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:
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!