have to or suffer some really unpleasant problems, then once you lose enough weight, that motivation goes away.  If you lose weight because you want to feel more fit and healthy, however, that motivation doesn't really go away.  You're still going to want to feel fit and healthy, even after you've achieved your original goals.

Positive motivation gets stronger as you go along.  Seeing progress toward your goal, whatever it may be, reinforces your positive motivation at the same time that it weakens your negative motivation… after all, you're getting closer to your thing you want (positive, or "pull" motivation) and farther from the thing you want to avoid (negative, or "push" motivation).  Positive motivation can also help you conserve momentum when moving to a new goal after completing your current one.

Summary

The trick of motivating yourself is to know how to combine the two, and which to use when.  Negative motivation is good for getting started, which is why many people who speak about reaching your goals will tell you to share your goals and time frames with someone else.  This induces the negative motivation of not wanting to look bad in front of that person.  That can range from a medium to a very strong negative motivation.  At the same time, however, it makes you start framing the way you look at your goal in terms of that negative light.  This can lead to you looking for ways to avoid both working on the goal and the person with whom you shared that goal.

That's where positive motivation comes into play.  Once negative motivation gets you moving, you can start to see your progress toward your goal, which helps to strengthen your positivel motivation into a force that can support further progress.  As you make more progress, and the end point (your goal) becomes clearer, positive motivation becomes even stronger, getting to the point where it can really drive you to the next goal once the current one is achieved… as long as you don't slow down too much.  Once you slow down, you may need the kick from negative motivation once again.

So… that's a really simple look at the differences between negative motivation and positive motivation.  Do you find that you use one more than the other?  Will you change how you attempt to reach new goals after thinking about the difference?  Let me know in the comments. 

Author

October 10th

Energy, Feed Your Mind, Goals, Motivation, Perseverance, Planning, Polarity

A Life In Flux

Have you ever had one of those times when it seemed like your entire life was in flux, where almost nothing seemed to be stable, something to hold onto while everything else shifts?  It's relatively common to have had that experience, although not everyone is required to go through it.

So… why do I bring this up?  Well, you might say it has a little personal relevance for me right now.  My employer is currently trying to sell the piece of their business where I work, other people around me seem to be finding greener pastures (in the employment sense), and things have been a bit chaotic on the home front, as we just had a huge yard sale.  This is in addition to writing for this website, and having recently set an ambitious goal of 500 subscribers by November 20th.

My normal rock among all the shifting sands, my wife, has been busy with getting ready for the yard sale (and cleaning up afterwards).  While I helped, and did most of the heavy lifting, she invested far more time than I, and so hasn't been as available for me as she normally is.

How does this all tie back to self-development?  Quite well, actually… because it has reinforced for me the need to find a center, a place of peace in the middle of your soul.  This is a place that is isolated from the outside world and all of its influences and distractions, a place where you can go when the rest of the world is too much to handle.

How do you go about finding your center?  Well, it's a combination of things, including learning how to achieve internal quiet, who you really are, and acceptance of your own freedom and the responsibility that comes with it.  So, here's a short summary of each of these factors:

  1. Achieving Internal Quiet

    This is the starting point for finding your center, as it provides a place from which to pursue the other two pieces.  First, a definition – internal quiet is the point at which the surface of your mind is calm, with all interrupting thoughts and distractions dealt with.  Now, a very quick guide on how to achieve it (I've mentioned this in a few previous articles):  Find a spot where you can sit and have aa few minutes of time to yourself.  Make yourself comfortable, and close your eyes.  Let any thought that comes up come, drift across your mind, and go back out.  Let any feelings that come up come without attempt at suppression, observe them, and let them go, too.

    Before too long, though the time it takes varies depending on what the circumstances of your life are at the moment, you should reach a place of internal quiet.  Now you're ready for the next step.

  2. Finding Who You Are

    Finding who you are… this is sort of mislabeling.  It may feel like finding who you are, but in reality what you are doing is peeling back the layers you have pasted over the real you, and admitting who you really are inside.  It's not so much finding as admitting, although you may have buried some things deep enough that you find yourself surprised that they are still there.

    This is the point where you start taking down some of your internal walls and dealing with things that are not pleasant.  This is by far more easily done when you have reached internal quiet, and know how to do so again, as internal quiet allows you to release the pain that some of your digging and demolition of walls allows back up into your conscious awareness.

  3. Accepting Your Freedom (And Responsibility)

    When you are well into the process above, you are likely to start recognizing the fact that anything you don't like about yourself is your own fault, that it's both caused and continued by your own choices.  If you have a lot of anger inside, it's because you are holding on to some old injury.  If you have trouble trusting others, it is no doubt because of something else (or the same thing, I suppose) you are holding inside with your walls.  There are two reactions to this realization that you are who you choose to be… you can deny it and turn away, pretending you are someone you are not, and that others are to blame for who you are, or you can embrace it and realize that since these things you don't like are a result of your choices, that also means you are free to make different choices and change who you are.

    Either way, once you recognize responsibility for who you are, you can never totally bury that knowledge and understanding again.

Once you have done the things listed above, you should be able to tell a significant difference in your level of internal peace and your ability to deal with external stress.  You'll have a place inside you that can function as your anchor in a life in flux, something to hold you steady against whatever waves may come.

And it's a spot, that center of your soul, that no one else can ever take away from you. 

Author

October 8th

Feed Your Mind, Internal Quiet, Perseverance

The Truth Behind Falling – And Being – In Love

Holding Hands

There is nothing like falling in love.  Your whole self, body, heart, and mind, yearns for the person you are in love with.  You want to be with them all the time, you wonder what they're doing or what they're thinking when you are not around them, and the whole world just seems like a better place.  There's only one problem.

You can't, and won't, be falling in love forever.  At some point, if you want to keep the relationship, you have to go from falling in love to being in love.  If you're already at that point, you might want to read The Secret Killer Of Relationships or The Very SImple Secret To A Happy Marriage.

Falling In Love

Falling in love is the beginning (and can sometimes re-occur later, but I'll get to that)… it's that place where the other person, your significant other, can do no wrong.  Everything about them is beautiful, fascinating, and you can't get enough of them.  Any time your focus is not fully on something specific, your thoughts drift to the newly significant other in your life.

At this point, everything is new… every day together brings new revelations, new learning, which make you feel like you're getting more and more "inside" the other person.  You let each other in deeper than the surface, and there is always a constant feeling of growing closer, an observable closing of the mental and emotional distance between the two of you.

That is a huge part of the greatness of falling in love… getting closer at a visible rate.  It's also part of why it can't last forever.  Eventually you are close enough that even as you grow closer, it's not as visible, and so it feels like you have stalled, or even like you are growing apart.  When you are (bad, but understandable, analogy coming up) a mile apart, and you get 10% closer, that's a huge distance.  When you are a foot apart, and you get 10% closer… that's a lot harder to see.

So does this mean that you have reached that point where you love each other, but you are no longer "in" love? 

No…  when you are growing closer at a very visible rate, that's the "falling" part of falling in love.  When you are already close, and moving closer by inches (or even fractions of an inch, eventually), that's when it changes to being in love.  It doesn't mean you're no longer in love, it just means that seeing results of your efforts, where you see the relationship grow, is not as easy, and so you need to find other sources of motivation as well.

Being In Love

Being in love is where it starts taking conscious involvement to keep the "in love" part without the falling.  Now, instead of falling in love, you need to start being in love.  You will have to go out of your way to keep yourself in your partner's thoughts (and make sure that they stay in yours!).  If you don't go out of your way, it won't mean anything.

What does it mean to "go out of your way"?  Going out of your way can mean different things to different people, but the important thing is that you are devoting the two things that you can't possibly acquire more of to them.  What two things?  Time and attention… you can't get more time and you have only a limited amount of attention to invest during the time you do have.  Giving time and attention, therefore, is the universally recognized way to convey someone's (or something's) importance to you.

When you are falling in love, and everything is new, it's easy to devote an enormous amount of attention (and with it time) to your significant other.  New things always have a draw on our attention… it's part of being human, and part of our survival instinct (you have to determine whether or not something new is a threat, after all).  That's why it's also easier to stick with a new diet, or a new workout, or why you may find you love a new dish or a new restaurant.  Once something (or in our case, someone) become familiar, however, it requires a conscious decision to dedicate mental energy (attention) to that thing (or, as I said, person).

When you combine that advantage of newness drawing our attention with the visibly growing closeness of the relationship, it makes giving more attention to the relationship a no-brainer.  It doesn't require much in the way of conscious effort, because not only is your subconscious driving you to make sure this "new" thing is not a threat, but the rewards are blindingly obvious. 

Once you get to the point of obviously diminishing returns, however, you start to notice that the same amount of effort doesn't move you the same amount closer.  At the same time, the subconscious drive to categorize anything new as "threat" or "non-threat" fades away, leaving you with much less "drive" to devote attention to the relationship.  Other things start to claim your attention, drawing it away from your significant other.

I mentioned earlier that your partner needs you to give two things in order to keep being in love, as opposed to just loving each other (the difference between soul mates and good friends).  One was time, the other attention.  Out of the two of these, time is the easiest to give, attention the most important.

Attention Is Money

Despite the phrase above, attention is far more important than money.  Attention is the currency by which you show how much you value something.  You've heard the saying "time is money" but time without attention means nothing.  Whatever it is that you do, it's highly unlikely that they truly pay you for your time… they really pay for your attention across time.  They pay you to write, to watch a security monitor, to serve burgers… whatever it is, they may pay you for the hours you do it, but if you don't "do it", whatever it is, you don't get paid.

This applies to relationships, too.  Giving time without attention is sort of like leaving a seventeen cent tip at a restaurant… it lets the other person know that you didn't forget, you just didn't think they were worthy of more.  It's insulting, whether done consciously, as with the tip, or subconsciously, as with spending time with your significant other without giving them your full attention.

When you give someone time, without attention, you are telling them that they are low on your priority list.  It doesn't matter whether you intend for them to be or not… you are showing them, with your actions, that they are.  You can show someone that they have your attention in many ways… communication is an extremely important one, but there is also buying them something (probably the least effective way), making them something (the more it reflects the fact that it is something YOU created, the better), or doing something with them (ie going out to dinner and/or a movie).

All of the ways listed above can show your attention, but if you don't show your mental involvement, show that you were thinking of them specifically, the value drops.  For instance, when you buy something for your significant other, if you don't take the time to buy something that they specifically like (for instance buying roses when your wife prefers tulips), it loses some of its value… that doesn't mean it has no value, just less.  The same goes for making them something… if you don't show that you were thinking about them when you made it, it loses some value.  If you do something with them, and keep taking phone calls, it takes away some of the value.

Communication is a special case.  By the very act of communicating, you are giving them some fraction of your attention.  Different forms of communication show different amounts of attention, and also show how much of your attention the other person has to different degrees.  Email, for instance, doesn't require much attention, or show how much attention the other person has, unless it's a long and involved email, which could STILL have been written across time, and thus be less of your attention.  Instant messaging, on the other hand, still doesn't require a lot of attention, but shows how much of your attention the other person has a little better, because they can see how long you take to respond.  Voice communication (ie a phone call) is better yet, as it requires more attention, and they can hear in your voice how much of your attention they have.  An in-person meeting provides them with the most attention, and lets them read your body language as well to determine how much of your current attention they have.

The Difference

What it boils down to, then, is that the difference between falling in love and being in love is that you can't fall forever.  Eventually you have to move from falling in love to being in love, from the easy part to the part which requires your conscious effort.  It IS worth that effort, though… being in love still moves you closer, and still builds your relationship and love higher.  It just exchanges speed for depth… it goes back and fills in all the little chinks that falling in love passed over.

You can also fall in love all over again.  This usually happens when you let your partner slide from your attention for too long, and then something wakes you up to that fact.  All of a sudden what was old and familiar is new and different.  You close the gap that opened up between you, and now have that momentum to keep you going once you move back to being in love once again.

Again, falling in love is absolutely wonderful.  It is an amazing experience, and one you will likely always remember.  Being in love, though, has depth and duration that falling in love is not capable of producing.

Falling in love gets you to the starting line.  Being in love is the rest of the race.  And when you win at being in love, you win big.

Author

September 26th

Awareness, Communication, Energy, Growth, Motivation, Perseverance, Priorities, Relationships

One Man’s Change – Overcoming Depression

Depression 

You may want to read A Potentially Fatal Mistake, the article that lead to this one.

When I was younger, I had great self-esteem, but horrible self-worth.  Just because I was confident in my abilities didn't mean that I thought those abilities made me worth anything.  Other people had worth, and always took precedence over me, because I didn't have any worth. 

This low self-worth lead to me being depressed.  I was depressed to the point where I didn't really feel emotions, didn't really care about anything, for years… about 5 – 6years, actually.  Near the end, it was bad enough that I couldn't sleep more than 45 minutes a night, I thought about dying every day, and finally was ready to go through with it.

I went to the hospital because of the side-effects of such low amounts of sleep (seeing things move when they weren't, etc.).  While I was there, I finally told someone who could help me about how I felt, and they ended up sending me to another hospital, where they gave me Prozac and a medicine that helped me to sleep.

I was on Prozac for 30 days, and in that time it cleared out the depression enough that I could take a good look at myself and my life for the first time in a LONG time.  I realized that I was keeping myself depressed by my thought patterns… I would dwell on the things that made me feel bad, almost wallowing in the negativeness of it all.

So I made a decision.  I changed my thought patterns… when my thoughts would start to go down that path of negativity, I instantly stopped them.  I'm not saying that this is something that everyone can just instantly change, but that's what I did.

It worked.  When those 30 days were over, I didn't suffer from depression any more.  I was cured, and I no longer needed medicine to help me.  Removing the cycle of negative thoughts removed the negative emotion of depression, and freed many of my other emotions, to some degree.

A couple years later, I had depression come back… I had allowed myself to fall back into the cycle of negative thoughts.  Again, I needed a little help to clear my head, so I went to the doctor, told him of my previous experience, and asked for Prozac again. 

It was the same story… I took it for 30 days,  and during those 30 days, I really thought about what was going on, and I realized that I had only taken care of half of my problem the first time.  I had dealt with the negative thought cycles, but not the problem behind them, which was my low self-worth.

What I found, with all that thinking, is that I had value intrinsically.  I was worth something because I was a person… it had nothing to do with my intelligence, my looks, what I had or hadn't done.  I had worth simply because I was a person.

I had felt this way about others all along.  Everyone else had worth, regardless of who they were and what they had done.  Not only that, but they all had equal worth, though some of them had more importance to me, being people I liked or loved or both (yes, you can certainly love someone without liking them).  In other words, the worth had nothing to do with anything specific to the person, it was theirs by virtue of being a person.

And that value was mine, too.  I was also a person, and I also had worth simply because of this.  That revelation, along with fixing my negative thought patterns again, made my changes permanent this time.  Since that time, I have been depressed, yes, but it has lasted, at most, a few hours.

Now, different people may have different reasons for thinking that every person has value.  My "why" is that I believe that all of the universe is a part of God, including each person.  I believe that God's universal awareness is present in, and perceives through, each person.  So, in essence, any time you deal with any person, you are dealing with God, also.

I think it would be awfully hard to believe in God, and believe you are dealing with Him, even if indirectly, and think that the person that He is in has no worth.  In fact, God's worth is so overwhelming that any difference in an individual's worth, if it exists, is insignificant in comparison with the worth that God being present in them adds… so every person is of equal worth.

In case you're wondering, I am Christian, but I think my understanding and beliefs are considerably different than average… you can feel free to ask about them, if you want, just send me an email (you can click my name at the top of this post to find my email). 

Author

September 20th

Awareness, Beliefs, Feed Your Mind, Growth, Healing, Perseverance

8 Ways To Put Procrastination Off Until Tomorrow

Notepad - List

Ah yes, the joys of procrastination… putting off all the hard or unpleasant work that you need to get done until later.  Then, when it all piles up until it's over your head, you feel overwhelmed, wondering how you managed to end up so deep in a mess and how to escape.

Some people seem to have a natural tendency toward procrastination, always putting off until tomorrow what could be done today.  Others don't seem to have that issue.  They don't seem to have any problem just getting right to work on something, even when it's very unpleasant to even think about.  Those of us who fall into the first category can, however, take steps to deal with our "problem".

So, since you have a tendency to procrastinate (otherwise, why are you reading this article?), why not put it to work against itself?  Here's some ways you can put off procrastinating until tomorrow.

  1. Write A Daily Task List (DTL)

    This one is relatively obvious, and you've probably heard it until you're sick of it… but any list of ways to help put off procrastination would be incomplete without it.  All this requires is that each night you make a short list of things that need done (or worked on) the next day.  Once you have your list, there are many other things that you can do with it.

  2. Prioritize Your DTL By Importance

    The first thing you can do is prioritize the list you created in #1 by importance.  That way you can be sure that you will at least get the most important things accomplished, and you are likely to find that you get more than the first few things done, because you feel like you've gotten the important stuff out of the way and gotten something accomplished for the day.  You may even find yourself on a roll, getting things done left and right.

  3. Prioritize Your DTL By Difficulty

    Your next choice is to prioritize your list by difficulty, putting the most difficult tasks first.  This makes it so that you have the hardest work out of the way early, so that when you are more tired later in the day, you have only the easier tasks left, thus decreasing the chances that you will put a task off until tomorrow because it's too hard to finish in the time that you have left.  Also, this particular method of prioritizing is even more likely to make you feel like you're "on a roll" than #2.

  4. Prioritize Your DTL By Unpleasantness

    This may be very heavily related to #3, as difficulty is a major factor in how unpleasant a task is… but it's not the ONLY factor.  This means of prioritization has the advantage that as you complete your tasks, the remaining tasks are more and more things that you actually want to do, not things that you have to do.  Also, like #3, you're less likely to have that really unpleasant task at the end of the day that you put off until the next day because you don't want to start it late.

  5. Reward Yourself When You Complete Tasks Early

    People have known for thousands of years that you train people, including yourself, through rewards and punishment.  You reward behavior which you want to increase, and punish behavior you want to decrease.  Since most procrastination has punishments built right in (like putting off paying your bills… not good for your credit, people come and shut off power, etc.), you are free to concentrate on the rewards side of the equation.  The three easiest ways to do that are trewarding yourself for completing unusually difficult tasks, rewarding yourself for completing a longer-term task early (ie something that you expect to take a week and you finish in three days), and rewarding yourself for completing your DTL.  Don't make the rewards too easy, or out of proportion, though, or they won't help you to train yourself… you have to feel like you earned whatever it is.

  6. Post Your DTL Where You Will See It Regularly

    This is especially good if you cross tasks off as you go, since it allows you to see your progress.  It can be motivational to see a list of ten tasks with seven of them already crossed off, especially if it's still relatively early.  Even if you don't have anything crossed off yet, having the list in a place where you see it can remind you of what you decided to do for the day if you get distracted.

    Just as a note, the phrasing in that last sentence is important… always look at your list as what you decided to do, not what you "should" do.  What you "should" do takes the element, the feeling, of choice out of it, which can leave you feeling resentful even if you made the list yourself.  It's a list of tasks that you decided to do, not something forced on you by others.

  7. Be Accountable To Someone Else For Your DTL

    Just about everyone hates to feel stupid in front of someone else.  If you let someone else read your DTL, and share your progress on that list with them at the end of the day, it provides a little more pressure to actually get things done, so that you don't feel like you have to stand there in front of them and tell them that you screwed around all day and didn't get anything on your DTL done.  Don't let doing this make you feel like you have to put more things on your DTL just to impress them, though… the list is still for you, and you don't want to exhaust yourself trying to impress someone.

    If you're in a relationship, your significant other is probably a good choice for this.

  8. Do Things Instantly When Possible

    This is really simple, and the thing that has helped me the most with my natural tendency to procrastination.  This is completing tasks as soon as you can when you become aware that they need done.  For example, you can pay your bills as soon as you get them in the mail.  Or you can fix that chair with the wobbly leg NOW instead of waiting until the weekend (by which time you've probably become accustomed to procrastinating that task, which makes it easier and easier to continue doing so, while other tasks pile up behind it).

    Your mental list of what needs done (not the same as your DTL) can become overwhelming when things pile up, making you want to hide behind one distraction after another.  Completing tasks as soon as possible after you become aware of them keeps your mental list all cleared out, making you far less likely to feel overwhelmed, helping you to put off procrastinating.

Procrastination tendencies are incurable.  They will be with you for the rest of your life (at least from what I have observed in other, and felt personally).  Using the methods above, however, you can put procrastination off until tomorrow, and get things done today.

Author

September 18th

Goals, Motivation, Perseverance, Planning, Priorities, Timetables, Tips Tuesday

The Subconscious Mind In Control (AKA Habits)

What Habits Are 

"Habit" is a word for an area where your subconscious mind controls your actions in the absence of input from your conscious mind.  Most of your every day life is controlled by habits… you have a habit of breathing, sleeping, waking, etc.  When most people talk about habits, though, they are referring to ones where you are aware of the habit but still relinquish control to your subconscious.  Smoking, drinking, gambling… these are things where the decision to do it is made by your subconscious, and your conscious mind, while aware of what you are doing, is nothing but an observer.

There are two things you should know when looking at habits from this viewpoint.  The first is that if your conscious mind involves itself, becoming more than an observer, it can break (or change) that habit.  The second is that even if you do decide to make a change, but don't give regular attention to maintaining the change, you will allow that area to slip back to your subconscious mind's control.  If you have established enough of a different pattern, that won't matter, because the subconscious will continue along the new pattern, but if you slip before that new pattern is set, your subconscious will go back to its old ways, and your habit will return.

Now let's get something straight… not all habits are bad.  Taking a shower every day is a good habit, as are brushing your teeth, chewing with your mouth closed, and exercising.  Smoking can even be looked at as a good habit, if the benefits outweight the costs… it's just that the costs for smoking are cumulative, and quite high over the long term, where the benefits are NOT cumulative, and only valuable over a very short term.  So one person may consider something a bad habit, where another might consider the same thing neutral or even good.

How Habits Form

You form habits by repeating the same response, or a very similar response, to the same, or very similar circumstances.  You form your habit of breathing by exhaling when your lungs are empty of oxygen and inhaling when they are empty of air.  You form your habit of smoking by picking up a cigarette in certain situations, which can then expand if you start doing so in more situations.  Doing something one time is seldom enough to form a habit… it usually requires tens, hundreds, or even thousands of repetitions.

Performing the same action in response to non-similar circumstances can peripherally reinforce a habit that is forming, but the impact is small.  That is, if you have a habit of smoking first thing in the morning, and you smoke one at lunch time, that isn't really enough to expand the habit to smoking at lunch, and if you have smoked a few in the morning, then smoke one at lunch, it is unlikely to cement the habit of smoking in the morning, either.

How Habits Change

There are two kinds of change that can happen with a habit… replacement and removal.  Replacing a habit is FAR easier than removing it.

When you replace a habit, what you do is change which action is fired when certain circumstances trigger a habit response from your subconscious.  Basically, you have trained your subconscious to fire off a habit when certain circumstances arise.  Replacing a habit simply points that trigger at a different habit, such as chewing gum instead of smoking.  That's relatively easy, because all you're doing is choosing a different habit to fire, rather than trying to change the whole subconscious pattern of responding to those circumstances with a a habit.

Removing a habit is the other side of that coin… it is conditioning the subconscious to STOP responding to a certain set of circumstances by firing a habit trigger.  This is mostly done by altering the way you perceive the set of circumstances.  If you want to remove a habit of swearing, for example, you could train your subconscious to look at the circumstances where you would normally swear through a filter of "What if my baby was here?".  Even this doesn't actually remove the habit trigger, though… it simply keeps your subconscious from seeing the set of circumstances that trigger it.

That last is why people who form a habit of smoking, then quit, can one day pick it up right where they left off.  They changed their perception of the circumstances for the time where they quit, but then their perception goes back to, or close enough to, the old set that fire off that trigger.  Abra cadabra… your habit is back!

The ability for "removed" habits to return is one more reason why replacing habits is more effective… even if that set of circumstances arises, it fires off the replacement habit, not the original.  I haven't really looked into replacement FOLLOWED by removal… that might be a relatively effective technique, so that even if you backslide it's only to the replacement habit, not the original.

Conclusion

The reality is that if you want to alter a habit, the first thing you must do it become consciously aware of it.  After you become aware, you have to make a conscious decision to change, and you'd better have motivation for the change, too (and internal sources of motivation are by far the strongest, most persistent sort).  Then you can work on replacing the habit or removing the habit trigger.

Don't expect instant results when trying to change habits.  Chances are pretty good that you'll have a fight on your hands for at least two weeks… often much longer.  Just keep your focus on now, on the progress you have already made, the changes that you already have, not on the permanent change that is your goal… it'll make it much easier to stick with it.

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PS – This post was written in response to Jenny and Erin's self development writing challenge.

Author

September 6th

Awareness, Growth, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Perseverance, Subconscious