Creating positive behavior change in our own lives and in our communities and workplaces
When people fail to reach a goal that they have set for themselves, we often hear them say something like, “I guess I just didn’t want it enough.”
In this episode, Monica and guest Cassie Christopher discuss what is really behind this sentiment. (Spoiler alert: It’s usually not about whether or not you wanted it bady enough.)
Continue reading “Not wanting it enough”In our recent episode “Will I succeed?” we offered some questions to evaluate your chances of succeeding at whatever goal you are working toward. One of them was: Do I believe I am worth the effort – and worthy of the outcome?
What if your answer to that question is No? What can you do to change that to a Yes?
In this episode, we explore some possible answers to this question.
Continue reading “Are You Worth This Effort?”Do you know the difference between goals and commitments? Both play an important role in creating a life that is both meaningful and purposeful.
In this episode, we’ll explore the distinctions between them, and how they can work together to guide your efforts.
Continue reading “Goals vs. Commitments: Why you need both”Creating change can be difficult. It can also be great…but it is rarely easy. So it makes sense that we want some assurance that we have a reasonable chance of success before we’re willing to invest our resources–and get our hopes up.
But when we ask, “Will I succeed?” we often look in the wrong places for the answer.
In this episode, we talk about ways to evaluate your chances of success. More importantly, we want to offer some ideas for maximizing your chances of success.
Continue reading “Will I Succeed?”Have you ever wondered why you seem to be stuck at a particular weight, or a particular level of fitness, or a particular amount of money in the bank?
If you’re like a lot of the people we work with, you’ve spent a fair amount of mental energy (and other resources) trying to make a change. And yet, you find yourself seemingly stuck…unable to move out of your current reality into that vision of your future.
The reason is both more surprising and simpler than you might think.
In this episode, we will dig into what actually shapes our current reality (hint: it’s not your goals) and what we need to focus on in order to start making progress toward our future self.
Continue reading “The Surprisingly Simple Reason You Stay Stuck”Change can be scary. And sometimes, fears about what transformation might cost us can lead us to sabotage our own success. We may have mixed feelings about leaving certain parts of our selves (or our lives) behind–even if they are things that we don’t particularly like.
These worries and fears are totally normal. But left unexamined or unchecked, they can keep us stuck.
In this episode, we’re going to get all of that out in the open, so we can engage with it more intentionally…and more productively.
Continue reading “Why We Sabotage Our Own Success”For some endeavors, all you need to succeed is knowledge and a good reason to follow through. As long as you have a good set of instructions, you should be able to succeed on your first try.
Acquiring a skill, however, requires knowledge plus practice.
If you expect to succeed at a skill without allowing yourself time to practice, you’re likely to be frustrated. (And we don’t want that!)
Continue reading “Acquiring a New Skill Will Require *This*”If you have ever come up with a scheme to keep yourself from succumbing to temptation, you have experimented with a thing called a commitment device. As you’ll see, you are not the first to try this.
In this episode, we’re talking about different types of commitment devices and whether they might be useful in staying on track with whatever you are trying to accomplish in your life–whether that’s breaking a bad habit, establishing a new behavior, or meeting a challenge that you’ve set for yourself.
Continue reading “Lashing Yourself to the Mast”As a society, we place a very high value on optimization.
Now that it’s so easy to track your nutrition, sleep, exercise, productivity, your stock gains or weather, you naturally want to optimize them.
What we don’t always acknowledge is that optimizing for one thing is likely to cost you gains in at least one other domain.
In this episode, we talk about why it’s so important to be clear on exactly what value you are optimizing for–-and what you are willing to sacrifice in order to do that.
It is a tricky balance to find but well worth the effort.
Our evaluation of a certain experience can be heavily influenced by things that actually have nothing to do with it. For example, if we happen to be very thirsty when we sample a new beverage, we may later remember it as being far better than it actually was.
It’s called attribution bias. And if left unexamined, it can lead us to make choices or decisions that are not based on our actual goals and values.
As with so many other things, correcting for attribution bias starts with becoming aware of its existence.