"If you have it figured out, write a book!"
— a friend said to me after I dropped that I got a budgeting app to change my spending habits. I said I'd need a couple of months to observe and make tweaks, and he looked up in disbelief. "Bold plan", he said. "People don't change habits easily."
Which took me by surprise.
Surely the books are already being written and read, I don't go a week without someone mentioning "Atomic Habits". (Great book btw.) The books lay out the theory super clearly, cue-response-reward, here's how behavior change works. Take it and roll with it. Yet we don't seem to roll.
This got me thinking, what is the gap between having detailed instructions on how to change behaviors, and actually doing it? I changed lots of habits on purpose over years, and while it's a bit of a sport at this point, it wasn't easy in the beginning. What helped?
- Gain confidence in the process first.
If someone handed me a manual on how to swim and asked to go in the ocean, I'd say no thank you very much. I'd prefer a shoulder-deep pool and someone who can save me from inevitable panicked mini-drowning. With habits, that meant dipping my toes in the process by changing something innocuous, with a coach on my side to cheer and course correct. After I've seen it work on low stakes, I gained confidence to go for something life-changing. - Be sufficiently annoyed.
I have a host of habits that could be considered bad, and I'm going to keep on living with most of them. The time and mental energy it takes to go through the change process is not worth the annoyance they're causing me. Only the top ranking "OMG CAN I NOT" habits get to ride in the behaviour change part of my brain. As much as I'm having fun with this process, I got other things to do. - Be inspired if you can.
It's even more powerful to imagine what amazing change could come out of the process. It's a little tricky. Firstly, the results often exceed expectations as fundamental change happens and solidifies over time. Secondly, it throws me into an "are we there yet?" mindset, which makes it hard to sustain the grind in what they call the "valley of disappointment", when you keep doing all the right things, but the results don't seem to be getting any closer. (They are.)
I want to talk about a bunch of interesting things DURING the process of making change, but I thought I'd pause here in the beginning. Have you tried changing habits? How'd it go? Has reading books about it helped you? What's your favourite?