Habits in miniature: Why start tiny?

Hi Friend,

Last week I talked about how to make dreams come true according to the research. If you haven’t read it click on the link and come back here to read on.

Spoiler alert: it isn’t using the law of attraction.

Once we’ve Wished for something and imagined the best Outcome for us the most important part comes next. We need to imagine our main Obstacles in detail.

What trips us up every time we wish to change?

Is it:

Forgetfulness. Do we just not plan when we’ll perform these new behaviours and get to the end of the day and realise we just plain forgot?

Skill. Are we unsure how to approach the development of new behaviours because we haven’t the skill and experience right now?

Resources or equipment. Is something physically missing that makes new behaviours more difficult or impossible?

Support. Are we alone in our pursuit without peer support?

Once we have a grasp on the Obstacles in our way we can then make an “If-then” Plan to overcome them. For example, if I forget to perform new behaviours then I will create a reliable trigger to remind me.

This is WOOP. A method, supported by research, to achieve what you’ve never been able to before:

Wish

Outcome

Obstacle

Plan

Planning change

When we get to the planning stage most of us (let’s face it 90+% of us) try to sprint before we crawl.

I know you’ve made plans to go to the gym every second day from tomorrow on. Or you’ve committed to decluttering for 30 minutes every day without a break until the end of time.

Unfortunately this barely ever works. In fact, if someone tells you they’ve been able to permanently change deeply ingrained behaviours by merely agreeing with themselves to begin a new behaviour one day I call bulls**t.

We need to take those baby steps we’re always told about but never heed.

Why should people who hoard start creating habits by taking baby steps?

This little question has huge ramifications for the hoarding prone, so listen up.
Beginning with the smallest scaled-down actions promotes long term success.

If you can get your head around how to start petite and build bigger and exponentially more healthy habits you’ll be amazed at how successful you will become…in all areas of your life.

Before I detail how to create these petite habits we need to understand:

How do tiny behaviours have such a long term impact on change?

I’ll try to give you the guts of the psychology in a digestible way.

Let’s start by considering human behaviour.

Our tendency is to continue on a path littered with less than healthy habits because it feels good IN THE MOMENT. This is why we procrastinate.

Humans are wired to seek out pleasure and avoid pain.

Just to drop a truth bomb, there is no solid evidence that it takes 21 days or even 60 days for a habit to become wired in to the brain.

Some behaviours have a one and done effect and they become a wired-in habit instantly. Like the gambler who wins big the first time they placed a bet, or the kid who plays Candy Crush once. We say - “they’re hooked” don’t we? Yes they are!

Why does this happen? Because, the positive experience of success taps into the reward system of the brain and the release of pleasurable neurotransmitters, like dopamine, encodes the cause-and-effect relationship between action and pleasure creating expectations for the future.

We want to do it again because we expect it will feel good. More than that, we do it again on autopilot.

For those of us who hoard, we discovered that by SAVING something we feel relief. It’s distressing to consider letting go of our possessions because it brings up emotional and psychological discomfort and uncertainty, right?

The minute we decide to delay a decision to let something go we feel a sense of relief. This is a positive experience. Avoiding pain is wired in and becomes our new habit. The relief feels so good that we experience a positive emotional reaction.

NOW, this is where my ACT theoretical perspective comes in. I believe that our common hoarding cognitions of emotional attachment, control, memories, and responsibility are sometimes justifications we give for our positive emotions.

“I feel good when I save this.

It must be because:

I have an emotional attachment, or

I need it to remember something, or

I’m responsible for it’s well being, or

I can’t bear to lose control over my possessions.”

It feels “right” to save and “wrong” to discard.”

This is more likely to be: it feels “good” to avoid pain, and “bad” to experience pain.

Acquiring is the same.

“When I feel down a reliable way to improve my mood is by acquiring more.” You seek out a dopamine hit: Retail therapy isn’t called that for larks.

OK, so this reframes saving doesn’t it? In many instances it’s not some deep-seated emotionally ambiguous knot of feelings we need to methodically unpick.

It may have started out that way but we often keep saving because it’s a habit we’ve formed to feel relief. A coping mechanism to stop feeling bad…which feels…good.

So what if we could do something ELSE to feel good instead of saving?