We’ve all had those days when 4pm rolls around, you’re tired from work, and you feel like indulging in a late afternoon cake or piece of candy. In this small crisis, you convince yourself to skip the gym tonight, and promise yourself that you will go early the next day instead. The next day, you hit the snooze button and put the gym off till that evening. [Insert vicious cycle here].

Having no structured routine and a sea of choices leaves things open to opportunities to make excuses. When you are trying to zero in on your health and fitness goals, this can be a massive roadblock. Taking proactive steps, planning, and cutting out some of the choices you have to make each day pertaining to your health and fitness is key. 

What Is Decision Fatigue?

Wikipedia defines decision fatigue as “the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual, after a long session of decision making.” A study at Columbia University even reported that judges in court make less favorable rulings as the day drags on.¹

If you don’t take a hands-on approach to shortcutting decisions, decision fatigue can kick in earlier in the day, and chances are you will feel like hitting the couch after work rather than the gym. Most people wake up with just enough time to decide what clothes to wear and grab something for breakfast, at best. That leaves the decision about if you’re going to go for a run or hit the gym later up in the air.

Don’t leave your health up to the random chance you will make the right choices when you’re tired! Buy it and book it, with no chance of a refund or changing your mind. Every good salesman knows that giving too many options is never a good thing. The same applies to your diet and training regimen. Take away options and complexity to ensure better compliance.

Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Mark Zuckerberg and President Obama all chose to wear the same or similar outfits every day, so they could be more productive in their respective fields. Success has left us clues and principles that can be applied to your training and nutrition.

How to Remove Decisions From Your Fitness

If you’re someone who struggles to stick with your fitness or nutrition plan, you must find a combination of accountability, habit, results, and enjoyment. Without those, you will be one of the many that start and never follow through long enough to see the results.

Accountability

This is crucial concept that will help you follow through, even when times are tough and you might not feel like it. Having a coach there, making sure you are checking the boxes each day, has a multitude of benefits for accountability. Not only does your coach give you expert guidance, but the social pressure of not letting the coach down helps you make the right decision and show up for each session.

You can similarly create accountability with a partner, friend or colleague. Get them to commit with you to a minimum of twelve months of training together and checking up on each other’s nutrition. Twelve months might sound like a long time, but if you are serious about turning a commitment into a lifestyle, those that can last 12 months create a habit for the rest of their lives. It might sound a little narcissistic, but posting on social media can create accountability by announcing to everyone what your intentions are. You may even find unexpected encouragement and support from family and friends.

Habit

The secret to your long-term success is, without a doubt, habit. Once your training and nutrition have embedded themselves into your lifestyle, all the hard decisions are gone. Health no longer becomes a choice; it is a necessity.

Results

Seeing results has a powerful reinforcing effect on your psychology to continue with your training and to continue to eat well. They reinforce the reasons why you are maintaining your newfound habits. If you’re not assessing, you’re guessing. Take photos, measurements, blood work, and anything that can show a positive change. This is a tool for your continued success. If you’re not getting the favorable results that you expected, then go see an expert. Chances are you will learn ways to keep improving.

Enjoyment

It seems obvious, but you are more likely to continue with something that you enjoy doing, rather than beating your head against a brick wall and hoping that it will feel better soon. If you don’t like the gym, try gymnastics, CrossFit, basketball, whatever! There is no one way that it has to be done. Anyone who says, “this is the only way” doesn’t know what they are talking about. Training and healthy eating shouldn’t be a chore; it must be pleasurable and rewarding. If you are struggling with enjoyment, find yourself a coach, trainer, or person that is truly inspired and enjoys what they do. You will find their attitude infectious, and the enjoyment will flow through to yourself.

Wear the same clothes every day. Commit yourself to your goals. Make fewer decisions, and you will find success in health and fitness. 

Reference:

1. Danziger, Shai, Jonathan Levav, and Liora Avnaim-Pesso. “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 17 (2011): 6889-6892.

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The Best Minds of Fitness Destroyed by Facebook

Such anger and venom was spewed over something that, without any attention, probably would have gone almost completely unnoticed. I had heard of neither the publication nor the Produce Princess, until the proverbial inter-Ragnarok reached its apex and popped up on my screen.

This seemed counterproductive to the goals of those trying to argue against the Princess’s appearance on the cover. You took someone (me) who was blissfully unaware of such nonsense and made her (me), well, aware – beyond aware, in fact. The whole thing stayed at the top of my newsfeed for days.

Yes, there is a lot of fitness misinformation out there. It can be frustrating to see. I rarely go a week without being bombarded by requests to become part of some multi-level supplement-marketing scheme (NO, I DO NOT WANT TO SELL YOUR NUTRA-MONSTER SHAKES. I WANT TO TEACH PEOPLE TO MAKE A REAL, ACTUAL MEAL, THANK YOU).

I just ask you this, fitness: is arguing on the Internet what we really want to be spending our energy on? What is the cost-to-benefit ratio of participating in such an argument? Personally, I would rank it on the scale of trying to buy a Furby on Christmas Eve while fully aware that my child will grow tired of it by New Years.

If Allen Ginsberg liked to lift and had a Facebook, he would have written Howl beginning with “I’ve seen the best minds of fitness destroyed by Facebook, typing hysterical angry, dragging through the comment threads until dawn…”

You Are Going to Die

Today, however, I don’t want to talk about the Produce Princess or what she may or may not put in a shake. I want to talk about the fact that you are going to die.

How, when, and why is dependent upon a litany of social, biological, environmental, and physical factors that may or may not be related to each other or even within in our control. For example, you might get hit by a delivery truck full of CrossFit equipment (rowers that spit flames when you get your 500m split below 1:30). You might get shot by a vegan bank robber (it certainly can be expensive). A tree might fall on you, and then a tree might fall on that tree.

Suffice it to say that someday, somewhere, somehow you will die. It might even have something to do with diet and exercise (sort of).

With that in mind, I would like to share a mental exercise that I learned the other day from a podcast that I enjoy (The Jay Ferruggia Show), which gave me some perspective on who and what are important in life. It goes like this:

1. Imagine your own funeral. What day is it? What time of the year is it? Is it in your hometown? If not, where is it? Be detailed in your mental picture.
2. Now, in this setting, imagine: Who is there? How are they feeling? What is the tone of the occasion?
3. Now, among these people, who has decided to get up and say a few words about you?

Bam. There is your support system. That is your dream team. Think about it.

If someone doesn’t care enough about you to be there with you until the end, or if that person wouldn’t have something meaningful and substantial to say about you when the inevitable has happened, why the hell would you care what he or she thinks? Are these people on your deathbed A-Squad? Do they have your best intentions at heart? Do they really care about what works for you, what makes you feel happy, healthy, and fulfilled?

No! They are fighting on the Internet! Let them get focal dystonia from their angry keyboard hammering while you type a friendly e-mail to your local strength coach to schedule your first instructional squat session, because squats fix almost everything. Just please promise me that you won’t start fighting on the Internet about squats.

Get Real Support

I read a study the other day that flew in the face of theories regarding “food addiction.” One particular sentence stuck out to me as a salient message amidst the clamor of constant fear-mongering. I will reconstruct the quotation in free-form poetry to emphasize its message:

It is readily evident

that the complexity

of the factors

that shape individual eating

preclude an over-interpretation

of specific findings

including those . . .

of animal models.

Bongo roll.

In short, perhaps the operant conditioning of a mouse to select sugar over cocaine isn’t as related to our preference for Funfetti cake as we might be lead to believe. (And yes, I am thirty, and yes, my mom still makes me a cake with my name on it for my birthday. It is my cake and I want everyone to know it.)

In The Mind & The Brain by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, the intricacy of individual neural development is discussed right down to the quantum level. Neuroplasticity, which is basically your ability to upload new software to your brain throughout the course of your life, is almost completely dependent upon our given focus on new or present stimuli.

New stimuli create new paths, whereas present stimuli deepen the groove. If you already have a conflicted relationship with food, engaging with things such as inter-warfare will do nothing for you other than to further entrench the neural processes that lend themselves to things such as negative feelings, guilt, and compulsive eating. Trust me.

Is there something about nutrition you would like to learn? Are there some changes you would like to make in your lifestyle? Start by talking to your support squad. Seek out an unbiased professional. If that professional has a line of “x-free” products available for purchase because you just shouldn’t be eating “x,” immediately find someone else.

Think about how to start incorporating mindfulness into your life to stay in control when your habits might be getting the best of you. You might astonish yourself with what a few moments of concentrated breathing can do.

An aside: please, just don’t ask your personal trainer for nutritional advice. The chapters on nutrition in our textbooks are around ten pages long. With that in mind, a lot of trainers give nutritional advice from personal experience, so chances are a trainer knows a lot about what works for him, but not a lot about what might work for other people.

No, I don’t think you need to be on some NitrobolXplode Crea-Peptide pre-workout stack for an energetic training session. Maybe just a black coffee? Put it this way: if your trainer had the answer to perfect nutrition, do you think he would be working at a gym? No, he would be sailing around the world on his yacht named “Pumpkin Spice” while buying football teams from his iPhone 100 because he just solved obesity.

But I digress. Honestly, I have been that fighting Internet person before. Not too long ago, I made a pointed remark towards someone who posted something I found to be quite irritating. My remark elicited a predictably sharp response from that person, but I immediately made the decision to disengage. I apologized for the tone of my comment, reaffirmed my respect for her as a professional, and went on with my day. It was, at that moment, that I came to the realization of how wholly unimportant something like that is in the grand scheme of my life and my goals.

You Have What You Need

Working in a corporate, sales-driven gym environment, it gets drilled into your head that you need to be constantly utilizing social media. A lot of the online personal training resources out there drive at the same thing – how to get sales.

But, in truth, everything people need to be successful in health, fitness, and life lies within their own ability to mediate their habits and behavior. This is why some people have a lot of success building strength by doing nothing but squats. Why some people feel off-the-charts healthy from eating strict paleo. And curse me for me saying this, but even those damn shake plans can work for some people, too.

And there will always be the infuriating outlier. Like my colleague, who eats tacos and cheeseburgers every day and has abs like a turtle shell. No matter how much we argue, there will never be a be-all and end-all when it comes to exercise and nutrition.

You know what will always and forever be awesome, though? Turning off your computer, sitting on your porch on a fall day with a beverage of your choice, breathing, and letting yourself relax. Let the small-minded be the ones who fight. You have much more important things to do.

*No chemicals have been added to this blog post.

References:

1. Schwartz, Jeffrey, and Sharon Begley. The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York: Regan Books/HarperCollins Publ., 2002.

2. Hebebrand, Johannes, Ozugur Albayrak, and Roger Adan. “’Eating Addiction,’ Rather than ‘Food Addiction,’ Better Captures Addictive-like Eating Behavior.” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2014.

Photo 1 courtesy of Experience Life.

Photos 2 and 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 4 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

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Study Design

The biggest variable to the success of psyching up is the amount of time that passes between it and competing. This was the primary focus of the researchers in the Journal study. Sixteen sprinters completed tests in two conditions:

1. The experimental condition, in which the sprinters psyched themselves up.
2. The control condition, in which they were distracted from the sprinting.

For each condition, the participants were randomly tested during five different time intervals each, for a total of ten tests. The time intervals refer to the length of time the participants waited after being psyched up or after being distracted before they would run their sprints. These five time intervals were as follows:

1. Immediately after the psych up/distraction
2. One minute after the psych up/distraction
3. Two minutes after the psych up/distraction
4. Three minutes after the psych up/distraction
5. Five minutes after the psych up/distraction

To get psyched up, the sprinters used an imagery approach. They were instructed to close their eyes for thirty seconds and imagine themselves setting a new sprint personal record. By contrast, during the control condition, the sprinters were instructed to count backwards from 1,000 by sevens for thirty seconds – a mental task with enough difficulty to make it impossible to think about the sprint ahead.

Results

The psyching up did indeed work. The greatest effect was on the acceleration phase of the sprint, which lasted for the first ten meters. The total run of thirty meters also improved significantly as a result of greater acceleration. The max speed portion of the sprint, which occurred after the first ten meters, was only slightly improved.

The researchers discovered that psyching up is a short-lived and delicate endeavor. The effects were strong immediately and up to two full minutes after getting psyched up, but they vanished pretty rapidly. The top speed portion of the run (from ten to thirty meters) seemed to be affected the strongest by a delay, with a significant boost happening only if the run was completed immediately after psyching up. All in all, the effects of psyching up were most marked when it happened immediately before the sprint.

Application

Psyching up works, but it needs to be performed immediately before activity to work at its best. The imagery technique used in this study doesn’t require making a big spectacle of yourself, and it only takes thirty seconds to be effective. That means you can employ it before each set at the gym or before you engage in any intense activity.

References:

1. Sarra Hammoudi-Nassib, et. al., “The time interval moderates the relationship between psyching-up and actual sprint performance,” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 2014, DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000000530

Photo courtesy of CrossFit Empirical.

The post Science Says Imagery Is a Powerful Psych-Up Tool appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But courage can be displayed in many ways, and for a coach or trainer it is in having the courage to admit you were wrong and change things accordingly. It also comes into effect when you know you’re on the right path and have to stick to your plan, even when your athletes and clients want change.

Have the Courage to Be Different

Recently I was watching my clients do our regular Monday training. Monday for us is very different than for most. In many gyms it is chest-and-arms day, while in others it is the heaviest session of the week.

But my greatest priority for my clients is mobility and flexibility. Our average clients, like most trainers, have sedentary jobs and show all the telltale signs of an aging body that hasn’t been well looked after. Many struggle with a good overhead position, and others struggle with adequate range to squat well.

Therefore, if we aim to train hard for the rest of the week, we need to make sure to address their range of motion issues as our number one priority. That means it goes first in the week and first in every workout.

Have the Courage to Stick to Your Guns

Initially, that was a difficult sell to my clients. They wanted to lift heavy, to squat and deadlift. They wanted to push hard where I said to slow down and move gently. It took a little while for everyone to see the benefits and come to understand why we do it this way

I could have easily backed down and given in, returning to what most do on a Monday. That would have been the easy thing. But I stuck to my guns and insisted we run these mobility sessions.

Of course, I can’t force people to attend any sessions, Monday has turned out to be our busiest day of training both in mornings and evenings. So it’s fair to say that forcing this upon my clients has been met with understanding as they now see the benefits of better movement through the rest of the week.

Have the Courage to Change the Plan

But at the same time, I was forced to admit failure last week when I watched everyone struggle with new flexibility exercises. It’s not like our previous sessions had been wasted, far from it, but I had decided to step up the demands of the Monday mobility work and make them far more challenging.

Where previously the sessions were mobility focused, which can end up feeling like a nice recovery session, the new session was a hard strength/ flexibility workout – incorporating a lot of Ido Portal’s Corset approach, some other drills from Gymnastic Bodies, as well as exercises from my own experience in martial arts. Some of these drills have literally reduced people to tears in the past, they can be so tough.

Watching my clients, I was ashamed. My programming had failed them. If they had been athletes on a team I was coaching, I would have benched them all for their performance, and then fired myself.

I went home that night and rewrote our plan for the week. I switched the entire focus of the week to this hard flexibility and movement work. I will admit to being nervous when I walked into work at 5:50am the following day, told everyone how disappointed I was in their performance, which really amounted to how disappointed I was in myself, and then laid out the plan to fix it.

Mea maxima fucking culpa.

Have the Courage to Drill the Basics

I’m not sure many people have the guts to tell the clients who come to them for fat loss and general strength and fitness that until further notice, all sessions are going to be related to flexibility. But that’s exactly what happened last week.

Already as of this morning, in six training days, I saw a remarkable improvement in everyone’s abilities. This leads me to think that we won’t need to continue this total flexibility training for much longer, but that we need to keep incorporating it far more than we previously had (which was already more than most facilities, outside of gymnastics and yoga).

In a similar vein, trainers need to have the courage not to change plans too often. Adaptation, the thing people are coming to you for, takes time. Charles Poliquin estimates that it takes about six workouts to get the most out of one session. As in, you must repeat a session exactly six times to get the most out of it – the same set, rep, tempo, and exercise selection and order exactly. Moving quicker than that will actually halt progress, not speed it up.

Have the Courage to Do It Right

John Wooden used to say you can’t allow yourself to get bored watching basics. Think how different the athletic world would be if Phelps’ coach got bored watching him freestyle? Or if Tiger Woods had gotten tired of putting in practice? Or even Hossein Rezazadeh getting bored with the clean and jerk?

Our job entails working primarily with beginner to intermediate trainees. It is all about repeating basics over and over again. The same cues, the same types of workouts, and the same people.

I often think the reason most exercise programs seem to get flipped around so often is because the trainer is bored. Coming to the realization that you’re going to get up at 5am to go and say the exact same thing to the same person as you said yesterday can be tough sometimes. But that’s the job, and if you want to do it, you have the guts to do it right.

Having the courage to stick to the plan, even when clients dislike it will bring them fast results. But don’t be pigheaded. If your plan isn’t effective (or isn’t effective enough, as I found) – have the guts to change it, then stick to the new plan until you can see the results.

Photo 1 courtesy of FBCoverstreet.

Photo 3 courtesy of CrossFit LA.

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Our Eyes Are Bigger Than Our Metabolisms

A recent study by Wansink and colleagues set out to see how visual cues (i.e., plate size) affect consumption.⁶ This study was actually made up of four separate studies that build upon each other. Study number one investigated how much people think is right to serve themselves. Cereal bowls were set out with differing amounts of cereal. Participants were asked two questions: how much is the appropriate serving and how much would you serve yourself. Interestingly, the responses for the two questions differed. Participants thought the most appropriate serving was when the bowl is about 66% full. However, they indicated that they would often serve themselves a bowl that was 75% full. Thus, it seems like there is already a conscious bias that people serve themselves more than what they think is an established norm. To say it another way, we fill our plates more than we know we should.

Plate Size Matters

Study number two investigated how much people serve themselves at a Chinese buffet-style restaurant if they use small or large plates. Participants in the study did not know they were being observed and could choose either a small or large plate to serve themselves. People who chose a large plate tended to put about 52% more food on their plate and ate about 45% more. One potential issue is that maybe these dinners chose the larger plate because they were hungrier and therefore they ate more. However, the results are consistent with other studies that show people tend to eat more when given a large plate. From a business standpoint, I can see why buffets tend to use small plates as it certainly cuts the cost of food preparation (or maybe they are thinking of the health of the consumers). The take-home point from this study is that we might want to purchase smaller plates for our homes.

Behavior Habits Are Hard to Break

The third study is quite intriguing as it involved human resource managers who were taking part in a three-day seminar on creating healthy organizations. The participants had just attended an hour-long lecture on how plate size can affect eating patterns. The point of the lecture was to pay attention to the amount of food on the plate and not on the proportion of the plate that is filled. After the seminar, participants were brought to lunch and randomly assigned to one of two buffet lines. The only difference in the lines was the plate size. As I was reading the study, I had that same feeling that I do when watching a horror film. “Don’t go in there.” “Don’t fall for it.” Even after just attending the lecture on food consumption and plate size, the larger the plate the more food that was consumed. That is, people still ate 50% more food even after hearing about how plate size affects food consumption. The habit of using a visual cue for eating seems like a tough one to break.

Our Estimations Are Illusions

Study number four investigated the cause of this relationship and how it affects our eating habits. Basically, we have trouble with the Delbeouf illusion. That is, we see different sizes depending what is the external reference. In the picture, the inner circle appears to be different sizes depending if there is a large circle or a small circle around it. We have this same difficulty with food. We have difficulties judging how much food there is as our brain tricks us into thinking there is more or less depending on the plate size. That finding is exactly what the researchers saw when people were asked to estimate soup portions. Our brain uses the external reference to guide us into how much there is of something. Most of the time this shortcut works. However, when it comes to estimating food the shortcut backfires on us.

How to Apply This Knowledge

There has been an ongoing philosophical discussion of whether the mind can override the instinctual aspects of our self. The argument has swayed back and forth between saying we are rational creatures and we are creatures of our emotions. From an evolutionary perspective, our instincts have had many more years to be refined and finely honed (an analogy would be the tenth version of software). The rational conscious system is relatively new (continuing the analogy, it is beta software). When it comes to eating it seems like we rely a lot more on habit than on our rational thinking side.

This fact is quite important when designing eating plans. We need to take the thinking portion out of it. We can’t rely on the will of the individual, as we need to change the cues that guide us what to eat. Probably the simplest solution is to find smaller plates. That is easy at home, but in restaurants it can be more difficult. One trick I use at Cheesecake Factory (home of some really large plates) is to keep the bread plate and move a fitting portion of my food to it. The remaining food on the serving plate I ask to be packed up to take home. I can overflow the bread plate and I feel very full afterwards.

Another idea is to keep tempting foods away. In another study by Wansink and colleagues, they found that moving a candy dish further away from people led to a lot less consumption.³ So, keep your healthy food choices nearby (and in small serving dishes) and the unhealthy ones inaccessible.

References:

1. Wansink, B., Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think (Bantam:2007).

2. Wansink, B., and Junyong Kim. 2005. “Bad Popcorn in Big Buckets: Portion Size Can Influence Intake as Much as Taste.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 37 (5): 242–45.

3. Wansink, B., Painter, J. E., & Lee, Y.-K. (2006). “The office candy dish: proximity’s influence on estimated and actual consumption.” International Journal of Obesity, 30(5), 871–875.

4. Wansink, B., Painter, J. E. and North, J. 2005. “Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake.” Obesity 13 (1): 93–100. doi:10.1038/oby.2005.12.

5. Wansink, B., Payne, C. R., and Chandon, P. 2007. “Internal and External Cues of Meal Cessation: The French Paradox Redux?” Obesity 15 (12): 2920–24.

6. Wansink, B., and van Ittersum, K. 2013. “Portion Size Me: Plate-Size Induced Consumption Norms and Win-Win Solutions for Reducing Food Intake and Waste.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 19 (4): 320–32. doi:10.1037/a0035053.

Photo 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

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So, I’ll go to the other hand, the part of me that wants to understand – well not to understand, because “understanding” implies acceptance. Maybe to develop a better sense of what might go on in the heads of people who commit such acts. What these two men are said to have done is so beyond what I fervently hope I or anyone I know is capable of.

But some people do commit such acts. And therefore, I want to comprehend. In no way do I intend to excuse or explain away such behavior by trying to learn more. Rather, I want to believe that knowledge is power. This video, which focuses on an incident in Steubenville, Ohio, that has received national attention, argues that a broader “rape culture” exists in our country within which a “boys will be boys” mentality prevails.

So that gets us back to what Emily, Lola, and I asked in our earlier article, about how each of us is contributing to both the problem and the solution. But even if you accept the argument that some people don’t know such things are reprehensible, what about people who do? In the case of the two grapplers, one of them was said to have apologized to the victim as he was attacking her, calling himself a “sick bastard.”

There’s a concept in psychology called “escalation of commitment.” Researcher Barry Staw, in his 1976 paper Knee-Deep in the Big Muddy: A Study of Escalating Commitment to a Chosen Course of Action describes it as follows:

Specifically, when a person’s behavior leads to negative consequences, we may find that the individual will, instead of changing his behavior, cognitively distort the negative consequences to more positively valenced outcomes…The phenomenon underlying this biasing of behavioral outcomes is often said to be a self-justification process in which individuals seek to rationalize their previous behavior or psychologically defend themselves against adverse consequences.

In other words, people who actually believe or come to believe a thing is wrong or maladaptive may, instead of refraining from doing that thing, go ahead and do it, or continue to do it, and then attempt to explain it away after the fact. They may even do more of the same or similar things to justify their behavior. I suspect we’ve all done this. Maybe we have floated a friend or family member multiple loans, even when that person shows no sign of intending to pay us back (known as “throwing good money after bad.”) Or, to use an example from my own past, maybe we have stayed at a job long after it stopped being a healthy environment and started being toxic. In those situations, we’ve justified the actions with “Oh, s/he will pay me back when s/he gets back on track” or “Well, everyone has tough job situations. This latest development adds insult to injury, but it could be a lot worse. At least I have a job.”

We do it in the health and fitness arena too. As one example, how many heated debates have you heard about something as seemingly basic as what human beings should eat? People who eat a certain way may be loath to change, not only because it requires them to put forth effort, but because it also requires them to come to terms with (possibly years of) past decisions that they must now accept as wrong, mistaken, or at least open to question. And this could be still more devastating or difficult to process if they have built careers and identities on this wrong, mistaken, or open-to-question information. It seems it would be far easier psychologically to stick to one’s guns.

The point is, according to the concept of escalation of commitment, people are remarkably adept at finding ways to reduce their cognitive dissonance and discomfort, and sometimes this results in us committing ever more vehemently to a course of action. I imagine you can see how this concept might relate to this or other news stories on this horrible topic, how over time or even in a matter of seconds people might employ twisted logic to justify their actions in their own minds.

So what can we do with this information? As usual, I believe the best place for us to start is with ourselves, and with an examination of our own behavior and assumptions. How might the concept of escalation of commitment play itself out in my life in ways that lead to negative consequences? Can I identify situations in which I justify or have justified behaviors that are less than ideal? What are the broader implications of this? What are my beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior? Are they consistent with the kind of behavior that must exist in order for everyone to be able to life a safe, fulfilling life – not just me?

Yes, it’s a lot of questions to contemplate. So just pick one and start – if you’re willing.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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There are certain areas of my life that I want to change but I don’t know how. I feel like I try to take steps forward for a period of time, but eventually end up repeating the same pattern again. Do you have any ideas how to initiate changing a pattern? I really want to do something different, but just can’t seem to actualize this long term. HELP!

Sincerely,

Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,

First of all, congratulate yourself on being aware enough to notice you want to make a change. Awareness IS the first step in changing anything in our life. We first must be able to have enough perceptibility to recognize when a pattern is not working for us.

Here is a simple formula I use for my Coaching for Transformation clients who want a change. This may help you with breaking into new behaviors and positioning your self in the intended direction, without the old pattern weighing your psyche down.

1. Identify old pattern:

Think of a pattern as a behavior – an organization of individual actions. What is the specific pattern? An example might be smoking. In this example, it is a behavior with many distinct actions that create the pattern of smoking. Clearly state and write down what the pattern is.

2. Identify specific actions in the old pattern:

In the above example, get clearer as to what the specific actions are with smoking. It is a series or sequence of steps that result in smoking. There is the initial thought of wanting to smoke followed by grabbing a lighter, pack of cigarettes, heading outside, lighting the cigarette, putting it to your mouth, and inhaling.

3. Know the favored action:

What action in the pattern do you like the most? By identifying this individual action or set of actions, you can then begin to switch them for actions that are more relevant to your life. If you like the smell of the smoke because it reminds you of someone or something with significance, you can then choose a different, more serving action to replace the old one. Perhaps a better option would be to replace cigarette smoke with aromatherapy and the use of essential oils.

This is a simple and effective means to shifting from one set of patterns to establishing new ones that will serve you more dynamically in the future. If you need clarification and would like to speak to do this exercise to more completion, email willow@breakingmuscle.com and we can go into more detail. There is a great strategy to ensure your new pattern becomes permanent while maintaining the level of association you are seeking from the original pattern.

Good luck to you. Keep breaking patterns to live the outstanding life you deserve.

Sincerely,

Willow

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The post Dear Willow: How Do I Break a Behavior Pattern? appeared first on Breaking Muscle.