Change is often synonymized with self-improvement. While the pursuit of personal growth is obviously valuable, how well do you understand the “why” behind the change you’re seeking?
Each year, there is a social phenomenon where we set intentions for the next 365 days, but in my experience, we rarely stick with these goals. New Year’s resolutions, or other sought after behavior changes, are often fruitless because of three things:
We don’t understand the complexity behind the process of behavior change
We don’t tie our goals to our values
We underestimate the equilibrium that is behavior
The Process of Behavior Change
It takes a lot to change, and it definitely isn’t as simple as writing down your goals or creating a vision board. These types of exercises have their place, but building a keen sense of awareness around how we process behavior change can be more helpful in the execution of our goals. Psychologist James Prochaska developed a model for exactly this.
The Transtheoretical Model (TTM), or Stages of Change, can be broken down into 5 major categories:
For the sake of this conversation, let’s focus on the highlighted stages above: contemplation and maintenance.
In the contemplation stage, we recognize that something’s got to give. Nonetheless, we can’t jump to action because we are all loss aversive. Loss aversion is our natural tendency to attribute greater value to what we give up vs. what we gain.
Even still, with the right kind of preparation, we can make it to the action stage early and often. What is far more difficult to reach is maintenance stage because it connotes sustaining new behavior, which is really where the conversation gets interesting.
Tying Our Goals to Our Values
Our struggle to enter the final stage of behavior change comes from the fact that we often forget to tie our goals to our values. Divya Robin, a friend and Mental Health Counselor, recently highlighted this in her blog Mind Matters.
“Setting goals that are not grounded in our values typically produces short-term change because we don’t have that passion or meaning behind the desire to grow.”
This short-term change can become a long-term change with two adjustments. We must examine:
The incentives - more critical thinking in the contemplation stage
The approach - find ways to stay in the maintenance stage
The incentive (our values)
The incentive we might gain through a behavior change must be so worthy that it can sustainably overcome human bias towards loss aversion. We must recognize that not only is a behavioral change required and believe that it will yield a better a outcome, but that this outcome is something that is rooted in and aligned with our core values as an individual.
Only once we reach a value-based point in contemplation can we focus on adjustment 2: the approach.
The approach
There are two ways to change behavior, according to Daniel Kahneman, father of behavioral economics and author of Thinking Fast and Slow. You can either (a) push yourself towards that behavior, or you can (b) ask “why am I not doing this already?”
The answers to the latter will provide you with a list of restraining forces, meaning reasons there is a gap between where you and where you want to be.
This is where the unlock lies.
Behavior exists in an equilibrium
Kahneman expands on these two approaches by stating that behavior exists in an equilibrium.
“There are forces that are pushing you one way and forces that are pushing you another way. How loud you speak, how fast you drive. What we tend to do when we want to move from A to B, is we push. We add to the driving forces. This is not what you should do. You should actually work on the restraining forces and try to make them weaker.”
When we try to change behavior by pushing ourselves, it creates greater strain on the system that is in equilibrium. As all systems in equilibrium optimize towards a path of least resistance, this is a less than ideal approach. A strained system is more likely to snap than it is to bend, which is the reason “pushing” is less successful in driving sustained behavior changes.
Instead, when you eliminate or weaken a restraining force, rather than adding tension to the system, a new equilibrium is born. For example, think about a plant stem that is currently being held up by two springs. You’d like to move the plant in a certain direction. Kahneman explains:
“You could add another spring that would push it that way, OR you could remove one of the springs that is holding it back. The striking outcome is if and when it moves. If it moves because of a driving forces, then at equilibrium it will be at a higher state of tension than it was originally, but if you remove a restraining force, there will be less tension on the system.”
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As you take some time to digest these ideas, I hope you give yourself the space to review some of the intentions you’ve set for this year and revisit the contemplation stage.
Staying critical with ourselves as we set ours goals is the only true path to achieving those goals and changing behavior.
It’s good to be back,
Shiv