Is 2015 the year for the new normal?

“I am still learning.” – Michelangelo

 

Now is the time for resolutions – the traditional way to start the New Year, right? I’ve never been much of a fan. Like bad companions, resolutions are big and loud and lofty. They’re full of themselves and many, if not most, are destined to fail.  

 

According to a recent poll, the Top 10 New Year’s Resolutions are: 1.) Have more fun. 2.) Relax and reduce stress. 3.) Spend more time with family. 4.) Eat better. 5.) Exercise more. 6.) Reduce spending. 7.) Save for financial emergency. 8.) Make more time for yourself. 9.) Reduce debt. 10.) Lose weight. And, while that all sounds pretty good, of the 90 percent of Americans who make resolutions, only half have achieved any of their goals six months later.

 

I used to make resolutions, but then gave it up because I was simply recycling the same ones year after year. Occasionally, I made baby steps towards lasting change, but mostly I was just extending and renewing my resolve like an almost-read library book or a movie that always puts me to sleep.

 

This is why a show I heard on NPR this morning (“What heroin addiction tells us about bad habits”) made me sit down, pour another cup of coffee and really listen. It was about how research done on heroin addiction among soldiers in Vietnam during the early ‘70’s resulted in a shift in thinking about how to change habits.

 

Apparently, at the end of the war heroin use was so common among U.S. soldiers that President Nixon commissioned a task force to help these servants of our nation return home un-addicted and resume productive lives. At that time, 20 percent of soldiers identified themselves as heroin addicts. They were detoxed then followed in a study for years. Surprisingly, 95 percent of those soldiers did not become re-addicted once they were home. This was not what had been expected, given the highly addictive nature of heroin.     

 

Up until the ‘80’s, the way to change behavior was thought to be to change attitudes. It turns out that works for behaviors we don’t do frequently. Things like giving blood or not drinking and driving can be encouraged by public health campaigns because we don’t do those things often, if at all. But, if we want to change behaviors we do all the time – things like smoking or binge eating – simple attitude adjustments don’t work.  

 

"Once a behavior had been repeated a lot, especially if the person does it in the same setting, their behavior doesn't follow their intentions," psychologist David Neal explained. 

He goes on to say that our physical environments shape our behavior much more than we’re aware of. After a while repeating the behavior in the same physical setting outsources control of the behavior to the environment. Surprisingly (or maybe not…) about half of what we do every day is repeat behavior in the same environment.

“For a smoker, the view of the entrance to their office building — which is a place that they go to smoke all the time — becomes a powerful mental cue to go and perform that behavior," Neal says. The same for the act of sitting on the couch for someone who over indulges in ice cream, etc. “Over time, those cues become so deeply ingrained they are very hard to resist, despite our best intentions and resolutions.” 

 

That explains a lot, including the incredibly low re-addiction rates among the soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam. Once treated for their physical addiction, they returned to a different environment where there were no longer any cues to shoot up.

 

One way to battle behaviors we wish to change and/or make those New Year’s resolutions come true is to disrupt our environment in some way. Another psychologist, Wendy Wood, said even small changes can help — something as simple as eating the ice cream you don’t really want to be eating with your non-dominant hand.

 

“This disrupts the learned body sequence that is driving the behavior, which allows your conscious mind to come back online and reassert control,” she said. "It's a brief window of opportunity – to think, 'Is this really what I want to do?' "

 

How does this affect our New Year resolutions? It gives us a whole new way of noting what triggers our behavior and offers tools for change. To achieve any of those things on that Top 10 Resolutions list, we need to move out of our comfort zone, ruts and routines and shake up our environment a bit.  

Instead of going straight home after work and settling into the evening routine, why not go the gym or walk the dog or go outside and play with the kids. Then, instead of ordering take out or going for fast food, make a healthy meal. That, coupled with not going to the mall for entertainment and stepping away from online shopping, should help with spending, saving and getting out of debt. It turns out, if we really want to make a change, we have to alter our behaviors and environment so that new behaviors can follow. This does not sound easy – not at all.

For years I worked the “baby steps” method for change. I focused on process rather than goals and was content with slow steady progress. However, this show makes me think if I’m serious about changing some of my outsourced behaviors and working towards a happier, healthier, more productive 2015 I need to let go of some of my routines and do things differently, starting immediately.

Robin Sharma said, “As you move outside your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal” - a radical thought, but one worth exploring, especially while the year is still so young and the desire for change comes more easily.