Say it Better

Change a Habit in 30 Days and See Other Great Changes Happen

"If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing in this moment," goes the Tibetan saying. This may seem childlike but I always find it easiest to make a change in my life by picturing a very specific and compelling reward for the change:

• How will I have moved closer to being my true self?

• What wonderful, new experiences could I attract?

• How could I use my talents more fully, for myself and for others?

Conversely, what boring, irritating or anger-provoking task or person will I now experience in a more comfortable light or no longer have to experience at all?

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself," wrote Leo Tolstoy. What habit do you want to drop or pick up? From body fat to a bright new job we obsess about but often block our own change. Here are some steps that have proved helpful to me.

1. Find Your True North

There is a Thai word, "sanuk", which means whatever you do you should enjoy it. First be clear about choosing a habit-changing goal that is powerfully valuable to you. 

Why put effort in an "ought to do" goal, based on others’ wishes for you, when you can serve your true self by going for the one that you’ll truly find most satisfying?

As Keniche Ohmae wrote in The Borderless World, "Rowing harder does not help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction. Applying more muscle is no solution if the course is off."

Perhaps you are choosing a new habit that is someone else’s goal for you, not your own. If you really don’t enjoy moving toward that change, you may be acting against your deepest preferences. "Problems that remain persistently unsolvable should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way," wrote philosopher, Alan Watts in The Book.

2. Picture Being Your Hero

Keep picturing the experience of your success when you are tempted to fall back. As Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th Century Danish theologian said, "People celebrate achievements and spotlight heroes but the truly heroic act is not the outcome but in starting out and not knowing if you will succeed."

"A vivid imagination," wrote Aristotle, "compels the whole body to obey it." Emile Couce wrote in Willing, "It is the imagination and not the will that is the dominating faculty of man. It is a serious mistake to advise people to train their wills; they should learn to control and direct their imaginations."

Keep picturing yourself as the hero who has succeeded to make a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rather than talking about what you are giving up or how you might fail, always think and talk about your goal as the inevitable future—what is going to be.

3. Use Your Homing Device

Look inside for your "Homing Device" of your most powerful motivation or passionate interest that can be related to your goal. As Dr. Beverly Potter wrote in her book, Finding a Path With a Heart: How to Go From Burnout to Bliss, "When we pay attention to our Homing Devices and follow their guidance, we invariably feel right about ourselves and in perfect harmony with people and activities in which we are involved in the moment…Not all targets (goals) are the same. Some are easier to hit. Some are more fun. Compelling targets have a magnetic force that pulls you toward them."

4. Surround Yourself With Support

To keep your resolve, surround yourself with those who want you to succeed.

In The Healing Brain, psychologist Robert Ornstein and physician David Sobel, suggested we learn that the need for community is a key part of our evolutionary heritage and a way we can learn to change.

The brain’s primary purpose is not to think, but to guard the body from illness and despair. "The brain acts as an internal health maintenance organization, governing everything from the release of stress hormones to the functioning of the immune system.

Your brain cannot do its job of protecting your body without contact with other people. We have evolved to be dependent on others. Evolution has less regard for the individual than for the survival of the species. "For your evolution toward your goal, plant yourself firmly among those who will reinforce your desired behavior."

5. Know Do You Get Detoured?

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." wrote David Russell. Notice your pattern for avoiding your course toward your goal. What …

• Activities do you use to get sidetracked?

• Time of day or day of the week is it most likely to happen?

• Else is happening that can numb you into avoidance?

• Colleagues and friends help or hinder you on your path?

Discover these patterns now and you will be more powerfully productive toward this and all the next goals you set for yourself. But don’t be too hard on yourself when you’re not perfect. As Charles Garfield wrote in Peak Performance, "On course doesn’t mean perfect. On course means that even when things don’t go perfectly, you are in the right direction."

The keys?

1. Habit: Do the same thing at least three times a day for 30 days?

2. Habit witnessed by at least one other person: Get an accountability buddy.

3. Group committed to collective change: With even a small “cell” group committed to shared success in changing a behavior, there are more witnesses to keep each other in line, celebrate small signs of progress – bring out the disciplined side in each other.  Inevitably such groups forge strong bonds.  That mutual accountability is key to Delancey Street’s success. 

Think of all the variations of AA groups (from food to alcohol addiction).  Think of the small interest groups within Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church.  Think of military squadrons. I am still involved with the three small groups in which I worked on the Obama campaign. Read more about this effect in Influencers.

6. Confirm That You’re on the Right Path

Notice how your feelings change as you practice your new habit. Discomfort - yes, yet is there an underlying, growing comfort with yourself? How are others close to you reacting? What new experiences happen?

As you change, everyone around you will change in reaction to you. Some will be uncomfortable with your growing comfort. Others will be happy for you and inspired to change as well. Many will not consciously notice the actual change yet will feel better around you.

As Jean Shinoda Bolen wrote in The Tao of Psychology, "Synchronistic events can assure us when we are on the right life path; and advise us when we are not; at the most profound level, they assure us that we are not mere observers but always participants in an interconnected cosmic web."

Put simply, see how the changes you make affect your self-image and your relationships with others. Simply speaking, do you enjoy your life more?

7. Be Your Best

I believe those who will gain the most professional satisfaction in an increasingly challenging and competitive workplace will be those who choose to get very good at one single skill.

Like goal-setting, the more specific you state the change, the more likely the success and sense of satisfaction you’ll gain. We may not all be as lucky as Billie Jean King (I certainly wasn’t) who wrote in her autobiography, Billie Jean, "When I was five or six… (I) told my mother I’d be the best at something; by the time I was twelve, I knew what I’d be best in. But it is never too late in life to choose your "best."

8. Plan a Great Reward

Before you start a new habit, plan how you will celebrate when you meet your goal. The bigger the change, the more bountiful the reward. 

The most meaningful, memorable celebrations usually involve collective rituals and recognition where everyone involved with your change, however inadvertently, gets to share the spotlight with you.  Enable those who supported you or worked on the same goal with you, to savor the behavioral change with you. Your celebration may well be the needed nudge to sway them to start on their path towards living a bigger, better life by making some small changes in their habits.  

Repeating Positive Affirmations Backfires For Many of Us

Eric and Emma, the couple up the hill from me in Sausalito have been married 54 years, they proudly told me.  They walked, hand-in-hand past my home each morning, usually laughing, smiling and pointing out things to each other along the way. Originally from Ireland, they listened to BBC at dawn so they usually had a tidbit of news to share with me if they happened to pass my home when I was finishing my lame attempt at morning exercises in the back yard. 

When Emma died suddenly last year, he stopped walking, stayed in their home and ignored my knock on their door.  Later, when he started walking again, he told me his son, a public speaker on leadership, suggested that he start saying positive self-affirmations every morning “to lift his mood.” He retorted, “My mood doesn’t need lifting!  It’s right where it’s supposed to be.” So his well-intentioned son then mailed him a card pack with cheery faces on one side and, on the other, a series of upbeat daily affirmations.  The card pack was entitled  "Yes, I Can!” to which he responded (to me, but not his son, I gather) “No I won’t!”

That inspired Eric to act, but not in the way his son intended. He wrote his own series of Realistic Affirmations. The sentiments reflected his way of responding to grief, his stubborn resistance to being told to feel better and his core attitude about life.  Some were funny. Yet his basic resilience started to shine through as he finished writing his sayings by the end of the year. “Not every cloud has a silver lining so start liking the clouds."

I thought of Eric today when I read that Norman Vincent Peale may have been wrong, at least for many people when he advocated saying positive self-affirmations to lift your mood. That oft-repeated notion that feeding ourselves upbeat messages can make us feel better isn’t necessarily true according to Joanne Wood's research.  In fact, these wildly popular self-esteem boosters put some people “in peril.” (This finding may disturb fervent The Law of Attraction followers.)

If, for example, you say to yourself, “I’m a loveable person” yet you don’t really feel that you are you will feel worse than people who:

• Did not repeat the affirmation, or

• Focused on how the affirmation was both true and not true.

That’s a startling revelation for many of us Americans who have been bombarded with self-help messages based on the belief that positive affirmations are entirely beneficial.  It’s also a relief to know that one wasn’t simply self-defeating when one was feeling low, said positive affirmations and then felt worse.

In the study, those with high self-esteem who …

•  repeated the positive affirmations, or

•  focused on how they were true

…felt better than those who did not – but only to “a limited degree.”

I’d like to see more study on this because it means that there is little benefit for anyone in saying positive self-statements.  Plus this practice backfires for the very people who most need them. As Ed Yong concluded, “Statements that contradict a person's self-image, no matter how rallying in intention, are likely to boomerang. “

This new study doesn’t take away from the power of a related practice.  That’s preparing to perform well, in a sport, speech or other activity by vividly visualizing the performance in advance.

Eric, by the way, has begun writing his memoir, describing some of the adventures he shared with Emma, the people they met and the joy of living with her “through thick and thin.”    As Byron Katie would say, he is “loving what is.”

It has lifted his mood I am happy to report. 

After the Crash: Belated Feelings on Luck - and on Quotability

I’m ashamed. Actually, it’s the fault of Jesse Kornbuth and Robert Sabbag.  

“One June night in 1979, Sabbag had the extreme bad luck to be flying with a pilot who should not have been at the controls. Two miles from the Hyannis airport, the pilot made a tragic decision and pushed the commuter plane under the fog,” writes Sabbag’s friend, Kornbluth.

“The plane hit the trees at 123 knots. It lost its wings as it crashed. They were sheared off, taking the fuel tanks with them, as the plane slammed through the forest. In an explosion of tearing sheet metal, it ripped a path through the timber, cutting thick stands of oak and pine for a distance of three hundred feet.... The seatbelt held up. Nothing else did. I hit the belt with such force that I took the seat forward with me, ripping it right out of the fuselage,” writes Sabbag.

From the first detail Sabbag pulls you in. Irrevocably.

Kornbluth explains, “The plane was in a forest that was hard to reach from a road --- not that anyone at the airport, two-and-a-half miles away, knew where it was. The pilot was dead, several passengers were trapped. Sabbag had a broken pelvis and couldn't walk. Oh, and there was a good chance the wreck would catch on fire,“ Kornbluth explains.

30 years later Sabbat hunts up the other passengers, recounts his harrowing experience and how he lost his dry sense of humor, his courage – even his ability to imagine.

I can get irritatingly preachy here about the power of being vividly specific. Regrettably, I’ve never lived up to that advice as magnificently as Sabbat. He writes like someone you’d want to get to know better. 

When Stephen King was asked how he managed to writer bestsellers, he responded, “I cut out all the boring stuff.”

 Life is too short to be bland, to speak in generalizations. To avoid saying one’s truth.  Sabbat inspires me to follow my own advice. To divulge the meaningful specifics sooner. Gulp.

No Room for Parody When Real Life Offers Humorists Such Stories

Phelps’ blind spot was thinking that no one in the party would want a shot of him smoking dope. Richardson’s dark spot was neglecting to mention a grand jury investigation.  Daschle’s dim spot is not speaking up about not paying taxes on his special friend’s donated car and driver. But the capper for comedians (wait until tonight on Colbert) is not mentioning to the president’s team (and their not checking) that $900 lien on your home from back in 2005  - when you’re asked to become the nation’s first chief performance officer. 

Like you, I pay my taxes but (unlike you, of course) I’d have reason to squirm if my whole life was put under a public microscope.  But I’m not being nominated to live in a glass house.

Alternatively I’d like to become the nation’s first Chief Plain Language Officer. I’d require all regulations and legislation to be written in laymen’s language. But then my sometimes obtuse writing would be subject to parody. I think I’ll stick to enjoying "private" life.

What title would you like to have bestowed on you in this administration? Beware. Fame happens faster and reveals more details in an increasingly transparent world.

Apache In Baghdad: Uncensored Video Coverage

Hearing and watching uncensored U.S. soldiers is the real “reality show.” Yet it has become increasingly rare for Americans to see much footage even after so many years of daily news from Iraq. Sean Smith of The Guardian spent two months embedded within US military troops fighting in Iraq while shooting a documentary.

Through his brave video coverage hear solders’ unedited comments. There is no real break for most US soldiers deployed in the war zone. They are under continuous stress and exhausted much of the time. Teresa Smith and Sean Smith's documentary is getting attention.

Happy Face?

Apparently when we are happy the facial muscles on our right side are more active than those on the left side. Those change more often when unhappy.

So next time you are talking with someone important to you and you try to figure out how that person is feeling you might get so absorbed in figuring it out that the poor dear you are staring intently at may wonder if he has a piece of egg on his face.

When dogs are happy, their tails wag more to the right side of their rumps. When they have negative feelings, their tail wagging is biased to the left.

Its all about the “emotional asymmetry in the brain,” according Richard J. Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin - where he has pursued research on meditation, through his longtime friendship with the Dalai Lama.

Read the rest of the story in Sandra Blakeslee’s article in the Science section of The New York Times.

Discover more tantalizing tidbits about reading faces by reading Paul Ekman’s groundbreaking book, Emotions Revealed and Telling Lies.

Yes, even mission statements

can be memorable & even meaningful. Civic Ventures offers a shining example.

First craft the headline:
“Turning the tables: from an experience drain to an experience gain.”

Then create the two-step mission statement:

1. The set-up that pulls you in. A credible problem, vividly and briefly presented.
“Doomsayers see the aging boom as a problem to be solved,
a costly gray wave.”

2. Then show how your organization (or you) has the solution.

“Civic Ventures sees this longevity revolution differently
— as the springboard for an America made better by experience.”

How can you craft your indelible, frequently-quoted mission statement?
Consider that a rousing mission statement pulls you in, like a good novel, leaving you wanting to learn more.

Admittedly, few do. That’s because they are often the result of committee work and/or outside agencies, the deep fear of offending and, even more, leaving something out.

But, done well, they are prlceless because, with an actionable mission statement: “even” a money-poor non-profit or a small business owner can ....

• Out-shine a deep-pockets corporation.

• Unify everyone who works for the organization
(an implicit promise of what behavior will be rewarded).

Show those they serve what to expect
(an explicit promise of what they can get).

Altogether you have:

Turning the tables: from an experience drain to an experience gain.

Doomsayers see the aging boom as a problem to be solved, a costly gray wave. Civic Ventures sees this longevity revolution differently — as the springboard for an America made better by experience.

Consider Mozilla's mission statement as offer/promise: "We operate as a meritocracy, so the more good code you contribute, the more you will be allowed to contribute..."

Why not create your own personal mission statement?

By the way, “The number of U.S.-based nonprofits has grown at twice the rate of for-profit ventures in recent years. And it's no coincidence this surge is happening as the baby-boom generation starts to hit retirement age. Civic Ventures co-founder Marc Freedman says many people get frustrated with how traditional nonprofits are run and after a certain point "throw up their hands and just say they'll start their own." You may be getting the itch to start a nonprofit too - but first ask yourself three questions: Am I cut out for this? Is my idea different? Is a start-up necessary?” writes Dan Kadlic in Time Magazine.

Rats, Roaches and Semantic Stretch

It’s like yelling “fire” when there isn’t one. You’ll be ignored when you really need to be heard when you over-reach in making a comparision that can’t be justified. Made to Stick co-authors, Dan and Chip Heath dub this "semantic stretch" – and it is worth your reading.

One example they offer:

"We look at getting rid of the Confederacy as cultural genocide. They're attacking my ancestors, they're attacking my culture, they're attacking my heritage."
— Mr. Robert Banks, Member of Sons of the Confederate Veterans, Atlanta Journal, December 14, 1992.

The Heaths write, “’Semantic stretch’ refers to the way that words can be overused to the point where their impact is diluted. I.e., if people start using the word "genocide" to mean "saying bad things about the Confederate flag," and if the word is overused enough times and in enough situations, the term starts to lose the full measure of emotional horror that it should rightfully possess.”

While you read this blog comment at Powell’s Books’ excellent web site you may well be tempted to look around at their other blogs and reviews.

Laugh and the World Laughs With You

Laughter is an especially contagious behavior, according to Robert Provine, author of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation and a psychology professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

In almost a monkey-see monkey-do kind of way, we are wired up to imitate others' faces and voices.

Here’s Provine’s most surprising finding. After studying 1,200 examples of natural laughter in the real world, he found fewer than 20 per cent were actually linked to humor. Most laughter follows apparently banal or humorless statements. It occurs during playful behavior and social bonding.

Provine also found that:

• We have an almost automatic laugh reaction in response to others' laughter — think laugh tracks on television shows.

• We are 30 times more likely to laugh in the presence of other people than by ourselves.

• Women laugh more at men than vice-versa.

• "Women seek men who make them laugh, and men are more likely than women to consider themselves humorous – and to want to be seen as humorous.

Become the glue to bond a group together around their positive, sometimes humorous and high energy behavior by exhibiting those behaviors yourself – especially when around people who are not.

Gain more insights into how you affect others - and how they influence your behavior and choices in Robert Cialdini’s groundbreaking book, Influence. Then, in LikeAbility, discover specific ways to bring out others’ better side so they naturally see and support yours.

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.”
~ Sydney J. Harris

We Instinctively Imitate Each Other

It is instinctive. Almost beyond our conscious will. On a biological level, we are built to mimic others. Humans, like monkeys, have certain types of neurons that fire when simply watching someone else carry out an action, even when we ourselves are not doing the same thing. Such neurons help prime us to understand and identify with other people.

Say, for instance, you are sitting at home intently watching a football game on television, and you really like the team's quarterback. When he makes a long pass, you would likely show some electrical signal in our own arm as well, according to John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago.

You've identified with that player and, as part of that, you have an actual physiological reaction to his action. “Synchrony is necessary in social animals,” said Cacioppo.