New Years Change of Habits
A new year, a new list of promises to myself. Eat better, get to the gym, walk, and what is it with that mess in the office? And walk again. I do love a five-mile-or-so hike. Being outside is good for me in two ways. I love the fresh air, green, and trees; plentiful in Virginia, even in December.
Bu I also use solo hiking to listen to audio books and podcasts. I love fiction audiobooks because the writers use great words I would never think to put into my non-fiction books. They do a tremendous job painting pictures of imaginary people and places. It’s an excellent exercise for me to think about how I can do the same on my current work in progress; particularly because it has to do with dead people.
But today I’m writing because I listened to one of my favorite podcasters, Shankar Vedantam, His podcast Hidden Brain is simply excellent. Yesterday he interviewed Wendy Woods, the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick.
What a great topic for New Years resolutions and how encouraging to find out that habits are primarily a self conscious effort so stop blaming yourself for a lack of willpower. All of Vedantam’s work focuses on the social sciences and human behavior. Each podcast leave me saying, Wow, that’s fascinating! This particular podcast was an opportunity to interview Ms. Woods and explore the research behind how we form good and bad habits. It inspired me to find a good habit I want to pick up, and a bad habit I want to drop. I’ll need to choose wisely and then report back on how I did; which is indeed one of Ms. Wood’s strategies.
If you want to join me in this effort, I urge you to pick up a copy. Not convinced yet? Here is the Amazon summary of the highly acclaimed book: We spend a shocking 43 percent of our day doing things without thinking about them. That means that almost half of our actions aren’t conscious choices but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors. How we respond to the people around us; the way we conduct ourselves in a meeting; what we buy; when and how we exercise, eat, and drink―a truly remarkable number of things we do every day, regardless of their complexity, operate outside of our awareness. We do them automatically. We do them by habit. And yet, whenever we want to change something about ourselves, we rely on willpower. We keep turning to our conscious selves, hoping that our determination and intention will be enough to effect positive change. And that is why almost all of us fail. But what if you could harness the extraordinary power of your unconscious mind, which already determines so much of what you do, to truly reach your goals?
If you are in on the journey, let me know how it is going. And, Happy New Year!