Mea culpa. I Was an accomplice. I aided and abetted the lousy criminal. The rascal was me – my lesser self, to be precise. My higher self is the accomplice. That makes me 100% responsible.
The fact is that I hit 53% of my annual target. The goal was to publish a new book in 2024 – at least one. My specific target was a set amount of writing per day. If that was enough to have something I want to publish then great, if not, then too bad, it will take the time it takes. I held the first draft of book three in my hands one year ago. It could easily have been rewritten by now. Except, for me putting in roughly half the effort I set out to. The target wasn’t too ambitious, it was entirely doable: I put that much time in 2023. The fact is that Lesser-me let Higher-me down.
But Lesser-me is not going down so easily. He has an alibi – several in fact. His favorite is the extra time spent in physiotherapy and how that extend morning workouts. True enough, but, it each session seems to take twice as long as necessary. The deeper truth is that I abhor spending time doing the Jane Fonda workout and let each session drag on. And the same scenario plays out for each reason the scoundrel brings up to protect and assuage the ego of my higher-self.
Excuses are great, but they are not results and they are not conducive to change. Which means that I must either live with the results and stop complaining or choose to do something. So I choose the latter: Next year will be different. Except, I made that same choice last year, didn’t I? And I’m not alone, most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by about the third week in January.
Yet we begin each New Year full of hope and determined that this time will be different. So why are we repeat offenders?
Not, why do we keep trying and begin each year with new hopes. The answer is self-explanatory and noble. It’s the ignoble part, the inability to make change stick that is important. That has been the subject of intense study, by the likes of B.J. Fogg (author of Tiny Habits. Many of your favorite tech companies and social media platforms apply his techniques to keep you addicted to their products in case you need proof that what this PH.D.’s professes actually works) Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Clear’s Atomic Habits. Their advice outlines the mechanics of habit change.
Engineering New Habits
Think of the couch potato who commits to the gym three times a week for a 90-minute workout, skip breakfast, eat only salad for lunch, and lose ten pounds in a few months. Very noble, but prone to go wrong:
1. They’ve introduced a new activity into their week that requires significant effort and time. Life will interfere with the drive across town to a gym on Tuesday night. And then next Thursday, and then we get in the habit of negotiating with ourselves and promising to catch-up tomorrow instead of doing what we promised ourselves. It might be scheduled but it’s not done on a cue. You likely check messages within seconds of turning on a device or react to every ping. Likewise, make the behavior an obvious part of your environment and stack it by linking it to an existing habit. Wake-up, get outside and move. Or, finish supper, go for a walk. Link it to a cue to do it consistently.
2. The idea of melting the pounds away is great, but the reality is not. The grueling workout will cause Mr. Potato significant pain and the bland diet will make them dream of Cheetos and Oreos. We would be better off committing to a 10-minute walk with a partner after a meal and trading one item of junk food for a healthy treat we actually enjoy. These simple things we can repeat often, get accustomed to, and build upon. Our new activity needs to be easy and attractive. Make it something you crave by making it social and rewarding. The easier it is to integrate into your life the easier it is to program yourself to do consistently. Focus on the process, results come with time.
3. They’ve made the whole process an ordeal so they live hungry and hurt all the time. The new behavior must be satisfying. If the change involves constant voluntary suffering it is only a matter of time until their limbic system rebels and sends them on a junk-food binge. We will do things, good or bad, that provide an immediate reward. If every action is an arm wrestle between you higher self and lesser self, it’s only a question of time before your higher self is exhausted and lesser self gets the upper hand. Remember, the key books on habit change are called Tiny Habits and Atomic Habits. Paulo Coelho summarizes succinctly why:
“Change. But start slowly, because direction is more important than speed.”
The reward that makes it stick doesn’t need to be chocolate cake (probably shouldn’t be). When we were kids, getting smiley-face stickers made us proud. Surprisingly, you can still make that work for you as an adult. So keep score – track the number of times you do the desired behavior. Even if it’s you that distributes the shiny starts to you – your higher-self who judges if your lesser-self has earned it – a simple accountability system works. To that end, many influencers offer new year new you campaigns. They are happy to take your money in exchange for a little accountability and a sense of community. Both provide an instant reward that helps make habits stick.
The formula is: Cue creates a craving that evokes a response that is followed by a reward.
If you question in any way if any of this really matters and you’re thinking of just stating with the upmost of resolve your New Year’s resolution and letting willpower take over, think again. Just think of whatever apps you check 42 times a day. They did all of the above until you were hooked. Think of any premium service you have: You got used to getting the freebies until you became so attached to the small but consistent rewards that you upgraded from free to paid.
Now that I think of it, the journals I make inadvertently tap into the habit-forming techniques. The idea is to keep it by the bed or on your desk and use it morning or night (cue). New ideas on each page are there to feed curiosity and keep it interesting (craving). There is only a few quotes and one question per days (the cue evokes a response). Finally, the insights of great thinkers helps us see that we share the same challenges and aspirations as they do, creating a sense of association (reward). By meditating daily on what we value most and what we will do differently in the future we and reshape our behaviors and over time our identity.
The Psychology of Habit Change
It is this last piece, identity, that is the key to lasting habits. The person who goes jogging once on January 1st is not yet a jogger. And they probably don’t think of themselves as a jogger if they push past the resistance that wells-up as January becomes February. But, if they keep at it, sometime between the spring and the fall they’re likely to begin thinking of themselves as a jogger. Who we are is what we consistently do. Repeating the behavior creates the habit and the habit creates the identity. The urge to skip a run will still come-up, maybe daily, but the cost of not running no longer is about gaining something we never had (fitness), it becomes a loss (the pride of being a jogger) – and we all know that a defending army always has an edge. This is why identity is the North Star of habit change.
If you are skeptical about the power of identity, meander over to the nearest professional sports complex. There you will find middle-aged men whose spirits rise and fall over balls or pucks going in nets. Their testosterone levels ebb and flow in tow in the same way that our neurochemistry changes according to our fortunes in the various status games of life. Except, this is not their victory or loss. They identify so strongly with the fortunes of these other players that they wear a jersey with the name of another man, usually half their age.
This is not to pick on sports fanatics. If their obsession for the fortunes of these other team is balanced by more passion for their own pursuits then the sport just adds spice t life. Moreover, we all do this to some extent during the Olympics. But here’s a question: Who do you cheer for if recently emigrated to a new country? It’s the new country against the old in a showdown, who does your heart want to win? Unless fleeing persecution at home, most of us will be torn between the two athletes and ultimately decide that it’s really inconsequential, that it’s a victory no matter what.
And therein lies the rub. We identify strongly with our former selves. As the 19th century novelist Samuel Butler outlines:
“It is one against legion when a creature tries to differ from his own past selves. He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so as to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, or not to gratify them.”
This insight brings another, this time by Jack Kornfield, to mind: Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again. These insights underscore the dark side of identity. Learning to see ourselves as different than before can propel us to new heights, being unable to let go of who we once were can anchor us in places we’d rather leave behind.
In looking at the mechanics of habit change (cue-craving-response-reward) I chose a fitness example because it is the most popular New Year’s resolution. Health objectives are the priority in my habit stack because fitness it is so bloody hard. Aerobic capacity and muscle mass takes months of toil to gain and a few days of leisure to lose. The body gives up any extra pounds it has squirreled away with much difficulty. Evolution has rewarded those that gained and kept the energy storage with survival. If we eat less our body compensates by using less energy. If we begin working out the body will crave more calories rather than dig into those precious reserves. Our bodies might be very adaptable with consistent effort, but consistency is the key because they are also very resistant to change.
And so it also is with our minds. Therein lies the ultimate source of my shortcomings in 2024: Resistance. I’m using capital R resistance as Steven Pressfield does: I’m talking about the voice of resistance – the one that says that you’re an imposter, that you don’t belong, that it won’t work anyways, and this is not what people expect from you. The injury really just a pretext. Ultimately, rationalizing – true on one level, but pure bullshit on another. The injuries gave Resistance an inch and Resistance took a mile. The added challenge of injury threatened my identity as a person who takes fitness seriously. The identity (writer) I aspired to was pitted against one I already held dear and he older or more important one had the edge. On one level, the battle is not the war, and I can accept the shift in priorities. However, I made the required adjustments for one identity to thrive and sacrificed the other instead of doing what was required so both could thrive.
This is the truth I need to contend with as the new year begins and I set new objectives. On a purely technical level if I have too many objectives I might as well have none. I will have no priorities, always feel productive because I’m always working on something I’ve defined as important, yet make little measurable progress. On the psychological level I need to tap into my will. I know, the habit books all tell us that willpower won’t work. The thing is, willpower alone won’t work, but it is a necessary ingredient, the necessary ingredient. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you can just tinker your way to a better self. 2024 taught me that without willpower, without soul in the game, nothing significant will happen.
Becoming someone new is a battle: It’s you against Resistance, your higher self against your lesser self, Future-You against Past-You. It requires a killer instinct, for one version of you must die. You must be willing to stab the version of yourself that voices Resistance in the heart every time it finds a reason and an excuse to do something else.
The struggle within brings to mind aspects of Joseph Boyden’s great novel The Orenda. Set in Canada in the 1600’s, the story shows the collision of the European and Amerindian world views. “In matters of the spirit, these sauvages believe that we all have within us a life force that is similar, if you will, to our own Catholic belief in the soul. They call this life force the orenda.” In one passage the Jesuit priest probes this notion of the soul with the a wise Huron (Wendat) chief. The chief describes tracking a deer in the winter for a long time until finally hunting it down. He explains that he didn’t really kill the deer, it let itself be killed – as he puts it “My orenda overpowered it’s orenda.”
K. Wilkins is the author of:
Stoic Virtues Journal: Your Guide to Becoming the Person You Aspire to Be
Rules for Living Journal: Life Advice Based On the Words and Wisdom of Jordan B. Peterson
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