Change is not about willpower. It’s about habits
What habits do you have that don’t serve you well? Maybe you accept every meeting that lands on your calendar. Or you check email while you’re in bed. When faced with a full day of meetings without a break, do you ever ask yourself, how did I get here? And how can I get out?
Athletes and musicians have coaches who help them develop good habits. These coaches keep a sharp eye out for habits that don’t serve the goal and help their athlete pivot to habits that help. Business executives and leaders are expected to perform and drive transformation through tremendous complexity, and they rarely get the kind of hands-on, daily and consistent coaching that’s needed to identify when they’ve gone off the rails with bad habits, and what to do to build better habits. A shocking 43% of everything we do each day is performed out of habit.[1]
So it’s incredibly important that we develop the right habits!
A habit is formed in our brain. The neural wiring comes together, lays into a groove, and we can set autopilot. There’s no doubt that you’ve got some habits that don’t serve you well, maybe even some that are sabotaging you. In the absence of a daily coaching session, there are three steps you can take to re-wire your brain.
Step 1: Take an inventory of the habits you want to change.
This is pretty simple at first. You already know some of the things you need to change. Write those down. Then ask someone close to you if they see any habits around working that aren’t serving you. For example, a partner can point out that when you get stressed, the first thing you abandon is your morning workout. Or a close colleague might observe that you tend to reschedule your one-on-ones, which makes your direct reports feel undervalued.
Step 2: Broaden your capacity for mindfulness.
We can’t change habits that we’re not paying attention to. Developing mindfulness requires five simple elements:
1. Having a sense of purpose. As you’re pivoting to habits that serve you, be guided by a purpose, something that is meaningful, aspirational and in the future, such as to be more present for your children. Whatever it is, having a sense of purpose will increase your steadfastness.
2. Priming for calmness. Not too tense, not too relaxed, but primed to be fully present and in the zone, when you need to be.
3. Tuning in to optimism. Believing you will be able to change your habits, and that you’ll have support from the people around you, dramatically increases your capacity to turn positive thoughts into action.
4. Making focus a priority. Focus is increasingly difficult to find in an environment of persistent digital stimulation. But research shows that it is more efficient for us to create space to deeply focus on one thing at a time.
5. Building habits that serve you. Habits are the engine for consistent growth. In this meta moment, I’m saying you need to develop the habit of paying attention to your habits. Willpower alone is not enough to create change, because it’s a limited resource. Habits, on the other hand, can stay with us effortlessly.
Step 3: Turn the will into habit
In step one we identified the habits that require brain re-wiring. In step two we learned what psychological components we need in order to re-wire. In step three we get into the actual daily work of re-wiring for better habits.
Let’s say you’ve identified a need to create more breathing space in your days (this is your purpose). The habits you want to change around this include:
Not accepting every meeting without interrogating whether your attendance is necessary
Requesting and setting meetings in 15-20 minute blocks instead of 30 minutes or an hour
Taking a short walk after lunch every day
Getting up from your desk to re-fill your water bottle twice each morning and twice each afternoon
Let’s start with the first re-wire: not accepting every meeting automatically. To turn this into a habit you need to be aware of your intentions every time a meeting lands on your calendar. At first this will be hard. This is because you’re re-wiring your brains automated response. But the more you take a moment to focus on this, the more routine the new behavior will become. Eventually you’ll re-wire the brains of your colleagues who will learn that you’re going to challenge them on whether you need to be in the meeting! Celebrate your progress when this happens. When you fail to protect your time by automatically accepting a meeting, keep perspective and do better next time.
A powerful way to turn willpower into habit is to enlist the support of others. Maybe you share your goal with a trusted friend, or your entire team. Report on your progress. When they cheer you on, you’ll find yourself more committed to your sense of purpose and more confident in pursuing it. When we feel supported we are much more likely to rise to a challenge.
Training our brain is an important part of managing in complexity. Addressing habits is one way to bring this to life on a daily basis. You can integrate the five simple elements that help broaden your capacity for mindfulness around any topic.
What habits are on your “must stop doing” list?
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[1] Harnessing the power of habits (apa.org)