Change is hard. You’ve probably noticed that.
We all want to become better people — stronger and healthier, more creative and more skilled, a better friend or family member.
But even if we get really inspired and start doing things better, it’s tough to actually stick to new behaviors. It’s more likely that this time next year you’ll be doing the same thing than performing a new habit with ease.
Why is that? And is there anything you can do to make change easier?
How to Be Good at Remembering People’s Names
My girlfriend is great at remembering people’s names.
Recently, she told me a story that happened when she was in high school. She went to a large high school and it was the first day of class. Many of the students had never met before that day. The teacher went around the room and asked each person to introduce themselves. At the end, the teacher asked if anyone could remember everyone’s name.
My girlfriend raised her hand and proceeded to go around the room and accurately name all 30 or so people. The rest of the room was stunned. The guy next to her looked over and said, “I couldn’t even remember your name.”
She said that moment was an affirming experience for her. After that she felt like, “I’m the type of person who is good at remembering people’s names.”
Even today, she’s great at remembering the names of anyone we come across.
Here’s what I learned from that story: In order to believe in a new identity, we have to prove it to ourselves.
Identity–Based Habits
The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviors are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).
To change your behavior for good, you need to start believing new things about yourself.
Imagine how we typically set goals. We might start by saying “I want to lose weight” or “I want to get stronger.” If you’re lucky, someone might say, “That’s great, but you should be more specific.”
So then you say, “I want to lose 20 pounds” or “I want to squat 300 pounds.”
These goals are centered around our performance or our appearance.
Performance and appearance goals are great, but they aren’t the same as habits. If you’re already doing a behavior, then these types of goals can help drive you forward. But if you’re trying to start a new behavior, then I think it would be far better to start with an identity–based goal.
The image below shows the difference between identity–based goals and performance and appearance–based goals.
Graphic by James Clear.
The interior of behavior change and building better habits is your identity. Each action you perform is driven by the fundamental belief that it is possible. So if you change your identity (the type of person that you believe that you are), then it’s easier to change your actions.
The reason why it’s so hard to stick to new habits is that we often try to achieve a performance or appearance–based goal without changing our identity. Most of the time we try to achieve results before proving to ourselves that we have the identity of the type of person we want to become. It should be the other way around.
The Recipe for Sustained Success
Changing your beliefs isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps.
1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.
Here are five examples of how you can make this work in real life.
Note: I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to start with incredibly small steps. The goal is not to achieve results at first, the goal is to become the type of person who can achieve those things.
For example, a person who works out consistently is the type of person who can become strong. Develop the identity of someone who works out first, and then move on to performance and appearance later.
Start small and trust that the results will come as you develop a new identity.
Want to lose weight?
Identity: Become the type of person who moves more every day.
Small win: Buy a pedometer. Walk 50 steps when you get home from work. Tomorrow, walk 100 steps. The day after that, 150 steps. If you do this 5 days per week and add 50 steps each day, then by the end of the year, you’ll be walking over 10,000 steps per day.
Want to become a better writer?
Identity: Become the type of person who writes 1,000 words every day.
Small win: Write one paragraph each day this week.
Want to become strong?
Identity: Become the type of person who never misses a workout.
Small win: Do pushups every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Want to be a better friend?
Identity: Become the type of person who always stays in touch.
Small win: Call one friend every Saturday. If you repeat the same people every 3 months, you’ll stay close with 12 old friends throughout the year.
Want to be taken seriously at work?
Identity: become the type of person who is always on time.
Small win: Schedule meetings with an additional 15–minute gap between them so that you can go from meeting to meeting and always show up early.
What is your identity?
In my experience, when you want to become better at something, proving your identity to yourself is far more important than getting amazing results. This is especially true at first.
If you want to get motivated and inspired, then feel free to watch a YouTube video, listen to your favorite song, and do P90X. But don’t be surprised if you burn out after a week. You can’t rely on being motivated. You have to become the type of person you want to be, and that starts with proving your new identity to yourself.
Most people (myself included) will want to become better this year. Many of us, however, will set performance and appearance–based goals in hopes that they will drive us to do things differently.
If you’re looking to make a change, then I say stop worrying about results and start worrying about your identity. Become the type of person who can achieve the things you want to achieve. Build the habit now. The results can come later.
TEDxCambridge - Sara Lazar on How Meditation can Reshape our Brains
Neuroscientist Sara Lazar’s amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress.
Back To Meditation
The diet has been stalled a bit, and its not for lack of trying, but rather focusing on the symptom rather than the disease. If you have never tried meditation, I strongly suggest you give it a whirl. The point is to address the root cause of being overwight and eating too much or eating the wrong things. Every one of us has some level of neurotic issues, and some of us self medicate with the pleasure of food.
This is my current meditation:
1. Sit in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. I need to sit upright in a chair with my feet flat on the floor. Set a timer for 15 minutes to start.
2. The point is to calm your mind by stopping the constant fireworks of thought, which is filled with angst, worry, fear, and all the other negative side effects of dealing with life.
3. I breathe deeply, just relaxing and constantly guiding my mind back to stillness and emptiness. Its often been referred to as gently lovingly guiding a puppy that is wondering all around your living room peeing on everything. Don’t force it, just keep guiding yourself back to stillness gently. Just the shift back to stillness is success, not necessarily keeping your mind still.
4. I then imagine my mind being a sponge, and all day (all week, all year, all life) long it has picked all kinds of negativity. Fear, hate, self-loathing, anger, frustration, lonliness, longing, anxiety, just everything everyone’s mind keeps picking up.
5. I exhale and gently squeeze that sponge and all the nasty stuff runs out between my fingers. I inhale and the sponge takes on fresh mountain spring water. Exhale, and more dirt and grime flush out. Imagine all the dirt and grime and nastiness flushing out, while the sponge comes clean and starts to show the beautiful colors it picked up during the day. All the good things that happened have colored the sponge a beautiful pattern, and that can’t be washed out. Colors of love, happiness, compassion, self-love, gratefulness, self-worth, character, courage, and sunlight. I keep rinsing that sponge under that mountain spring and I revel in its beauty, because that beauty is in all of us, no matter how much grime we have picked up. You just have to work at it sometimes. Use all of your senses when imagining the sponge, how foul and slimy and stinky that dirty sponge is and as it comes clean how soft, fresh smelling, and even the sound it makes as all the soap suds come out and its just spring water.
This can take a little practice, when I discipline myself to meditate twice a day I can generally make great progress. Then I take it for granted and start skipping and going backwards! Good luck.
Write Out Your Day From Another Point of View
I might have to give this a whirl:
“Some researchers have developed a method where they say, if something is nagging at us, write about it in the third person so we can look at it as objectively as we can as opposed to immersing ourselves in a negative experience. That kind of distance can be really helpful to change our story and to look at it in a new way and give new meaning to it.
I think I try to do this sometimes. I remind myself that my interpretation of something is just that—an interpretation. It’s not the only way. Sometimes it’s good to to look at a situation the opposite way as an exercise.”
(Source: Lifehacker)
A productivity method that encourages focus on what you have to do right now, what’s on your plate next, and what you’ve just completed, all organized into categories that are easy to switch among.
(Source: Lifehacker)
The 10-Minute Hack
The hardest part of doing most things is just starting. We often think about how big of a project we have ahead of ourselves, and that’s what makes it hard to start. I know when I was writing my book, it seemed like most of my day was spent fighting the agony of just getting started. It was hard to ignore just how big of a project it was.
Thankfully, I’ve found a great hack for getting started. It’s called The 10-Minute Hack.
Each day, after I wake up, as soon as is possible—before eating, before showering, before checking email, (but not before meditating)—I pick one task, set my iPhone timer for 10 minutes, and work on that one thing non-stop.
How much work can you possibly get done within 10 minutes? A surprising amount, really, but that’s not the point.
The point is, you get started.
Sometimes, the 10 minutes seems like an eternity. I’m just waiting for it to end so I can eat something or go to the gym. But often—actually, usually—I don’t stop after 10 minutes. 10 minutes turns into 45 minutes, an hour—two hours—of non-stop work on one project.
The Beauty of Ten Minutes
Beautiful item number one about The 10-Minute Hack: once you get started, the trail has been carved. The rigidity of hesitation gives way to the fluidity of being in a project. Whatever second-guesses that had to be quelled to get started are knocked down by the possibilities introduced by being in motion.
This also sets a precedent for the rest of the day. Naturally, I get the urge to check email, to make some tea, or to check Twitter. But “I only have to do this for 10 minutes” I tell myself. The neural pathways that have to be exercised to suppress these urges—probably in the prefrontal cortex—get stronger.
Which introduces beautiful item number two about The 10-Minute Hack: you will feel like atotal loser if you can’t work on something for 10 minutes without stopping. Anybody can do that. It’s nearly impossible to fail at this.
Motivational Judo
And just after beautiful item number two takes effect, beautiful item number one is exercised. This motivational Judo is what makes The 10-Minute Hack work.
If I don’t get into the flow, hey, no problem. I did my 10 minutes, and I have permission to do some other things. Maybe I’ll be in the mood to get something done later.
If I do get into the flow—fantastic! If I’ve gotten 2 hours of solid work done at the beginning of the day, I feel much better throughout the day. Honestly, that’s probably more work than I would have gotten done futzing around for 8 hours.
This technique can be used a number of different ways, and it doesn’t always have to be 10 minutes:
- Want to start meditating? Set a timer for 2 minutes. If you can’t meditate for 2 minutes, being busy isn’t your only problem. If you like meditating, you’ll look forward to longer sessions.
- Want to start stretching in the morning? Start simple. Sit on the floor, and reach your toes. It’s easy because you’re sitting, but since you remember how good it feels to stretch, you just might try some more postures.
- Starting a workout program? Pick something simple, like “30 minutes of cardio,” and commit to do it every day for one week. It’s easy to not make excuses for one week, and once you realize how good you feel, you’ll want to keep going.
(Source: Lifehacker)
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jwalking/2007/03/cherokee-wisdom.html#ixzz1nc6P2nlw
