On my coaching call the other day someone asked about how to implement a very specific healthy behavior.
And it got me thinking about how we tend to focus on the wrong parts of behavioral change.
The typical approach is to place your attention on the behavior itself and what it is you want to do.
But the big problem with this strategy is our behaviors don’t have a “clean slate” to work from.
In other words, the behaviors we want to implement have to interact with our own unique psychology and even biology.
So if you want to implement a specific behavior, and you’re struggling to get it going, I’d recommend what I’m temporarily calling “behavioral inverse theory”.
That’s just a fancy way of saying to flip the behavior around.
Instead of focus on WHAT it is you’d like to do, place your attention on the resistance you’re experiencing to doing it.
Because knowing how to do the behavior is rarely the problem.
What we need to understand is why we aren’t doing it.
Addressing the resistance is what’s going to lay the track for the behavior to be built upon.
So if you’re struggling to eat less, stop trying to just set a lower calorie intake. Instead, figure out what’s creating the upward pressure on your eating and address that instead.
If you’re struggling to exercise, don’t keep focusing on what to do or forcing yourself to do it. Place your attention on what’s causing the resistance to doing it and address that.
This goes for any behavior. Flip it around. Find the inverse. Address the resistance.
That’s what’s going to allow the behavior to flow freely and become habit.
Talk soon…