discover your need/want connection, you can begin building new strategies that will help you kick your busy habits and make your life a lot more joyful.
• How and Why We Do What We Do •
We formulate strategies throughout our lives. These strategies are a set of tools we use to navigate our experiences, and they are significantly influenced by our parents or primary caregivers. As we grow and change, our tools evolve, enabling us to hone the ones that work well. We also may use ones that are not as useful or helpful, but we use them simply because they are familiar to us. Our experiences, the development of our strategies, and the evolution of these tools function as a script we continually refer to as we move forward. Values, morals, and societal norms influence our experiences and become part of the development and structure of our strategies. And as we have these experiences and employ these strategies, what emerges are habits. It’s how we do what we do.
Charlene’s story below illustrates how some people are really good at adapting their strategies and modifying their behaviors. Their ability to self-evaluate, shift perspective, and change an approach gives them a greater capacity to reinvent themselves.
CHARLENE’S OSW STORY
I moved around a lot as a kid. I went to six different middle schools and three high schools. Each time I had to find a way to make friends and fit in, and because I moved so much, getting along with people and making friends without getting too attached became a natural way of fitting in wherever I went. It also helped me advance in my career because I was able to build relationships without getting overly involved, and that worked for what I wanted to achieve. I learned to separate the relationship from what I needed to do. Where I struggled was in my personal relationships. It took me until I was in my late thirties to figure out what piece of that strategy wasn’t working for me. My ability to distance myself was blocking me from true emotional intimacy. Realizing this was like having a light go on in my head — how could I have missed that piece? Well, I never had to use that before to get what I wanted, so I had to figure out how to adjust my strategy to get what I needed.
The good news is that we all have the capacity to adapt and the power to reinvent ourselves. As you make small edits to your busy habits, you’ll begin building the bridge from where you are now to where you want to be.
Habits are strategies on autopilot. They are often our fallback reactions when we are stressed and busy. A habit consists of three primary elements: the cue, the behavior, and the reward. For example, it’s 5:00 PM (cue), you pour a glass of wine (behavior), and you sit down and unwind (reward). Or your phone rings and you see it’s your best friend (cue), so you answer (behavior). You know she always makes you laugh and you always enjoy talking with her (reward). The cue, behavior, and reward are the fundamental mechanisms that prompt automatic thinking, feelings, and actions. In simple terms, habits are the result of training. By repeating a certain behavior, we train our body and mind to perform it with less conscious thought. The more we access the training, the easier it is to form, implement, and maintain the habit. And the more we perceive the reward in positive terms, the more likely we are to use the associated training because it provides an outcome we want or at least one that we are familiar with. I got to learn this early when at age nineteen I was hired as a flight attendant.
Emergency and safety drills were a primary part of my training. Over and over the other trainees and I were put in potential disastrous situations, many of them taking place on a life-size simulator of an airplane’s interior, such as crash landings with fire-like effects in a smoke-filled cabin with jammed emergency slides and blocked exits, and much more.
Part of our training was in a technique that would end up being a key method I would use in many other aspects of my life. It is called the Thirty-Second Review and takes place during the first three minutes and the last eight minutes of any flight, the times considered the most critical for flight emergencies. Seated on our flight attendant jump seats, we mentally ran through all the major emergency scenarios that might occur during takeoff and landing. This process works on the premise that whatever is in the forefront of your mind, gleaned from your training, will help you react, even when chaos and danger ensue. Some forty years later, as a passenger, I still do the Thirty-Second Review every time I’m on a flight.
Every day we use similar techniques to reinforce our habits to get what we need and want. For example, in meditation, I use conscious thinking to attune my thoughts to what I need (mental and physical recharging), and that is central to what I want (clarity, creativity, calm, and spiritual connection). I go to the gym every day not because I like to work out but because it’s another way for me to recharge, stay relaxed, and enhance my health. Both habits are implemented often, both have positive rewards, and both advance my personal goals for living a healthy lifestyle. I’m motivated by the rewards I reap, and the high value derived from the outcome of these habits helps me sustain both as long-term strategies to get what I want.
Habits are familiar, which means we don’t consciously think about how to use them. That’s why adopting new ones, such as beginning an exercise program, feels more difficult and tiring. They take more thought. They take practice. After a while, new habits become easier to access, with less effort and more predictable results. The familiarity of a habit often blinds us to the fact that it is not healthy. That’s why bad habits often undermine our desires to implement good ones. The key is to build new, resourceful habits that you can fall back on. The clearer you are about which strategies work for you and are in alignment with your need/want connection (which we will discuss further below), the more likely you are to automatically adopt those habits instead of falling back into your old busy habits.
Needs first, wants second; once that equation is in place, you’ll be more likely to fulfill your goals and desires.
• Is Busyness Keeping You from What You Need and Want? •
Certain strategies and approaches generally work well for shorter-term goals, the things we want to accomplish in the near future, such as taking a vacation, purchasing a new car, or paying off a credit card. Lifestyle changes — like breaking your busy habits — require a longer-lasting approach that develops into maintainable strategies and eventually new habits.
Changing your relationship with busy necessitates determining your need/want connection and how it relates to your goals. It’s a cause-and-effect formula that when balanced will lead to more sustainable outcomes. For example, if you decide you want to lose five pounds in a week, it can be done. No problem. There are numerous people to tell you how to do it. But is that helpful? Can you get the weight off ? Absolutely. However, it’s unlikely that approach will be sustainable in the long run.
When a client comes to me because she wants to lose weight and has tried several times, without success, to keep it off, I need to help her find the why now part of her need/want connection. If her motivation is that she wants to look better, or that she’s tired of the extra pounds, that is typically a sign that she has not dug deep enough to make her goal sustainable. Her reasons just scratch the surface of what she really wants.
The broader the reason, the less likely the root of the why now has been uncovered. In this case, if she doesn’t believe she deserves to feel or look better, her weight loss is apt to be temporary. How can she be truly successful until she knows the value of what she needs and how it will support what she wants? When she establishes both, her why now will be evident, and she’ll realize her endeavors with less effort and more satisfaction.
Before moving on, let’s explore your need/want connection. This is to help you develop the habit of considering your need first, before anything else. Think of it this way. If you know you want to change jobs, what do you need to make that happen? You may need to write a new résumé, network with business associates, buy a new interviewing outfit, and rearrange your schedule so you have time to search for that new
