You Don’t Need More Willpower - You Need A Better Starting Point
A realistic approach to behavior change for busy moms
We all have things in life that we want to change.
-The time we go to bed
-Our energy levels
-Scrolling on our phones
-Snapping at our kids when we feel overwhelmed
-How we feel in our body
-Starting an exercise routine
-Eating more vegetables
For the most part we know which behavior changes that would lead to improved health and energy levels.
The problem isn’t so much what we should do to change, but how to change. How do we start a new desired behavior? How do we make a change without relying on willpower?
HOW do we actually get ourselves to get going?
These are the questions we will discuss in this article. We’re going to learn how to choose a behavior you want to change in this specific season of your life (not what someone on the internet demands you should do) and how to use the power of a fresh start to get going.
Make a Decision
First off, in order to change, you have to feel an opening where you want something else. You want to feel a different way. You’re flat-out over not doing the things you want to do. You’re ready to take on new perspectives and allow yourself the possibility that maybe, just maybe, things could be different for you.
If you feel that opening of possibility, read on.
Take a moment to reflect on these questions:
What in your life is causing you the most pain or suffering right now?
What do you most desire for your life, your health?
Go ahead, take a moment, I will wait.
The answers to these questions will give you the areas in your life that are currently most important to you.
When working with my clients I see higher rates of success when they work on areas of their life that are most important to them. I know this may seem obvious, but we often get distracted by the latest trends online or we get persuaded to try something that worked for our friend. But this is your life. And you get to choose what to prioritize.
Let’s take an example from my own life.
In my early to mid 20s my biggest pain point was incredible, intolerable abdominal pains. I went to multiple doctors and they all said I was “fine.” But I had gas and felt bloated all.the.time. I hate to get too descriptive, but I had such painful bouts of diarrhea that I would ball up and cry on the floor. My stomach made noises so loud that a student in front of me during a test in college actually turned around and gave me a pointed “what the heck is going on with you” stare. Pretty sure that is still up there in the top 10 most embarrassing moments of my life.
At this point I felt the opening that I wanted something different.
I didn’t want to stay stuck in the terrible land that is IBS. I had to create a process to begin changing this pain point in my life, or chose to stay the same.
This is the first part of the change process.
Make a decision.
Am I going to change? I can sit in the misery of “not knowing what to do or where to start,” or I can figure out steps to take to get into action and start feeling better.
Decide to remain the same, which is totally fine and understandable at times, or decide to make a change.
When you’ve decided you’re ready to put some actions into place to help you feel better, there are a few steps you can take to help make that change process a little easier.
Pick One Behavior You Want to Change
Please don’t try to change everything at once. That usually doesn’t work because that triggers our nervous system, and we will quit if we feel too overwhelmed.
You can choose to add a new behavior, or choose to stop doing an old behavior that is no longer serving you.
Define your desire
Based on your reflections from above about the biggest pain point in your life during this season, ask yourself:
What do you want?
What result are you trying to achieve?
What person are you becoming; what’s your new identity?
In my example about living with IBS, I wanted less abdominal pain, a quieter stomach and regular bowel movements. I wanted to become someone (a new identity) who didn’t have to know where all the bathrooms are. I didn’t want to carry GasX and Immodium on my person at all times. I wanted to go out pain-free.
What’s your new desired identity?
For example, say you want to lower your stress levels. Your desire is to “manage stress” effectively, or “feel more calm when I’m at home.” Your new identity could be “someone who manages the stressors of daily life with flexibility and resilience.”
Take a moment to think about what your heart really, truly desires for you to achieve.
Brainstorm activities that could help you change
Now that you’ve thought about your desire and your new identity, it’s time to pick one behavior that will get you started on your path toward that desire. This is where we get to brainstorm! I love a good heads-together session to generate loads of ideas.
I lead my clients through an exercise I picked up from BJ Fogg’s book Tiny Habits called “Swarm of Behaviors.”
Start coming up with all sorts of different behaviors that could lead to your desired result or identity. Jot them all down without rhyme or reason; no judgement if the idea is “good” or “bad.” As you write down the ideas your brain already has stewing in the back of your mind, you will make space for other ideas to emerge.
Keep asking yourself, “what else?” If you come up with 3 ideas, what else? If you come up with 10 ideas, what else?
The ideas don’t even have to be realistic or feasible. Letting in a little magical thinking will actually generate more ideas than you thought possible.
You can also ask friends and family what they would do if they wanted to achieve your desired result.
You could ask them BJ Fogg’s question: “If you could get me to do any behavior that would help me (insert desired result), what would it be?”
For the example of becoming someone who manages stress with resilience, your swarm of behaviors might include:
Meditating for 10 minutes a day
Having a dance party with your kids
Doing deep breathing exercises before bed
Riding a unicorn in a meadow (see? magical)
Learning how to let your inner critic run in the background without getting attached to what that voice is saying
Doing yoga
Having lunch in the park once a week
Exercising
Etc.
What ideas would fit in the middle of your life?
(In case you’re wondering, when I was suffering from severe IBS I swarmed more behaviors than I can list here. In the beginning I chose to start with removing gluten from my diet. CHANGED MY LIFE. And then I greatly decreased the amount of Motrin I was taking for headaches. After that I worked on stress management. These swarmed behaviors all led to drastic improvements in IBS symptoms. I also tried many other behaviors from my brainstorm, but I let many of them go. The point is to just try, evaluate, and learn what works for you.)
Choose one behavior that moves you toward your desired result
Look over your “swarm of behaviors” list.
Immediately cross out any ideas that your body naturally tells you, no, these won’t work right now.
Next, circle ideas that are appealing and give you a spark of excitement to try. If you actually feel excited to implement a new behavior change, you are much more likely to follow through.
Once you have 3-5 interesting behaviors to try, ask yourself, “could I get myself to do this?” Be honest with yourself.
Here’s one true thing I’ve noticed about being human: we can’t make ourselves do anything we don’t actually want to do. That’s called using willpower and it doesn’t work in the long run. If you try relying on willpower you will eventually quit or burnout or worse yet, start to believe that you aren’t good at this whole “change thing.”
But that’s just not true. The process of change is a skill set that you can absolutely learn.
When change stems from desire instead of willpower you will be successful every time, because even if you “fail” your experiment with one behavior - you can learn from that experiment, pick a different behavior, and try again.
This is a normal part of the change process: you will forget about your new behavior, and then you will remember and try again, and then you will feel resistance, and you will adjust, and you will try again! That’s all to be expected.
Whittle your way down to one new behavior you can try as an experiment to see if it leads you toward the path of your desired change.
Once you’ve circled or starred the first behavior to try, you’re going to pick a start date!
Use the Power of a Fresh Start
We all know the feeling of setting a New Year’s Resolution. It feels like, “yes, this time around we can do this! Now is the time to change.” Why do we like to use this date as a fresh start? Because it gives us the feeling of a clean slate. We can leave our mistakes, things we didn’t do, and best intentions in the past.
We can harness that “new start, clean slate” feeling at any time. We don’t have to wait for January 1. In fact, I even wrote an article about not setting New Year’s Resolutions because we often put too much pressure on ourselves to change everything about our life at the new year. Adding too much change at once usually isn’t successful.
A fresh start can happen at any time during the year and it will boost your motivation to begin anew.
Create your own fresh start date
What are natural transition points that happen in your life? Where can you create that clean-slate feeling?
For example:
The start of summer when your kids get out of school
When the kids go back to school
After you get back from time off work
A birthday or anniversary
The start of a new season
Starting a new job
Starting a new project at your job
When your baby is out of diapers
After a doctor’s appointment
Sunday
Monday
And my favorite: Today
Any day can feel like a fresh start, because it is.
Today is the only day you can make a change.
Pick a fresh start date and put it on your calendar. Don’t back out on yourself. You wouldn’t ghost a friend so don’t do that to yourself. Use a colorful pen or sticker on your calendar (because you know you want to) to give yourself some excitement about starting something new for your health and wellbeing.
There you go! The first three steps in making a change.
Choose one area of your life to change based on what is causing you the most pain right now, or the thing you most desire for your health
Create a swarm of behaviors list and pick the idea that sparks the most excitement and feasibility to try
Pick a fresh start date and get it on your calendar
It’s okay to start small with new behaviors. That’s actually how life-changing habits are begun. Remember to expect resistance, that is normal and part of the change process. Resistance doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.
Lastly, maintain your experimental mindset. Don’t expect perfection. Try one behavior, learn from your experiment, keep the behavior or decide to try another one. This is how you will deliberately walk yourself toward your desired result for your life.
You’ve got this.
