Caroline L. Arnold Small Move, Big Change

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.”* In other words, we don’t think about what we’re doing; we just do it, unaware of how our autopilot drives us toward success or failure.When we decide to improve ourselves—to shake things up—we run straight into resistance from autopilot.While the autopilot system in a car can easily be switched off so that the driver can resume control, disabling any part of your personal autopilot requires real effort.Autopilot likes routine and resists change.The more change we impose on ourselves, the more resistance we must overcome.And yet we nearly always shoot for an instant transformation, resolving to be slim, to be neat, to be on time.Such wannabe resolutions require changing scores of behaviors and put us broadly at war with autopilot.Resolving to be slim means changing your habits in almost every eating circumstance: what you eat, how often you eat, how much you eat, the way you eat.Suddenly every action, every choice demands scrutiny, conscious effort, and willpower.In a seminal 2000 study on the dynamics of willpower, researchers Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister demonstrated that self-control is a limited, physiological resource that is easily exhausted:We found that after an act of self-control, subsequent unrelated self-control operations suffer.After resisting temptations, people perform more poorly on tests of vigilance and are less able to resist subsequent temptations.*The more we draw on our willpower, the sooner it gives out.The broad resolutions we favor place unreasonable demands on our self-control.In order to muscle through a behavioral change, our willpower has to wrestle autopilot all day long—no wonder we cry uncle before we make it to the beach! Despite our determination to succeed, after a few weeks of valiant battle our willpower collapses, outmatched by the entrenched habits and preferences that quietly rule our lives.The willpower-driven resolution is a top-down approach to self-improvement—we command ourselves to be different and try to force our behavior and attitudes into line.The microresolution system is a bottom-up approach, focusing relentlessly on one or two significant behavioral changes until they are driven into autopilot, where they require no deliberate effort—willpower—to sustain.A ground-level perspective offers visibility for the long run; the top-down perspective—the bird’s-eye view of the treetops, not the trees—obscures the path and seldom produces insights that lead to success the next time.But working from the ground up we can see in detail exactly what is in our way.By focusing closely on fundamental behaviors and attitudes, we increase our self-awareness and accelerate our progress.A microresolution is designed to reform a precise autopilot activity and requires little willpower to succeed.We’re Too ImpatientThe new year is a time of restless spirits.After so many holiday months filled with self-indulgence—eating more, drinking more, spending more, letting go—we’re eager to jump on the wagon and reform ourselves straightaway.We seek out shortcuts and gimmicks that promise to speed our transformation, convinced there is some magic formula to make us what we wannabe.Fueling our impatience is the fear that if it takes us too long to achieve a goal, we will give up before we succeed.Our mindless rushing blurs our vision, and we fail to observe how quiet habits and hidden attitudes keep us from succeeding.The next time we try to self-improve, we make exactly the same mistakes.Transformation is a process, not an event.(Even with the help of a fairy godmother, Cinderella ended up stranded on the road from the palace when her coach turned back into a pumpkin.) And why would you want to skip the process? Consciously nurturing change makes us smarter, more self-aware, and builds a powerful foundation for continued growth.Being able to repeat our steps from A to B is the magic formula for making our achievements permanent.The key to lasting transformation is not speed or force but nurture.We Underestimate Our Mental and Emotional Resistance to ChangeFamiliar habits and behaviors sustain and comfort us in our daily lives.Our mental, emotional, and physical habits are closely tied to the family values and routines we learned in childhood.All that early conditioning—your parents pestering you to hang up your coat, chew with your mouth closed, clean your plate, and be a good sport—established behaviors and preferences that allow you to operate on autopilot with respect to many of the actions and decisions you make each day.Disturbing these routines creates awkwardness, mental fatigue, emotional stress, and a strong impulse to revert to what feels right—to autopilot.The more change we take on, the more mental and emotional resistance we arouse in ourselves, such resistance brewing often just beneath the surface of our consciousness.The intense focus of a microresolution helps expose our veiled mindset and the subtle interplay among habits, attitudes, and values that block progress.Like a scientific experiment that alters a single variable at a time in order to precisely observe cause and effect, the single-minded focus of a microresolution exposes the source of our resistance to change.Once identified, a negative mindset can be addressed, undone, even turned in support of our objectives.Microresolutions foster self-awareness and expose the hidden attitudes that thwart success.We Expect to FailSadly, having bailed on so many self-improvement missions, we’ve come to anticipate the inevitable moment when our will to change collapses and we revert to the comfort of our previous routines.The ghosts of failures past haunt each new endeavor, making it harder for us to believe in our ability to sustain progress and influence outcomes.As our willpower wanes, we are oddly consoled by the familiar sensation of giving up and giving way.Yes, let’s have that milkshake.The way to free ourselves from cynicism and reverse our expectation of failure is to learn how to make resolutions we can sustain.A microresolution is easy to keep.• • •It was only after discovering the microresolution that I began to understand why so many of the pledges we make faithfully each year fail over time.Desperate and frustrated in the wake of one such disappointment, I made my first microresolution and thereby stumbled onto a system for making resolutions that succeed on the first try and are sustainable for a lifetime.But I don’t want to get ahead of myself—as I said, it all started with a broken New Year’s resolution.My First MicroresolutionNew Year’s Day.Resolution time again.What did I resolve last year? Oh, yes, I remember—to lose weight and exercise more.How did that turn out? Let’s see.do the math.wait for it.a net gain of three pounds one year later.It wasn’t hard to remember my resolution or the one from the year before [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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