EI for Young Adults: Discussion 36

How to Change

We find it hard to change. The book "How to Change" by Katy Milkman uses behavioral science to suggest some useful tools for changing towards who we want to be or changing our behaviors. Here are the key points:

What would you like to change? Make a list.

Fresh start. It helps to start fresh, scratching your previous attempts. To do it, committing to change that would happen at the beginning of a year / birthday / school year is more effective than picking a random day where you'd start.

When would you like to start the things you want to change?

Combine immediate gratification with the delayed reward. A lot of us find doing the right thing boring or painful, and so we prefer the immediate gratification (e.g. running vs eating a cake). To help you doing the right thing, come up with a way to combine with something fun or pleasant, for example, watch your favorite tv series while jogging on a treadmill.

Come up with combining unpleasant but needed activity with something rewarding
What can you bring to your routine to make it rewarding in the short run?

Gamify your experience. If you are working on something that's not fun, you can find a way to gamify it, for example:

• See how many check boxes you can mark as done

• Share with friends and see who does the most, for some reward

• Reward yourself for completing the actions and celebrate your victory

Punish yourself for procrastination. Procrastination is a big blocker for us to change. The root cause of procrastination is running away from something unpleasant. I don't want to work on something boring or tedious, so I run away from it, until the perspective of NOT doing the task is so daunting that I actually end up doing it. To make our behavior more effective we can punish ourselves for not doing tasks. For example:

• Pay money to the charity of your choice if you don't do what you said you'd do. (Even more effective, pay to the organization you actually hate)

• Promise to your friends. This is not as effective as paying a fine.

The biggest challenge is that people think they have enough will power to do the task and don't use this suggestion of paying a fine. This is a trap. Don't trust your willpower. If you really care about successfully finishing the task, use the punishment technique.

Use timely reminders. Often we remember that we have to do something in the place or time where we can't do anything about it. The trick is to remind ourselves when we actually can take an action. 

Figure out how you can improve your reminders to be actionable. For example, if you want to buy your mom a birthday present, you want to be reminded of it while passing by the store, not when you see a picture of your mom on your fridge. 

Make plans. When X happens, I do Y. The research shows that people who make plans are more likely to do what they say they would. If a plan is overwhelming, break it into smaller easily attainable goals.

Take advantage of being lazy. Laziness is following the path of least resistence. It's very effective. Rearrange your life so that the action that's needed is done by default. For example, if you forget to turn on your headlights in the car, make it default "auto". The fewer things you need to do by thinking about them, the higher the chance that you will be successful.

Change your habits. People who exercise daily do it not because of their tremendous willpower but because it's their habit. It's their default behavior. It takes effort to build your new behavior into a habit, but then it becomes natural. To train yourself for a new habit, make sure to reward yourself every time you do the desired action, and reward yourself more for longer streak. Make sure to not get too frustrated if you fail once in a while, allow your commitments to have wiggle room, for example, I am going to do yoga 3-4 times a week instead of 7.

Give advice. People who give advice to others are more confident to make changes for themselves. Find somebody who you can give advice to, even if this is the advice you actually need. Form an advice club where people can support each other. 

Hang out with the right people. Being around people whose behaviors you want to acquire is the best way for you to change. Peer pressure is very effective. 

Dealing with failures

When we take on things and challenge themselves there may be times when we fail. 

We experience failure as focusing away from our goal on our inability to achieve our goal. We become self critical, we start ruminating (I could have done better, I am not good enough, I am not perfect). We feel crushed and worthless.

Grieve. It is important to give ourselves time to grieve. Here you are, hoping for the best outcome and getting something you don't want. It's a blow. You are absolutely right to be bummed out about it, to cry or to be angry and frustrated. 

A lot of us think that we should move on right away and we push our negative emotions away. This may not always be helpful. Allow yourself to feel what you feel, it is part of your humanity

Celebrate. It sounds counterintuitive, but why not celebrate our failures? Celebration brings the positive side of us, we can no longer continue being in the negative circle of rumination. Celebration gets us out of our bad state. Once we are in a positive emotional state we can start paying attention on our goal again. What is it that I want? What do I need to do to get there?

Find somebody to celebrate your failures with. Make it a habit, a ritual. Go around and share what people failed at and celebrate these failures together.

Fail forward. Failure implies looking back, bringing our past negative experiences. (I am not good enough, I am not perfect is not something you just came up with, it's been there for a very long time) Failing forward means focusing on what you can learn from your failures, to prevent them from happening next time.

Fail fast. Failure is a great opportunity to save time. If our failures took long time we would be in the limbo state, not knowing if we are okay or not. Failing fast means seeing that whatever you were doing is not working, and you don't need to continue doing what you were doing. Hitting a rock bottom sometimes is needed to make the changes in our lives.

Telling your dance partner you have a new one

I found a new dance partner and I have a hard time telling my old partner that we won't be dancing together.

It's hard to break a professional relationship without hurting the feelings of the other person. There are no strictly "professional" relationship. We all take things personally, whether we want it or not. Understanding feelings and needs of the other person may help you have a more effective and less painful conversation.

After the first try of role play you can identify feelings and needs:

Partner: feels betrayed, invalidated. Needs appreciation, understanding

With this in mind the conversation may go like this:

We've been dance partners for long time and we've gone through a lot together and this will stay with us for a long time, the memories of us dancing together. I appreciate you as a dancer and as a person. At this point in my life I felt I needed to find somebody with a level of commitment matching my level, and you seem to be having too much on your plate. So I found a new partner.

Some tips:

1. Don't beat around the bush. As painful as it sounds, tell the truth, you already found a new partner

2. Don't do it over text, your partner deserve to hear it from you, and you can also use feedback much better than over the text and respond correspondingly