Author: couillard

This post is part of a series about raising your self-awareness to facilitate long-term behavior change. See the previous post for an explanation about how to mentally rehearse behavior change to make it easier to adopt in the moment

So far we’ve talked about mentally rehearsing a behavior before it happens in order to boost our awareness. Remember, more awareness means more change, more quickly, and more stickily (yes, it’s a word). This is because when we’re aware of what we’re doing, we can make intentional decisions about our behavior. To quote Victor Frankl / Steven Covey: “In between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Most of the time, however, we don’t notice ‘the space between stimulus and response.’ I call this being on autopilot – it’s how we behave without really needing to think or be intentional. Autopilot is our default mode – most people are on autopilot most of the time (here’s some science about that). And that’s perfectly normal – it’s a way our brain tries to keep us safe. But when we want to change our behavior, we need to temporarily turn off autopilot.

Mentally rehearsing before the fact makes it easier to expand that space between stimulus (what’s happening out there) and response (what we do about it). I like to call this space a wedge of awareness. With practice, we learn to insert that wedge to get us out of autopilot. Here’s an illustration –

So when we know we’re in a situation where opportunities to practice our target behavior will come up, being extra mindful of what’s going on will help us spot the opportunity, insert a wedge of awareness, and make the change in real time. But even if we don’t catch it in real time, just the act of turning up our awareness in those moments will make it easier for us to catch it in the next moment.

Additionally, it’s easy to get caught up in thinking we’ve missed our chance. But I like to encourage people to try things even when we think it’s too late. Going back to our self-advocacy example from the previous post – let’s say you’re in that meeting with your boss, and before you know it, you’ve only got 2 minutes left. With practice, your internal dialogue might look like this:

Ah shit, I’ve already blown it. I can’t believe I missed my chance again. I’m such a loser.

*inserts wedge of awareness*

Oh! I’m judging myself again. I’m also thinking self-defeating thoughts. Let me give it a shot, even it’s not the perfect time.

“Hey boss, I know we don’t have time to talk through this right now, but I want to bring it up and we can dig into it later. I’m really wanting a raise…”

This might be awkward, but in my experience the awkwardness can actually help. It can motivate you to catch it sooner next time. And also empower you by helping you realize that awkwardness does not need to stop you.

Practicing behavior change in the moment is most difficult, and requires the most self-compassion. You’re not going to catch it every time, but catching it every time is not a realistic expectation. Nor is it a useful goal. A far more useful goal is to practice being aware, even if it’s after the fact. Noticing that you behaved without as much intention as you would have liked, and doing your best not to beat yourself up about it. The better you get at noticing this, the more often you will perform the desired behavior and forego the undesired behavior.

I like to think of awareness based behavior change in terms of probabilities. The more awareness you have, the more probable it becomes that you will do the desired behavior instead of the undesired one. No matter how much you practice certain skills, you’ll never be perfect. But you can increase the probability that your behavior will be effective.

As you can see from this expertly crafted graph, both before and after practice there’s a spectrum of effective / desirable behavior. And sometimes your worst performance after practice might not be as effective as your best performance before practice. But on average, you’ll be more effective with practice.

Every instance to practice your new behavior has unique internal and external factors largely outside of your control – internally, you may be in a bad mood, or have not slept the previous night. Or externally, your company might be having a salary freeze, which will make it more difficult to actually get the raise you’re asking for. So rather than getting caught up in trying to achieve a specific outcome right away, try to focus on the process of long term growth, which inevitably will include missed opportunities, failure, and disappointment. Try to focus on how your practice of this skill is moving you towards a more meaningful life.

In summary – in order to intentionally change your behavior, try to be aware of what you’re doing in the moment. Turn off autopilot. And then do the thing that will move you toward developing your desired skill / behavior change. Don’t get caught up in perfectionism or not attaining outcomes which are outside of your control. Even if you think you missed your opportunity, try the behavior anyways.

(cockpit painting above by Jeremy Couillard)

This post is part of a series about raising your level of awareness to facilitate long-term behavior change. See the previous post for an introduction to why awareness helps behavior change, and why mental rehearsal works.

First let’s talk about what mental rehearsal aka visualization looks like in practice, being used in advance of the behavior you want to change. The example behavior change I’ll use comes up often with my clients – getting better at advocating for yourself / your team. This is an essential skill for things like negotiating a higher salary or getting a promotion.

Let’s say this is a skill you want to develop – perhaps you’re sick of seeing your peers get promotions when you’ve leveled out, or your team isn’t getting the resources they need and you want to help make that happen. Whatever the reason, first we want to get clear on at least one specific behavior change you want to practice. For example, asking your boss for a raise instead of just hoping they’ll give it to you.

Now, before the opportunity to practice in real-time arises, we want to imagine it in our heads. And since imagining something happening is more or less the same as it actually happening (as far as our neurological pathways are concerned), we can also practice being aware just by imagining. Again, more on this in my previous post.

So let’s say we’ve got 5 minutes before the meeting with our boss to do some mental rehearsal. First you want to get very clear on the behavior you want to try – what do you want to say? How do you want to say it? We can remind ourselves – in the past, I’ve had a tendency to chicken out. Imagine yourself on the verge of chickening out. Then imagine yourself catching the old behavior (chickening out) and replacing it with the new behavior (asking for a raise). The more real you make it in your mind, the better. Imagine…

I’m sitting in the meeting with my boss. God this is so boring, when is he going to stop talking? Maybe I’ll just ask in our next 1:1, this time doesn’t feel right…

Aha! I’m chickening out. I can’t believe I’m doing this again, I’m such a loser…

Aha! I’m judging myself, which is also not helping. Phew. This is so uncomfortable. My neck is tense and my shoulders are all hunched up. I take a deep breathe, exhale, relax. I got this. When am I going to get a chance to bring this up? Fuck it, I’m done waiting for the perfect time, let me just blurt it out.

“Hey boss, I know our annual reviews are coming up. I’d like to talk about a more significant bump than usual to my salary…”

You could go on with this visualization for a long time. I would advise against trying to imagine every possible scenario – that would be an endless rabbit hole. Just imagine what you think is most likely to happen leading up to your target behavior. It’s not about trying to mentally prepare for every possibility. Rather, it’s about practicing breaking through whatever has held you back in the past. In the above example, I was calling it ‘chickening out.’ But a more scientific way to put it would be cognitive fusion – letting your thoughts get in the way of doing what you know to be important (“the time just doesn’t feel right, [therefor I won’t do the thing]”).

Be realistic – if this is a behavior you need to work on, that’s because there’s a part of you that resists the change. So imagine the resistance (often in the form of self-criticism and excuses), and imagine yourself breaking through the resistance, not allowing it to stop you. What would that look like? What would that feel like? Imagine as vivdly as possible.

The more vivid the experience in your mind, the more well-paved the neural pathways you’re building in your brain. And the more well-paved those pathways are, the easier it is for us to repeat that behavior in the future. This is due to neuroplasticity – the ability of our brain to change through growth and reorganization.

The opportunities for practicing ‘in advance’ are endless. In our example, you could practice right before your meetings. Or you could practice at some sort of regular interval – say, every day for 5 minutes before lunch. This is especially useful for bigger picture skills like self-advocacy, not just the specific act of asking for a raise.

You can also incorporate other techniques, such as journaling. I teach one specific technique that I like in this YouTube video (it’s an 80 minute long workshop). Find a way that works for you, and trust in your ability to do this.

Note – this type of visualization is not about anything mystical like ‘putting out energy into the universe’ that will somehow magically get your boss to say yes when you ask them for a raise. It’s about skill building. The better you are at asking for what you want, the more likely you are to get it. There are no promises that you will get it.

So the goal in my self-advocacy example is not to get what you ask for – it’s to get better at making the ask. The problem with being attached to an outcome like getting a raise is that there’s so much outside of your control (the economy, the company’s performance, what your boss had for lunch, etc.) that you would be setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s far more effective to focus on living your values and building skills that are important to you.

And to generalize this last point – behavior change will be more sustainable and meaningful if the focus is on becoming the person you want to be, as opposed to achieving a particular outcome.

In summary, to practice mental rehearsal in advance of a behavior you want to change, first get clear on what you want to do. Then imagine yourself in the scenario, and imagine what is most likely to stop you from doing that thing. Then imagine yourself doing the thing in spite of it. The more real the scenario feels in your head, the more likely you are to build up some awareness that you can leverage to make the change more smooth and easy.

In my own intentional behavior change as well as the process of many of my clients, I’ve found techniques that are simple to apply and effective in sustainably speeding up behavior change.  In other words, ways to grow yourself faster and make sure it sticks.

Here’s what I’ve found: the more aware you are of the behavior you want to change, the more it changes.  Conversely, the less aware you are of a behavior you want to change, the more you go on autopilot and continue old patterns that are no longer working for you.

So in order to change a behavior, focus on amplifying awareness of that behavior – including both overt behavior (eg, what someone else might observe you’re doing) and covert behavior (eg, what’s happening inside you – your thinking, feeling, motivations, etc). 

As for the qualities of awareness, less self-critical is better – see my previous post for more about how beating yourself up is ineffective. Instead, we want to bring a sense of curiosity and objectivity. 

You don’t have to limit this awareness to the times when the behavior is actually happening – you can also beef it up before and after.  Before and after, we work with mental rehearsal, aka visualization or image training. And this pre/post rehearsal makes it much easier to be aware DURING behavior. Which is of course the only time you can make the desired change.

I know ‘visualization’ has gotten a bad rap thanks to mystical interpretations like you’ll find in The Secret (I admit to watching the documentary with my mom).  But there’s nothing mystical about what I’m describing here.  Here’s a shitload of research that talks about the effectiveness of image training or visualization in all kinds of skill acquisition:

• In healthy behavior change
• in work settings
• in sports

Mental rehearsal works because our brain doesn’t distinguish very well between reality and imagination.  So you can increase practice opportunities by rehearsing before the behavior and reviewing (and re-rehearsing) after.  

Side note – if you’re not convinced that our brain can’t distinguish between reality and imagination, here’s a scientist who explains one study which points to this conclusion.

Furthermore, our brain isn’t exactly capable of seeing reality.  Reality is too much data to process, so the brain simplifies it based on previous experience and we’re only conscious of the simplification.  In other words, we don’t see the territory, we only see a map.  Here’s more scientists saying the same thing.

So to recap – if you want to change a behavior, try to become more non-judgmentally aware of that behavior. Mental rehearsal can help here. In my next post, I’ll give a specific example and some more details of what this might look like for a behavior many of my clients want to work on – self-advocacy (eg asking for a raise). Stay tuned!