Inviting Positive Change, Pt 2

Is there something in your life that you’ve been trying to improve for what seems like forever but haven’t been able to shift in any meaningful way? Have you been setting the same resolutions or goals every new year or birthday? Is there something you want for yourself so badly, but rather than keep disappointing yourself, you’ve decided instead to convince yourself that it doesn’t matter? Well, it’s time to change all that, starting today! I promise you- the only difference between you and the people you see making progress in their lives every day is that you think that they’re special somehow; that they’re more disciplined or have fewer barriers or they want it more than you. And while any of those things may be true, none of them are the reason you’re not manifesting the changes you want for yourself. Check out the tips below to stop getting in your own way and start moving closer to your favorite version of yourself.

This is post 2 of 2. Check out my first three tips for inviting positive change here

Shift from an outcome focus to a habit focus.
This concept has been going around the productivity/self-development circles for a while now, partly spurred by James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. (It’s a great book, by the way.) The idea is that most of us naturally write down our resolutions in either vague (get in better shape, improve relationship, make more money …) or outcome focused (have a six pack by summer, have no more pain by the end of this year, make a million dollars…) ways. And goals written like this are ones that we are very likely to give up on before achieving them.
Some experts will have you try to fix this through the implementation of ‘SMART’ goals which stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. But James Clear would argue that goals of any kind, SMART or not, are still pretty useless. At least, not without one important extra step. Because the real gold lies not in our goals, lists, or vision boards, but in our habits. To achieve any goal, one must take action. Consistent, focused action. And while we can make that happen through sheer force of will for a short period of time, it becomes much easier to sustain if we have developed a habit that makes taking that action second nature. When the emphasis is placed on goals, we are outcome-focused and externally motivated. We look toward an unknown future and decide that we can only consider ourselves successful if it looks a certain way. Shifting our focus to the habits we want to develop in support of that goal is much more sustainable.
Here’s why: Habits are simply actions or behaviors that have become ingrained through repetition. We all have habits, most of which have been developed without much thought. Once we’ve made something a habit, there may be some sort of external trigger the spurs us to that action, but starting the action itself feels almost inevitable- it would take more brain power to NOT do that thing than to do the thing. We just do it because it’s what we’re used to doing. When we form a habit, we eliminate the need for willpower, mental focus, or external motivation.
Say it’s January, and your goal is to be able to run a 6 minute mile by June. Your fastest time right now is 12 minutes. What happens when you get to April and you’ve only dropped your time by 2 minutes? You’re probably going to be pretty discouraged, maybe even quit. You’re also much less likely to stay consistent with your runs, making it even less likely that you’ll ever hit your goal of a 6 minute mile. If instead, you commit to yourself that you will run your best possible time for that day, every day, the cumulative effect of all that practice is bound to make you faster over time. And you’ll be more likely to want to stick with it, which gives you a chance of eventually hitting a 6-minute mile at some point in the future, whether that’s June, May, or December.
A phrase made popular by the father of Ashtanga yoga, Pattabhi Jois, says “Practice and all is coming.” In yoga, we do not motivate ourselves through goal setting. Instead, we commit to showing up on the mat every day and offering our full devotion to the practice. On some days that may mean we need to move gently, on other days we have the energy and power to try things we’ve never been able to do before. I can tell you from personal experience that if you practice in this way- with patience, curiosity, equanimity and self-compassion- you are far more likely to transform your body for the better, and far less likely to injure yourself in the process, than you are if allow yourself to be led by goals like mastering a specific pose or achieving a certain level of flexibility.
Again, I am not saying it is bad to have an idea of what progress looks like. We, of course, need a REASON we are committing to these habits in order to feel motivated enough to make them habits. And we need to know what we are working towards to know what habits and practices will be worth our time and effort. Even in yoga, we have a general understanding of what healthy range of motion looks like and specific postures we are practicing. But when we have a hard time moving forward on a goal, we either don’t have the right habits set up, we have the wrong habits blocking our progress, or we’ve failed to form habits at all.
Shift from goal setting to habit forming. Before you know it, you’ll be looking back shocked at how far you’ve come.
Expect and embrace failure
The fear of failure can be powerful enough to keep us stagnant in an unwanted situation, habit, or state of being for years. Because first requirement of failure is that you try something that has a component of risk, many people avoid failure all together by not trying new things to begin with. So it’s wise to become aware of your relationship with failure right from the start, and to plan how you will handle those thoughts as they arise. Whenever you are challenging yourself to grow, know that you will fail at some point. You’ll miss one of your scheduled workouts; you’ll sit down for a planned writing session and an emergency will pop up; you’ll snap at your partner or kids despite your promise to yourself to work on your temper. Unexpected or just undesired things will happen. The ‘failure event’ itself doesn’t matter. It’s what you do after that counts. When these blips occur, watch any tendency for your mind to turn it into evidence that you can’t do it. This is the direct path to giving up altogether. Instead, acknowledge your humanity, and commit to starting again. Maybe use it as an opportunity to identify adjustments that could make it easier or more likely to hit your mark next time. Off days won’t keep you from your goals, but letting the ‘off’ days define your entire journey will.
Know that stumbles are part of the journey, and commit from the very beginning to getting up again each time.
3. Every day can be a fresh start
This can be applied to point #2 above, but I’d like to point it out from the perspective of the beginning, not the stumbles along the way. So often, we will wait until a special day to start something new. New Year’s; our birthday; the first of the month; Monday; the new moon. If you feel that starting on a special day or date helps you, then go for it. I’m not here to rain on your parade. There are days and times of the year where we may feel less resistance to making changes, and we certainly should take advantage of those. But if it feels more like a barrier, giving too much weight to that specific day and leading to a sense of failure if you don’t get to it when you planned (see point 2!), then consider letting the attachment to that date go. Or if you see that it has become an excuse to continue behaviors that you have realized aren’t serving you, that you have to wait until X day to start, it may be helpful to remind yourself of the importance, and inherent sacredness of this day, of this moment.
Each season, each day, each breath, each moment, offers us an opportunity to begin anew.