And yet another good podcast from a reader.  Hellene Gronda from Melbourne sent me this podcast following some of the posts I wrote this past summer on making, keeping, and breaking habits. One of the points I made was that feelings couldn’t be trusted when it came to both starting and stopping habits. For instance, waiting till you felt like working out probably won’t work. You have to just do it, even if you don’t feel like it.

Which raises the issue, that contrary to a lot of popular psychology, trusting our feelings and instincts often times just leads us to make poor choices. The reason? Psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, Deirdre Barrett says, we’re better coded for threats that are happening right now than threats in the future. Listening to your body, following your gut is good for some things, but not a universal panacea. A great interview with Barrett on her book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, can be heard here, on ABC (Australia).

This is the third, and probably last for now, in a series of posts on habits. The last post I focused on creating new habits, and how to make them sticky. This one is about breaking a habit, or, to stay with the same theme, unsticking a habit.

This  is far more complex because  un-learning something involves more analysis and more steps than simply doing something new.

Primarily, to un-stick a habit, you  first have to hack it. You have to investigate the eco-system of behaviors surrounding the habit. You have to do a little sleuthing to decide, who is the real culprit? It’s not always the habit that’s the bad guy. Here are three important things to consider before trying to stop a habit:   (more…)

In the last post, I talked about three common misconceptions around forming habits and making a change to your daily routine: discipline or will power alone is needed; inspiration should be enough, and having a fixed routine ruins spontaneity.

This post looks at some ingredients to forming a new habit, and making it stick. These are by no means conclusive – there are other things that help, but  I have found these 5 points to be key.

1. Know the difference between a goal and the activity. I realized that the main reason I wasn’t writing more regularly was that though I had a goal, I didn’t have a specific activity targeted. “Writing a post” is not a specific activity. Nor is “exercising” or “meditating” or “eating healthy.”  (more…)

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits lately. Everywhere I look, habits seem to play a role. Making headway on solving our biggest social problems ultimately comes down to changing ordinary, everyday habits. How do we switch to using public transportation instead of driving, or using reusable grocery bags instead of paper or plastic? Whether we’re tackling health care, the environment, or the global financial crisis, individual’s habits, behavior and choices play a role.

Closer to home, I’ve been thinking about my blog. I’ve had it for almost 3 years now, and my goal has been to write more regularly, ideally twice a week. And for three years, I’ve failed to attain that goal. What’s most frustrating is that I’m a fairly disciplined person. I exercise regularly. I answer emails promptly. I balance my bank accounts every month. I floss twice a day. The list goes on. So why do I fail to post twice a week? Well, here’s what I tell myself: it must not be important enough to me. I’m lazy. I’m undisciplined. I must be ambivalent about it. I make other things more important. I don’t take myself seriously. All of which has truth. But none of which helps me change. Here’s the simple reason. I haven’t posted regularly because I haven’t developed the habit. (more…)

I can’t say for sure, but I’ve either developed a competitive spirit as I have gotten older, or, I’ve just become less self-conscious about it. It’s become most evident when I cycle in large group events. While some riders have to tune out the others and focus on their own pedaling speed, I do the opposite. I quickly notice the more competitive riders and pace myself according to their speed.

In some areas, competitiveness is seen as a good thing. But where I come from – the peace and love era of the 70s, a progressive liberal college, the experiential psychotherapy culture – competition was a bit of a no-no. So noticing my burgeoning competitive spirit made me curious. What is it? What does it do for me? (more…)

Recently my father sent me a package filled with letters, newspaper clippings and memorabilia about my aunt, Leila Diamond. Leila was a scientist, a cancer researcher, at a time when most cancer researchers were men. The few women scientists that were out there were supposed to do “gentle research,” as one of her colleagues said. Electron microscopy and tissue culture (neither of which sound to me, a non-scientist, very gentle) were some of the ‘acceptable’ research areas for women. Leila, in her quiet and dignified way, paved the way for women in science. She was a mentor to many young female scientists, and was a founder of WICR, Women in Cancer Research. Reading through the letters and emails that poured in following her death, I was greatly moved to hear how she inspired and supported younger colleagues.

This tribute from one of her colleagues stands out above the rest:

When I read the obituary from the Philadelphia newspaper, I was disturbed by the line that said: “there are no other immediate survivors.” On the contrary, there are hundreds, probably thousands, of her immediate survivors to be found among the many women scientists she inspired and mentored during her career. We are among her intellectual and professional family. Each of our future achievements will be a testament to her faith in us and her contribution to our scientific progress.

And by the way, January is National Mentoring Month. None of us got here without the help of someone else. We stand on the shoulders of others whether they mentored us directly, or spent their lives, as Leila did, paving the way for others. Time to say thank you.

I have always thought of death as a sort of dénouement. The mysteries of existence will be revealed to us at the moment we die. And one of the biggest mysteries I’m anticipating that death will dispel is: why do we resist ourselves?

Why do we need resolutions, New Year’s or otherwise? Why do we need so much high-powered resolve to do things that are meaningful, important, good for us, or desirable? Why do we need so much encouragement to accomplish our goals and dreams, some of them quite mundane: getting up earlier, writing two blog posts a week, eating better, or exercising?

Those tasks in and of themselves are not that onerous. Some may even be pleasant. What is the internal obstacle that resolutions are meant to undo? Why is the human condition so fraught with inner resistance? (more…)

I just finished teaching a seminar in Australia, Beyond our Grasp: The Art, Science and Flow of Learning, Performance and Change. I really enjoyed working with a new topic, and having the opportunity to trial new ideas and learn together with such an enthusiastic and experienced group of participants.

We looked at the challenge of learning and outcomes: when learning is tied to an outcome, a funny thing happens. The outcome is experienced as external to ourselves. Our learning is now complicated by the presence and pressure of someone or something outside ourselves –  a teacher or program requirements, the organization’s goals, a manager, coach, or teacher, a professional association, or even a result or number. Even when the goal is self-assigned, for instance, quitting smoking or losing weight, because we are changing something about ourselves, it creates an inner conflict: one part of us against or trying to change another. Even the tiniest sense of conflict or lack of consensus with our self-interest can torpedo the whole enterprise. This is why research on workplace motivation shows conclusively that intrinsic motivation trumps external motivation, including paid incentives:

people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all.

(more…)

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, it was fashionable to put a quote underneath your photo. Most classmates had rock lyrics, like, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I was captivated by a line from a Robert Browning poem, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” (more…)

This past week I was in Yachats attending the Mindell‘s seminar, and pondering the question they were posing, what moves you? Writing about motivation, leadership and learning, we can begin to forget this question and think that I move myself. I decide. I lead. I determine a course of action, what strategies to take, what directions to pursue. But it’s not so simple. The “I” is not necessarily a unified thing. We each have multiple and conflicting parts, drives, desires, reactions, needs. (more…)