Learning Behavior Change
Being healthy and cultivating a long, full life can feel like a Sisyphean feat in the world that we’re living in. The world in which we’ve readily become “Human Resources” for a productivity driven, output hungry, insatiable machine. Not only is our work-life harmony more like a cacophony- what little free time we do have is consumed with advertisements and low-hanging, low-quality gratification. Everyone is trying to sell you something and, even if they don’t make the sale, they’re profited off of monopolizing your limited attention resources.
Key Takeaways
Our brains categorize and connect experiences, filtering only a few into long-term memory. Skills improve through repetition, making habit change most effective with a simple, specific approach.
SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely) prevent aimlessness and resource waste. Breaking goals into smaller, manageable steps increases success while filtering out distractions.
Behavior change follows stages from awareness to action, requiring consistency and resilience. Planning for setbacks and reframing failure as discovery strengthens long-term growth.
Background
Each year, we’re provided a small handful of “change moments”- holidays or key moments to get excited about “beginning again”. The New Year, a birthday, a new semester, Mondays- all examples of the “start” that we crave when we’ve decided that we’re ready to make a change (just not ready enough to do it right then). Inevitably, if we do step up to the “start”, we do so ready to capitalize on the collective enthusiasm to carry us through the perceived “finish line”.
So often, though, the wave fizzles out and we’re left to paddle onward. Without some form of planning and preparation, our compass malfunctions. If we haven’t charted the course, we’re left to paddle aimlessly, hoping to catch the next wave going in the “right direction”. The energy lost in the confusion could have been a valuable resource on the path to achievement. All of that to say this: behavior change is a series of skills practices until they become automated.
We perform best at tasks that we don’t have to think so hard about. We love a “path of least resistance”, especially in our society. That’s why we’re so easily sold on quick-fixes which, in turn, leave us jaded about the whole journey anyway. So let’s, for a moment, reframe the behavior change process as a skills practice.
How Memories are Made
When experience events, our senses perceive a handful of tidbits about the environment. From that initial encounter, we retain a smaller handful of tidbits that we then either synthesize or toss away. From short-term memory, the elite few get to stick around in the long-term memory, ready for recall at a moment’s notice.
Our brains can store so much information the way that it does because it categorizes elements of experience and connects them through relationships. The more we feed any given category, the better established it’s complexities become in our understanding. We build new skills that are considered procedural memory- we get better at them the more we do them. Though it might feel defeating to practice the habit at it’s outset, the demonstrated process of “learning until expertise” is undeniable. As a result, changing behaviors requires the simplest and most specific approach possible so as to leave no margin for error.
Getting SMART
This is why SMART goals are such a pervasive part of organizational development. Goals need to have specificity, there needs to be some sort of measure of success. They need to be achievable, relevant to the big picture, and set to be timely with deadline. The whole of my twenties was saturated with nonspecific goals that left me adrift over and over again. Setting goals without SMART-support is a resource-drain- it’s the well-intentioned friend offering to help without really intending to help, ya know? It’s that well-intentioned friend that’ll reach out while your floundering to offer support- “just let me know what I can do”.
We can set ourselves up for better success by taking big goals and making them small and by taking the small goals and making them smaller. When we get granular on our goals and values-in-action, we provide ourselves an exponentially larger toolbox of small steps to pull from. Getting miniscule means that, within the grains, you’ll be better prepared for challenges before they’ve come up, as well.
The practice of getting SMART, though, takes focus, patience, and resilience. The noise of commercials and gurus, along with the typical drags of the workday, distract and numb us from turning in. So getting SMART also involves finding and filtering out the noise that keeps you from accomplishing what you set out to do.
Learning to Love Learning
Most coaching certifying bodies that I’ve seen leverage the Transtheoretical Model of Behavior Change (TTM) framework. TTM is a model of behavior change that follows stages of change from “pre-contemplation” (no awareness or intention to change) all the way through “action” and involves both “maintenance” and “relapse” phases of making change.
We don’t know what we don’t know until we do. Once we’re irrevocably aware of the circumstances that need a shift, our inertia (precontemplation) is enlivened with potential energy (contemplation). The vigor of what comes next is big and daunting. Preparation is fun! But when you’re unsure where to start, seeking resources to inform and educate your path is your strength. While the internet may be bad for many things, it’s certainly a great way to access any bit of known knowledge at super speed. This is where coaches come in- they assist with the planning process if your process isn’t cutting it for you. Once you’ve got your prepped list, you’re ready to take action.
Practice makes permanence and those actions need to happen regularly and with fluidity to adjust as necessary in order for a behavior to really stick. If not, we lose steam quickly and revert to our former pathways. This consistency is a learned skill all the same. As such, it’s important to plan for relapse with grace and purpose instead of letting it snag you. Reframing “loss of direction” or “falling off the wagon” as “discovering doesn’t work” is one way to begin to break the cycle.
Learning can reliably be disappointing- that’s what makes the successes so sweet. Taking steps to facilitate growth and change in your life is the highest form of self-regard. You’ve got to look out for your future self, even just a little bit, in order to realize the vision of who that future self is to you, ya know?
Mindfulness for Beginners
What is MBSR
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a practice in being aware as moments unfold. MBSR offers an opportunity to leverage the tools we have on-hand (our consciousness) to be unhindered by both the anxieties of what has been and the concerns for what will be. In an over-stimulated society, practicing mindfulness through the easiest framework possible can feel like a breath of fresh air.
How the Body Handles Stress
When the body absorbs stimuli, our sense systems identify the threat’s potential and proceeds accordingly. When talking about stress response, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is our central driver. The hypothalamus is the systems central operation controlling temperature, hunger, and heart rate. The pituitary gland recieves signals to start production and circulation of hormones to the body and the adrenals via secretion of the stress hormones necessary to prime our bodies to react.
Our two most common stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, serve the purpose to get you up and going as well as keeping the system on alert after initial response. When that initial adrenaline pump fades away, the cortisol of the body continues to pump through the system supporting circulation, respiration, and musculoskeletal alertness.
Because we are constantly on-guard and assessing the stimulus around us, high or recurring systemic cortisol is not an uncommon experience. We are, essentially, trapped in our fight or flight response by the design of the society in which we live. So how can we return to grounding in a way that is not daunting and that is accessible?
4-Fast Tips to Ground
Take Inventory of the Present Moment
We are one set of eyes in a vast universal experience. All at once, this moment unfolds for and impacts an un-quantifiable number of other humans. Sometimes simply taking a second to take inventory moment over moment can be enough to return to the now and peel away from the concerns of what was or what will.
Observe Judgments, Emotions, & Resistance
As the seer, it is our ego’s contribution to keep us narrating, identifying, and affiliating with the concepts that come to mind. Pattern recognition is an important part of operating efficiently in the world that we exist in. While wonderful and with purpose, pattern recognition at all times is exhausting. The practice of noticing patterns can be enough to cut off intrusive thoughts and repetitive inner discourse.
Engage With Their Implications
While we dialogue internally between our observer and our narrator, having taken inventory and observed the narrator’s contributions to the present response to the present moment, we can begin to realize what is us and what is not us. More often than not, so much of what we assign to us is, in fact, not us. We are the sum of those that we interact with the most- the people, places, and things that operate around us have such a significant influence on our concept of self. Just taking the step back to see the historical pattern play out can also be enough to cut off overthinking or unproductive internal rumination.
Explore Opportunity to Step Into New Patterns
I often refer to this yogic concept of Samskaras- these wheels of suffering that we persistently ride on. Suffering (Dukkha) is inevitable, we are a logical narrator tacked on to an irrational animal form- both the horse and the rider- a match made in hell if I do say so myself.
Choices are made for us (both external and internal) when we lack the practice of awareness to find which choices we can in fact choose for ourselves, we become stuck to this treadmill of the same stimulus leading to the same outcome further ingraining our patterns and our suffering.
By this point, perhaps headway has been made, perhaps how you began is how you remain. What is worth noting is this- if you’ve taken the time to observe, to dis-associate, and to explore new oprtions- you’ve done the practice. It is a practice not a perfect because it may not be the first nor fiftieth time that yields a breakthough, but it may be that fifty-first, ya know?
Simply trying is the first step- failure, missteps, disappointments are inevitable- but sitting put and accepting the outcomes without agency will certainly yield no progress.