Mrs.DEVI VENUGOPAL
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST – 27
INDONESIA
Have you ever wondered, Why it is too hard to sustain the good habits despite our sincere effort and occasional outburst of motivation. It is so easy to fall back to bad habits and so difficult to stick to new ones!
Habits like exercise, meditation, journaling, and cooking are reasonable for a day or two and then become a hassle. Have you notices, when habits are established they stick around you for lifetime, especially the unwanted ones. Despite our best intentions, unhealthy habits like eating junk food, watching too much TV, procrastinating and smoking can feel impossible to break.
Changing habits is challenging for two main reasons.
We try to change the wrong thing.
We try to change our habits on the wrong way.
We will delve into the first reason now. Change can happen in three layers, the outermost layer is changing your outcomes, the second one is changing your process, and the innermost is changing your identity. Outcomes mean focusing on results such as losing weight, publishing your article, winning the championship. Mostly goals are connected to this level of change. The second layer which focus on developing new habits and systems such as implementing a new routine in the gym, developing a meditation practice. The core level focuses on changing your beliefs: your worldview, your self-image, your judgments about yourself and others.Most of the assumptions, and biases you hold are associated with this level.
Outcomes are about what you get, process are about what you do, and identity is about what you believe. The problem is the direction of change, many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve – outcome-based habits, on the contrary is to build identity based habits, with this approach we start to focus on we wish to become. For example, if you ask two persons resisting a cigarette, the person with outcome based habits will tell that he is trying to quit, while the other person with identity based habits will tell that “NO THANKS. I’M NOT A SMOKER.” The reason why most of the times we fail to establish new habits is because most of the times the old identity try to sabotage our new plans for change.
There is a common saying “Behind every successful man there is a woman,” same way I would say that, “Behind every successful healthy habit there is a set of beliefs”. Behavior that is not in allignment with your beliefs will not last. As parents, we would have noticed that you have tried to teach your kids healthy behaviors such as exercise, meditation and Yoga, but the practice lasted only a few days. You may want good heath, but if you prioritize comfort over accomplishment, you’ll be relaxing more than training. It’s hard to change the habits if you never change the foundation of beliefs which led to the past behavior. You have a new goal and new plan but you never changed who you are.
The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity. For example, instead of setting a goal such as
I want to read a book, instead I want to become a reader.
I want to run a marathon, instead I want to become a runner.
I want to do yoga, instead I want to become a yogi.
The more pride you take in a particular aspect of your identity, more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you are proud of how your biceps look, you’ll never skip an upper body workout. True behavior change is identity change. You might start a habit because of motivation, but sustainability can come only come when you make it as your identity.
Many voices in our head put down our self esteem, these voices constantly shouts at us stating:
“I’m terrible with directions.”
“I’m not a morning person.”
“I’m bad at remembering people’s names.”
“I’m always late.”
“I’m not good with technology.”
“I’m horrible at math, science or economics.”
When we repeat the story for years, it is easy to slide into these mental grooves and accept them as a fact. In time, we will begin to resist certain actions because “that’s not who I am.”
There is internal pressure to maintain yourself image incongruent with your beliefs. You find excuses and ways to avoid contradicting it. The more deeply a thought or action is tied to your identity, the more difficult it is to change it. It’s easy to believe what your culture believes or to do what upholds yourself image, even if it’s wrong. Good habits can make rational sense, but if they conflict with your identity, you will fail to put them into action. On a given day, you may skip a new habit as you might be busy, but over a long run, however, the real reason you fail to stick with habits is that your self image gets in the way. That’s why we can’t be too attached to one version of your identity. Progress requires unlearning. Becoming best version of yourself needs continuous edits on your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.
It brings to the important question, if your beliefs and world view play such an important role in your behavior, where do they come in the first place? How identity is formed? How can you emphasize new aspects of your identity that serve you and gradually erase the pieces that hinder you?
We will get into that next month….
