A massive part of what I do with my clients is goal setting. I have a table that I use, that includes headings like 'possible barriers' and 'accountability'. It can take the whole hour to fill the table in with three achievable goals. By the end of the hour myself and my client are feeling great. They have a clear path ahead of them, they know what they've got to do and they've predicted the possible barriers and come up with ways to overcome them. They are fully motivated, ready to change their lives by achieving their goals. I feel great, I've fixed them! Look at the fire in their eyes, look at the confident way they stride across my office and out of the door, ready to take on the world.
Then their next appointment rolls around.
"How did you get on with those goals we set?"
They stare at the carpet. They fidget. There is a deafening silence.
And that is what it means to be human. Goal setting is great fun, but actually doing it is another thing entirely. Even when we know our lives will become better and we will become happier, we still struggle to put in the work.
My clients are not the only ones who struggle to achieve their very achievable goals. When I started this blog, my brother cautioned me that writing one entry a week might be too challenging and too much of a commitment. Not at all, I replied confidently, I love writing them, it doesn't take that long, it's one of the highlights of my week coming up with ideas for my blog. All of this is true, yet much to my shame it has been over two months since I last wrote one. My life got a bit busier, and I let it slide. Even though I love writing, even though it is really enjoyable, even though it was one of the highlights of my week.
I would love to know what to do to fix this. Our brains our basically very lazy. It is in our best interest to expend very little energy. Our body is always going to tell us to take the lift, not the stairs. From an evolutionary point of view, the less energy we waste the more we have to cover the basics like staying warm, finding food and staying out of danger. It takes more work to create new connections in our brain then to keep using the old familiar ones. Forcing something new into our heads requires hard work and literally uses more energy. It use to take me so much effort and concentration to drive when I was first learned. I would be exhausted after my hour's lesson. Now I do it automatically and with very little effort.
As soon as I lost the routine of writing my blog, it became a job that would require increased effort and my lazy brain just wasn't interested. It is the same for my clients; they want to achieve their goals and make their lives better, but they have to overcome their brain's basic inertia.
Unfortunately, there is no quick fix. But 'Accountability' is a heading on my goal setting table for a reason. When people around us hold us accountable we are far more likely to follow through on what we say we are going to do. I don't want to have to face my brother and own up to how long a gap it has been between blog posts. My clients feel really bad when they have to tell me they haven't done what they said they were going to do, and they remember how bad it felt, so next time they get the goals done. If you want to start exercising, do it with a friend and then you are each accountable to the other.
The final heading on my goal setting table is 'Reward'. If we reward ourselves when we achieve something we are far more likely to do it. Our lazy brains love rewards like listening to our favourite song, or a chocolate bar, or a funny film. They all produce dopamine, which makes us feel great, and none of them require any effort.
Another way we can overcome our inertia is by saying to ourselves 'If I was going to do this task, what is the first thing I would do?' and then doing it. If I am going to write a blog, the first thing I do is open my web builder website. So that's what I did. Then I wrote the first sentence, and now here we are, a few hundred words in. Instead of thinking of the whole task, I just focused on the first step, tricking my brain into thinking it wasn't that big of a deal.
But to be absolutely honest, the main thing that got me writing was by giving myself a choice: write the blog or clean the bathroom. It was a no brainer.
Changing our behaviour is really hard to do, as is making ourselves take on new challenges. Getting work done is difficult when nobody is making us do it. But this isn't because there is anything wrong with us, it is because we have evolved this way. Thank goodness we have also evolved to be social, as the best way to achieve goals is to do it together. As I quote Brené Brown on my website, "we were never meant to do it alone."
Now I have to go and clean the bathroom.
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