HOW TO BREAK THE BAD HABITS - Try it and You'll See The Results
When
we're trying to change our behaviors there's some behaviors that we want to be
experts at and then there's some behaviors that we're perfectly fine being
amateurs at right and on the Bottom too as well the habituate or the addict
there's behaviors that we want to stop doing that are low willpower and high
willpower.
So
it's not necessarily the person it's the behavior they're trying to change But
I think you know, you'll find it very difficult to become an expert at
something if you use the same criteria. That it takes to become an amateur at
something. if your test to become an expert, is this MEA (Minimum Enjoyable
Action)?
You
actually won't have the grit and perseverance needed to power through the times
that are shitty that is hard. So most people's problems I think when it comes
to the fitness space in particular is that we train Like we're experts. Even
though what we want is an amateur behavior All right We go to the gym and we
have the mentality that we need a trainer and fitness programs and you know We
need to, you know, no pain, no gain, and it's got to hurt or it doesn't work And
that's the experts mentality. I've written on this article you alluded to
called why fitness apps make you fat because what we find is that when you take
that mindset in the Expert quadrant of you know, I've got to figure out the
expert quadrant is all about figuring out your mistakes And it's got to be in
some way painful in a way or else you're not gonna get better what that means Is
that people are doing exercise that they hate which means it's not going to be
sustainable.
Not
only that we know that when you suffer at something there's this phenomenon called
moral licensing. That when we feel like we've sacrificed in one area of our
lives. It's like squeezing on a balloon right when we feel like we're being
good in one area of our lives. We cheat in other areas of our life, right? I
squeezed on this side of the blue and the other and we've seen this phenomenon
occur time and time again we find that when people buy green products, they're
actually less kind though. They're less likely to help someone who's just
fallen down in front of them after they've sacrificed by buying an ecologically
sound product. Some of the highest insurance rates on the road today Are from a
car that you wouldn't expect it's not Ferrari's and Lamborghini's.
Some
of the highest insurance rates are for Blue Prius's, Right, right because
there's this effect of moral licensing: if we're good in one area, we're
allowed to be bad in other areas. So how does this play out in the fitness
world? Well, i just you know sweated it out on the treadmill for 30 minutes,
and I've you know, it was so difficult and I you know I did it. I persevered
and it was so hard for me. I didn't enjoy a second of it. I deserve a Jamba
Juice with 60 grams of sugar and, you know, 600 calories, even though I only
burned what like 300 calories on the treadmill I deserve a reward and
unfortunately. I think when bringing it back to the technology industry a lot
of fitness apps today only look at that side of the equation. They're only
about getting your step counts because they're using the expert mode as opposed
to the amateur level. So we talked about the top of that behavior change
matrix, right? These do behaviors that are either low willpower or high
willpower at the bottom of that behavior change matrix are the don't Behaviors
the things we want to stop doing and so there again we have low willpower and
high willpower.
So
what I've utilized it in my life, is it using a technique, I call progressive extremism,
Progressive extremism and the idea is that You know the problem with diets and
the reason that diets make us fat is that they train our brains to anticipate Scarcity
and of course what you're doing when you train the brain to do something is
that you're heightening the awareness you're making us You know these diets
train us to expect. Okay, I'm suffering today but as soon as this diet ends and
I'm you know I can fit into my wedding dress or the graduation ceremony comes
or here's my goal by the end of the year I'm gonna you know be at this weight
as soon as I free myself from that diet and that's the problem So instead of
saying, you know a diet that has this Time-based end point what I advocate for
is progressive extremism. So pick something That you know, you want to stop
eating in this case if food is what word is the behavior we're trying to
change, and the criteria is pick something that you can give up without too
much trouble But you can give it up for the rest of your life. Why would I want
to do something temporarily and then go back to eating the way I used to eat? That
doesn't make any sense. Of course. I'm going to gain the weight I want to make
a permanent change and so I started out with my the first thing that I excised
from my life was candy corn and so I just cut them out and say I'm never eating
candy corn ever again And then what happened and I kept track.
I
kept track of everything I gave up And then maybe like a week or two later, I'd
assess and say hey that wasn't so hard. What else could I give up? And then I
would give up another thing and another thing. Then I think the thing I gave up
was no sugary drinks in the house Okay, I can have sugary drinks outside the
house. No sugary drinks in the house ever again for the rest of my life it’s a
rule progressive extremism. So I went up this chart kind of more and more and
more things that I was giving up until I gave up you know, just last June I
gave up refined sugars completely. It's just not something I do now when okay,
people have no trouble saying Oh candy corn easy. That's great but then you say
okay. I'm gonna give up all refined sugars and people say oh that's not so cool
anymore but of course that's the natural progression of what you're doing here
is you're using this this this phenomenon of Self-image that when you talked
about self-image earlier and how we can actually utilize how we see ourselves
to boost our willpower.
There's
been a lot of studies that show that when people Identify a behavior that they
do or don't do as part of who they are it becomes much easier to resist for
example if you're a vegetarian if you're a devout Muslim if you're An Orthodox
Jew you're not constantly asking yourself Should I eat the meat or should I
have some beer or should I have some pork right? Like that's not a debate
you're having on a constant basis. You just don't do that because that's who
you are Right? If I'm a devout Muslim, I just don't drink that's just what I
do. If I'm a vegetarian, I just don't eat meat. It's no longer a debate of
should I can I is it okay. I just don't Right, whereas many diners they think
to themselves Well, should I should I not should I have the cake and what
they're doing is expending this willpower resource that over time you know,
there's a lot of evidence that shows becomes depleted and it becomes very hard.
It's this constant struggle. But by doing this progressive extremism and saying
look, that's just one thing I just don't eat and taking it slowly. I mean this
has to take years to Scale up. You're constantly you're constantly excising things
from your life from your diet But for the rest of your life and it's using that
same principle of this is just who I am I just don't eat those things. So that
that's the shift is changing your mindset Oh, this is something I just don't do
versus something I can't do which "can't" means "well, maybe
it's flexible" versus something “I just do not do.”
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