How to change your behavior
Millions of people make new years resolutions and 90% already didn't follow trough on the 15th of januari. In this artikel you'll learn why this is so and what to do about it.
The main point is that we are biologically not programmed to be productive is. We are programmed to avoid pain and get immidiate gratification. When humans needed to survive. it is good to eat now as much as possible becouse you dont know if there is any food tomorow. So we are programmed to think short term. But the things things that give us gratification on the short term very often prevent us from getting results long term.
This is one of the things why we procratinate so easaly. The things that are really important, difficult,. Are verry often not the things that give us instant gratification. So we tend to phostphone them till till the last moment and then we panic we panic, how im i going to do this. and then we want to avoid pain. We try to manage it last moment.
Now lets get in a bit deeper into this programming. in his book the talent code david cole talks about that people avoid difficult things becouse you can make mistakes and that is percieved by the brain as dangerous for our survival. Becouse of this we are naturaly programmed to avoid danger, its very deeply programmed becouse is was and stil is to ensure our survival. Now change, if we want to change our behaviour, our brain evaluates this as dangerous so our boddy litterly resists. This is why you feel resistant when yiu try to change your behaviour.
Another thing which is related tot his is that we are creatures of habit. We do everyday more or less the same things, we go to our work, eat the same times etc. But we also think mostly the same kind of thoughts and feel the same kind of emotions, we dont always percieve it as such.
So the conclusion is that we are creatures of habit and change is hard. Now if we want to change what do we normaly use? Dicipline or willpower. Now Roy baumeister who published his study in his book willpower show that willpower and dicipline are higly overated. He figured out that people have just a small reservoir of willpower and if we use it for a few times it is gone (for the day)
So we are creatures of habit, change is hard, and willpower and dicipline are overrater. So how do we change? I almost atert to sound a bit like dokter doom right now. But there is is a solution. What we are going to do is to use our little bit of dicipline and willpower and use it to create a new habit. Becouse when we have a new habbit. It doesnt cost us any effort anymore and we can go for a new habbit. It depends on the habit but you can create one in only 30 days.
So if you want to change your behavior, just create a new habit.
Good luck changing any bad habit you have:)