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How Quickly Can You Turn Success into Failure?

September 18, 2015 by Joycelyn Campbell 4 Comments

game_over

We don’t have to make a point of looking for what isn’t working or the places where we haven’t lived up to our expectations. Our brain automatically notices those things and points them out to us. It’s wired to pay more attention to negative events than to positive ones. That’s because while positive events may be extremely pleasurable and possibly even good for us, negative events could kill us or put us in grave danger. At least that’s how the unconscious part of the brain (System 1) perceives them. This automatic tendency is so universal it has a name: the negativity bias.

In and of itself, having a brain that points out what isn’t working or measures how far we missed the mark isn’t a bad thing. That kind of information is potentially very useful.  It’s the way we over-value and respond to negative information that gets us into trouble. Because we have a brain that is primed to notice the negative, it’s easy for us to overlook the positive altogether, even when there’s plenty of positive for the eye to behold.

When Good Isn’t Good Enough to Qualify

Several of my clients are addressing health-related issues in my Goals, Habits & Intentions course. They have either set long-term goals to achieve specific results in terms of such things as diet and exercise or they are working on changing or creating habits that support the level of health and well-being they want to achieve.

One person who has diabetes is working on lowering her blood glucose level (which is measured by a test called the A1c). She decided to aim for lowering her A1c to a specific number and created a goal action plan to help her do that. She was following her plan just fine until she purchased a kit from a drugstore to do a home test and got a result that was better than the one she was aiming for.

At that point, she pretty much stopped following her plan. But when she got her official A1c test results back from the lab a few weeks later, they were disappointing. The number was not as low as the one she’d gotten from her home test. Her view of the situation was that she had failed—not just in continuing to follow that specific goal action plan, but in doing the Goals, Habits & Intentions coursework.

So I was surprised to learn that her A1c result was lower than it had been the last time she was tested. And the number last time she was tested was lower than it had been at the beginning of the year. From the first test to the third test, she had lowered her A1c by 1.6 points! By any objective measure, that’s a significant success. Instead of celebrating it, however, she discounted it. Her successful results were a failure in her own eyes because they weren’t quite as amazing as she’d thought they would be.

I suggested she make a visual chart that tracked her A1c numbers over the course of this year and put it up in a prominent location so the irrefutable evidence of her success would be harder to ignore.

The Default Response

This is a pernicious problem we all face: jumping to conclusions about the information provided to us by our brain and by external sources. It can happen at either end of the scale (“good” news or “bad” news), but the interesting thing is that the result of both good news and bad news is often the same: we stop whatever it is we were doing. And the culprit in both cases is System 1 thinking, which is focused entirely on the short term.

If the news is “good,” we stop because we think we achieved our goal so we don’t need to continue working toward it. That makes a certain amount of sense because that’s what you do when you actually achieve a goal. But in a lot of cases we need to set up a goal in order to change or start a habit so we can maintain our success. This is especially important in the area of health and wellness. If we want to maintain long-term changes, we can’t stop doing the things that are making us healthier. Instead, we need to turn them into habits. (As an aside, I read a blog post a couple of years ago by someone who set out to develop a 30-day habit of strength training. After the 30 days he decided he had been successful and didn’t need to do it any longer.)

If the news is “bad,” we use it as evidence of our poor character (lack of self-control, powerlessness, etc.) and of the pointlessness of our attempts. Why bother? Nothing works, anyway. The automatic tendency isn’t to evaluate what might have gone wrong, but to chuck the whole thing, thus guaranteeing failure and maybe even overlooking evidence of success.

Celebrate Success!

I used to be able to count on getting in several workouts at the gym each week. And I loved it. But at the beginning of this year, my daily schedule went bonkers and has stayed that way. After months of attempting to fit the gym into my new schedule, I traded the gym for walking every day because I can break walking into smaller segments of time and fit them into the breaks between classes and appointments. As September approached, I decided it was time to exchange a couple of days of walking each week for using the treadmill at the gym.

I went to the gym at the beginning of the first week, loved it, and thought I could probably get in not just one more visit but two that week. Nevertheless, I managed only the one visit. The same thing happened the next week and then the week after that. I noticed I had failed to follow through on my original intention. I noticed the impulse to interpret my once-a-week gym visits as a failure. But I also acknowledged I really hadn’t had an opportunity to get in more time at the gym, and I’d kept up my walking and even increased it. I reminded myself that baby steps and perseverance are an almost unbeatable combination. At the end of three weeks, I looked at the notations on my calendar and realized I’d gotten in three more workouts on the treadmill than I would have if I hadn’t set an intention.

In order to celebrate success, we have to notice it, which means not having a knee-jerk reaction to every realization we haven’t met or exceeded our expectations. The game is only over when we stop playing—and that is largely up to us.

When have you turned a success into a failure? What do you think you could do to change your perspective in those kinds of situations?

Filed Under: Attention, Brain, Celebration, Cognitive Biases, Habit, Living, Unconscious Tagged With: Failure, Goals, Habits, Health, Success, System 1, Unconscious

Food, Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Habits

July 17, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

week-end-pleasure

What do all these things have in common? The answer is dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in the brain’s reward system. It is triggered by the expectation of a reward and its release fills us with a feeling of pleasure. Our brain then associates the behavior with the feeling of pleasure.

The brain’s reward system helps ensure that we learn—and remember—behaviors that enhance our chances of remaining alive. That’s why so many of the things we naturally find rewarding are related to food and reproduction. Many different substances, activities, and behaviors trigger the release of dopamine. Some of them, in addition to food and sex, are:

  • social interactions
  • music
  • generosity
  • scary movies, scary situations, or scary thoughts
  • psychoactive drugs (alcohol, cocaine, heroin, nicotine, etc.)
  • gambling
  • sugar

Dopamine is part of a brain circuit called the mesolimbic pathway. The mesolimbic pathway connects behaviors to feelings of pleasure, which results in the formation of habits.  A pleasurable experience acts as a stimulus to wake up the mesolimbic pathway. Along with the release of dopamine, emotional and learning circuits are activated to increase the likelihood we will remember what we did.

A reward is positive reinforcement. It motivates us to repeat the behavior. In the case of long-term goals, small hits of dopamine encourage us to keep moving forward, so it pays to know where you are headed. And it’s more effective to acknowledge and celebrate each small accomplishment along the way than it is to wait for one big jolt of dopamine at the end.

Dopamine also plays a role in:

  • movement
  • memory
  • behavior and cognition
  • attention and alertness
  • motivation
  • sleep
  • mood
  • learning

Abnormal levels of dopamine are involved in Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia, and drug addiction.

The Good, the Bad, and the Addictive

Although a wide variety of behaviors can affect dopamine levels, some of those behaviors have a greater potential for being harmful or even life-threatening. Psychostimulant drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, and ecstasy operate by inhibiting the reuptake of dopamine. As a result, the brain remains flooded with it. The person using the drug will continue ingesting it in order to maintain the increased level of dopamine.

Dopamine affects the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in a release of energy which is intended to spur us on toward the finish line. So the abuse of psychostimulant drugs often results in increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure. There is no long-term change to the production of dopamine or to dopamine receptors in the brain as a result of using these kinds of drugs, but when a person stops taking them, he or she will experience some seriously unpleasant feelings.

Many activities or behaviors performed compulsively are classified as addictive, even though they have no component of physical dependence. That’s because the behaviors stimulate the brain’s reward system—or over-stimulate it—to the extent that people are driven by a craving for whatever gets them those hits of dopamine. Craving a reward doesn’t just happen in the case of addictions. Craving is actually essential for successfully creating good habits, too. Whether it’s using cocaine or getting more fruit and vegetables in one’s diet, the brain’s reward system operates the same way.

Behavior  —> Dopamine Hit —> Pleasure —> “Do it again!”
Rewards Reinforce Habits

If there are no rewards, or weak rewards, habits are much less likely to take hold. That’s because the basal ganglia, which is the part of the brain that turns repetitive behaviors into habits, depends on having enough dopamine to operate efficiently.

If something doesn’t produce a hit of dopamine in our brain, we will not experience it as rewarding. It doesn’t matter if 99% of the rest of the people in the world find it rewarding (i.e., get a dopamine hit from it). If it doesn’t give us a dopamine hit, it won’t work as a reward. We talk about the reward as if it’s the activity, behavior, thing, or substance. But the things (activities, behaviors, etc.) that feel rewarding are essentially means to the same end: that hit of dopamine.

Sometimes we know what the reward for a habit is, but since habits can be formed outside our awareness, there are times when we’re kind of clueless. And as far as the brain is concerned, anything that produces a hit of dopamine is good. The brain doesn’t care about our opinions or mental assessments of good or bad. No one sets out to become addicted to a substance or a behavior. The brain’s reward system operates outside our conscious awareness. Feed into it and we create a habit or an addiction. Try to stop it consciously using will power or intention without understanding the powerful system we’re up against and we fail more often than not.

It’s easy to believe that your verbal inner voice is your whole thought process and ignore your neurochemical self. —Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D.

In order to change a habit or start a new one, we have to be able to identify what it is that gives us that hit of dopamine. We may know we feel good every time we do a particular thing without knowing what part of the behavior is creating the reward. It’s especially important to figure rewards out correctly when trying to change an existing habit. If the new behavior doesn’t produce a similar reward, it won’t work as well.

Long-Term Reward System

Dopamine doesn’t just play a role in immediate rewards or in the formation of habits, it also helps us stay focused on long-term goals whose rewards are not within sight.

The journal Nature reported on a study conducted by researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle and MIT that revealed details on how the brain is able to stay focused on long-term goals.

While most previous studies have involved looking at dopamine with respect to an immediate reward, the new study found increasing levels of dopamine as laboratory rats approached an expected reward after delayed gratification.

Researchers were able to continuously record dopamine concentration while training rats to find their way through a maze in pursuit of a chocolate milk reward. What they found was that levels of dopamine rose steadily and culminated in a peak level as the rodent neared the reward. According to Ann Graybiel, brain researcher at MIT:

The dopamine signal seems to reflect how faraway the rat is from its goal. The closer it gets, the stronger the signal becomes. It’s as if the animal were adjusting its expectations, knowing it had further to go.

Graybiel believes the same thing happens in the brains of humans.

Of course, many of our long-term goals could take weeks, months, or even years to achieve. In such cases, we’d be wise to set short-term goals, track our progress, and reward ourselves for achievement along the way.

All Rewards Are Not Created Equal

As previously stated, a reward that works for one person may not work at all for someone else. One person may imagine soaking for an hour in a hot bubble bath to be a tiny slice of heaven while another person considers it cruel and unusual punishment. And some rewards that seem small and innocuous might turn out to have unintended negative consequences.

Temperament-Based Rewards: Understanding our personality or temperament can help us identify the type of reward that is most effective. Rewards can be physical/material, emotional, or mental. Someone who responds well to mental rewards, for example, may not be very motivated by that bubble bath.

Guilty Pleasures: It’s counterproductive to use something we ordinarily feel guilty about or try to avoid doing as a reward. That’s especially true if we use “guilty pleasure” rewards often. What we end up doing is reinforcing the craving for something we’ve already concluded doesn’t serve us in the long run. Using “bad” behavior to reward ourselves for good behavior pretty much defeats the purpose.

Satisfying Rewards: Know yourself. Then explore. Stretch your imagination. We tend to get into ruts in all kinds of areas including that of rewarding ourselves. Dopamine is more likely to be triggered when we try—and enjoy—new activities. There are probably a lot of things we might find pleasurable and have even thought about doing but never followed through on. Identifying some of those things and intentionally trying them out as rewards could expand our horizons and maybe even lead us in new and pleasurable directions.

One-time or Occasional Rewards: Rewarding ourselves after an intense or exhausting effort can be tricky. The point when the effort or ordeal is over is often when our self-control is at a low point. It’s easy to feel we really deserve a treat of some kind. The almost automatic next step is to give ourselves a free pass to overindulge. But that turns an opportunity to reinforce positive behavior into an excuse for self-indulgence, and it could easily negate the sense of accomplishment we would otherwise feel. Planning ahead can solve the problem. If we decide what our reward will be ahead of time—before our self-control is depleted—we can bypass temptation. Then it’s a win-win situation.

Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Rewards

Sometimes the reward stimulus comes from others or from our environment. We might work extra hard for a bigger paycheck or for acknowledgement of our efforts if those things make us feel good. We might take up some form of exercise to look better at the beach or swimming pool or senior center if other people’s approval makes us feel good. We might get into the habit of picking things up around the house to avoid arguing with our spouse or partner if maintaining the peace makes us feel good. Similarly, we might change our diet or take up meditation so our doctor won’t get on our case about our blood pressure if getting through our next appointment without another lecture makes us feel good.

Extrinsic rewards can be effective for a while, maybe for a long while. Extrinsic rewards often motivate us to change or start a habit, and that’s a good thing. But extrinsic rewards are usually not effective over the long haul. If we ask ourselves why we want to do what we’re doing—not why someone else thinks we should do it—we have a better opportunity to clarify what’s really important to us. And if we can’t answer that question, it’s a sign we might just be spinning our wheels.

If we can identify a reward behavior that is meaningful to us—an intrinsic reward—we’re much more likely to stick with the habit or behavior. In fact, if we focus on intrinsic rewards, we’re not only more likely to be successful in creating and maintaining habits we want to have, we’re also likely to find out we no longer need to reward ourselves for continuing them! Rewards are great motivators, and they are critical in kick-starting new habits. But nothing beats the moment of discovering the habit has become a part of who we are and not just something we do.

Relegating What Matters to Reward Status

It can be tempting to use something that really matters to us as a reward for putting time and effort into something that doesn’t. If I get the house clean, I can get some writing done. If I finish this project for so-and-so, then I can work on my [music, quilting, gardening, etc.…].

This is an unequivocally bad idea and entirely backwards.The things that matter to us are often the very activities that energize and enliven us, whereas the things that don’t matter, but which we have to do anyway, can be draining and tiring. Putting off doing something that really matters until we’re drained and tired from directing the bulk of our energy and attention on things that don’t matter usually leads to not doing the things that matter.

If there’s something that’s really important, we need to find another way to include it in our lives. Making sure we spend time on things that matter can actually make those other activities less burdensome.

Besides, if we have to constantly reward ourselves for getting through the day, we might want to consider changing at least some of what it is we’re doing during the day.

~ ~ ~

The bottom line is that the importance of rewards cannot be overstated, yet this is often the step people omit when they are trying to change their behavior or achieve their goals. Maybe they place excessive confidence in self-control or will-power. Or maybe they believe they should be able to do these things without having to reward themselves.

But the brain’s reward system is going to operate with or without your consent or input. So why not be intentional about it and use it instead of letting it use you?

Filed Under: Brain, Finding What You Want, Habit, Learning, Living Tagged With: Brain, Dopamine, Goals, Habits, Mesolimbic pathway, Mind, Pleasure, Reward system

Habits of Behavior vs. Habits of Attention

July 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Last week poetdonald responded to my post What Do Your Habits Say About You? with this comment:

The following came to me as I was reading this post as well as your post on Mindfulness vs. Habits.

Let’s call this thinking out loud, Joycelyn. I’m going to pose 2 questions. I’m not ready to answer them, and I’m not sure if you are able to comment at this stage, but I feel it is important I ask and begin to explore them now.

For my Writing in Nature project, I am repeatedly going to sites and learning how to really see and thus write haiku. Eventually, I want to use what I learn to help others write haiku and connect with nature (for many, many reasons). Mindfulness is very important, as I need to pay attention—and at the same time be open—to my surroundings.

My two questions relating to this project…

1. Should I try to create habits to help with this process?

2. If I am not consciously creating habits, will I unconsciously be developing habits that will affect my seeing and writing?

These are such great questions! They got me thinking, first, about the distinction between habits of behavior and habits of attention. After that, I gravitated to looking at when we can best “use” habits to our advantage and when to avoid habits by focusing our attention intentionally. I hope this response will shed some additional light on the subject of habits.

Habits Are Habits

When we think or talk about habits, we’re usually referring to habits of behavior. Those are the habits that are the most obvious for us to see in both ourselves and other people. In fact, most advice about habits seems to assume those are the only kinds of habits we’re interested in changing. But after having explored this subject in considerable depth, I’ve concluded that behavioral habits are actually the easiest ones to deal with. There’s not much doubt as to whether we’re doing something or not doing it. We may not like what we see, but we can keep track of our behavior, either in the moment or after the fact.

Habits of attention, however less apparent they may be to us, are no less habitual than are habits of behavior. In both cases the unconscious brain (System 1) rather than the conscious brain (System 2) is directing us. System 1 takes in about 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, of which System 2 can process about 40. System 1 decides what information is important for us to notice and attend or respond to. It does this at a speed System 2 couldn’t hope to keep up with or replicate. So unless we make a conscious decision ahead of time as to where to direct our attention, System 1 will be making that decision for us. It can do so all day long, without much intervention from System 2.

So in response to poetdonald’s questions, I have two thoughts.

First: Develop as much of a routine as possible for going out to the sites in nature. Focus on creating the habit of doing so. That means identifying a trigger or cue (time of day, for example), following the same routine (although that doesn’t mean always going to the exact same place), and rewarding yourself for doing so. If you turn going out to these sites into a habit, you won’t have to waste any System 2 attention on the mechanics, whereas if you attempt to be flexible or spontaneous about going out to sites, you’ll be expending System 2 attention unnecessarily. Also, creating the habit of doing this will actually get your brain ready to pay attention and to write haiku.

Second: The kinds of habits you might unconsciously develop in regard to this venture are habits of attention, which are not the kinds of habits you want here. Habits of attention train the brain to always pay attention to this but not to that. You want to be conscious (using System 2) rather than unconscious so you can determine what to pay attention to. We all have the ability to train ourselves to be able to focus our attention, rather than allowing it to go wherever System 1 takes it.

Here are some excerpts from a very fine book on the subject, Rapt, Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher:

Paying rapt attention, whether to a trout stream or a novel, a do-it-yourself project or a prayer, increases your capacity for concentration, expands your inner boundaries, and lifts your spirits, but more important, it simply makes you feel that life is worth living.

Not only how you focus, but also what you focus on can have important neurophysiological and behavioral consequences.

Just thinking about paying attention affects your brain, revving it up for the actual experience.

Your neuron populations can represent pretty much anything, but not everything at once. You have to choose—or they do. (John Hopkins neuroscientist Steve Yantis)

New research…shows that what you pay attention to, and how, can actually change your brain and thus your behavior. This extraordinarily practical scientific breakthrough shows that like physical fitness, the mental sort that sustains the focused life can be cultivated.

To give yourself an opportunity to make the most out of your Writing in Nature venture, you might want to put System 1 to use to create the behavioral habit, which will then free up System 2 attention for you to focus intentionally. Recognizing the distinction between behavioral habits and habits of attention is important for any creative pursuit. It’s a waste of time and attention to have to think about and decide whether or not to perform an activity we’ve already determined we want to do. That attention is limited and could be put to much better use!

Poetdonald, thank you for asking such great questions. I’d really like to hear more about how this works out for you.

I’m also interested in hearing anyone else’s thoughts on the subject.

Filed Under: Attention, Brain, Consciousness, Creating, Habit, Unconscious, Writing Tagged With: Attention, Behavior, Brain, Consciousness, Creating, Habits, Haiku, Nature, Writing

Creative Thinking = Making Connections

March 17, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 3 Comments

Q: Do you have to get out of the box in order to think outside the box?*

Popular wisdom has it that in order to think creatively—think outside the box, that is—we need to trick ourselves. Or at least we need to apply some special technique or exercise to get our stodgy old brains to see things from a different perspective.

For the most part, this is a counterproductive waste of time.

If we want to be creative or think creatively, we don’t need to manipulate or play games with our brains. We just need to get out of their way and let them do what they already know how to do.

The problem is that we identify with the slow, energy-sucking conscious part of our brain and not with the quick, energy-efficient unconscious part that sees patterns and makes connections outside of our awareness. Most of the action in terms of problem-solving, insight, and creative thinking actually takes place in the unconscious, which then serves up its ideas to our consciousness. It’s an amazingly wonderful arrangement that’s already in place.

The best thing we can do to help this process along is exactly the opposite of what’s usually recommended. Don’t change routines. Don’t take a new route to work. Don’t try a change of scene. Don’t go to a different café or coffee shop. Don’t try to think about things in a different way.

In terms of freeing our minds for creativity and creative insights, the more aspects of our lives we can turn into routines, the better. The less attention we have to put on things that don’t really matter, the more attention our brains can devote to problem-solving and idea-generating.

This is from an article by painter Robert Genn:

 Choreographer Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit describes her morning routine of rising early and going through the same morning rituals; same coffee, same bun. She puts on the same leotards, goes down the same elevator to the same street corner, puts her same arm up in the air and gets into the first cab that comes along.

By the time she gets to the studio she has made no significant decisions. Stepping out onto the dance floor, her dancers await. It’s eight in the morning and her first decision is yet to come. It will be a creative one.

Genn has some suggestions for streamlining routine activities, such as:

Simplify morning rituals.

  • Keep regular habits by day and week.
  • Work in a space unsullied by impedimenta.
  • Use a day-timer—plan your work; work your plan.
  • Always ask—”Is this action necessary?”
  • Be businesslike—discourage time-wasters and interlopers.
  • Be efficient and mindful of wasted motion in your space.
  • As far as possible, get stuff delivered and taken away.
  • Be modern—pay bills, bank, book flights, etc., online.

Genn and Tharp have to be creative almost every day. They aren’t trying to get out of the box. They recognize that the box helps them be creative. It keeps them out of their brain’s way.

I’ve experienced the benefits of getting out of my brain’s way over and over and over again. My unconscious has connected some dots that didn’t even seem to exist in the same domains. I don’t take credit for those insights and ideas. My conscious brain didn’t come up with them. But I take credit for maintaining routines and practices that free my brain do its thing. I take credit for loosening the reins.

*A: You can’t actually get outside the box, so there’s no point in trying to think outside it.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Consciousness, Creating, Habit, Living, Mind, Unconscious Tagged With: Brain, Consciousness, Creativity, Habits, Insights, Robert Genn, Routines, Thinking Outside the Box, Twyla Tharp, Unconscious

Intentions: Mistakes Were Made

July 23, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

should what?
(Photo credit: 416style)

Creating an intention seems like something that should be pretty straightforward. So why isn’t it? There are three common mistakes almost all of us have made when we’ve set out to do something.

Mistake #1

The clue to Mistake #1 appears in the first sentence of this post: the word should. We have many concepts about the way things should be, but even more about how we should be and what we should be able to do. In the context of creating intentions, the word should needs to be banished. It isn’t helpful, and it sets us up to have unrealistic expectations. Why start out by pitting your actual self against an idealized self who can easily do whatever it is you’re currently struggling with? That makes absolutely no sense, yet we do it all the time.

If you have created an intention to do something because you think you should do it or you should be able to do it, let it go. You’re not going to be able to commit to something you should do, and you’re probably not willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish it since you think you should already be doing it. The fact that you aren’t doing it means you’re just not trying or you’re lazy or incapable or have no will power. You’ve prejudged yourself as somehow lacking, so you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Mistake #2

Sometimes there are entire areas of our lives we want to revamp, so we create an intention to do just that. No baby steps for us; we’re going for the gold! But trying to tackle too much all at once is another recipe for failure because the chance of succeeding is miniscule at best. When we take baby steps we have a much better chance of accomplishing what we set out to do. Then we can build on our success. When we aim to do it all at once and miss the mark, we end up with nothing but a reinforced sense of ineffectiveness or inadequacy.

Another thing to remember is that when you try to do many things at the same time, you’re giving yourself many opportunities to fail. If you want to develop a habit that involves doing something multiple times during the day, start out by creating an intention to do it once or twice a day—or even every other day. Once you’ve succeeded with that, you can expand on it. This is the kind of mistake we often make when starting an exercise program. Add Mistake #1 to the mix—the belief that you should be exercising for a certain number of minutes every day—and you might as well just pick up the remote and head for the couch.

Mistake #3

The third mistake we make when creating an intention is that we are vague rather than specific. Maybe we aren’t consciously trying to give ourselves wiggle room, but that’s what vagueness does to intentions: it paves the way for us to wiggle right out of them. There are a lot of reasons we’re vague. Maybe we think just creating the intention should be sufficient. (Is there a voice in your head that says if you really want to do something, you’ll do it? Tell it to shut up.) Or our schedule is too variable for us to be specific. Or we want to maintain our flexibility. Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

The reason for being specific when creating an intention is that vagueness simply doesn’t work so creating a vague intention is a waste of time. If you want to do something twice a week, decide on the days of the week and the time of day you will do it. If your schedule varies, make appointments with yourself and write them on your calendar or in your planner. Treat your appointments with yourself the same way you would treat an appointment with someone else. Give yourself a little respect. If you know what result you want, think through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Make the steps your intention and the result will follow.

Creating an intention really is pretty straightforward, but only if we know what works and what doesn’t work.Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Consciousness, Creating, Habit, Mind, Purpose Tagged With: beliefs, Brain, Consciousness, Habits, Intention, Mind

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