Post at least once per week. It might not seem like an ambitious goal, but this month has been a struggle.
I’ve had so much human interaction in the past week, I’m on introvert-overload. My creativity is zapped. And I have failed to maintain my goal.
Admitting that I failed so soon after starting stings a bit. Rather than throwing in the towel, I’ve been trying to re-focus and narrow the scope of what I want to accomplish.
Today I was reading through Steve Pavilna’s blog Personal Development for Smart People. And I immediately identified with his message about behavioral conditioning. Pin-pointing the source of why I feel so far behind, even as I’m working my tail off, was instantaneous. I need to incorporate adjusting my behavior into a continuous routine that is focused on success. This way, as the many demands on my time shift, I can re-evaluate what behaviors I need to be taking.
Sometimes you may encounter situations where you know what you should be doing, but you’re having a tough time getting yourself to do it. Or perhaps you’re able to get started on a task, but you just can’t seem to maintain the momentum to see it through to the end. If such a problem continues for too long, you’re bound to start to seeing a detrimental effect on your overall confidence level. You may begin thinking you have a motivation problem, as if maybe you just don’t want to succeed badly enough.
One solution to this problem is conditioning, which comes in two primary forms: thought conditioning and behavioral conditioning.
Thought conditioning focuses on controlling what you think. This is a cognitive model of success, relying on the assumption that if you think the right thoughts, you’ll take the right actions, and thereby get the results you want.
Incorporating positive affirmations, visualizing a positive outcome, transformational vocabulary (choosing positive words to describe your situation as opposed to negative words, as in, “I’m having a fantastic day”), and certain forms of meditation in your life are all ways to utilize thought conditioning. And in many situations, thought conditioning is very effective, particularly when problematic thoughts are the root of the problem, such as a negative attitude causing you to rub people the wrong way.
Behavioral conditioning comes from a behavioral model of success. This model assumes that if you take the correct actions, you’ll achieve the results you want, regardless of what your thoughts are.
Behavioral conditioning focuses on forming new habits of action with little concern for what you think. Many behaviorists believe that if you take the right actions, the right thoughts will follow anyway. Examples of behavioral conditioning include setting your alarm clock to wake you up each morning or giving yourself a tangible reward for working an extra couple hours.
Both models can be used with great success. I spent a lot of time researching these topics getting my Psych degree. Today, however, I find that behavioral conditioning is more effective for me and a lot faster.
One of the problems with thought conditioning is that if you fail to take the right actions quickly, then your behavior can de-condition the very thoughts you’re trying to adopt. For example, if you’re trying to quit smoking, and you focus on thinking that you’re a nonsmoker and do some daily affirmations to that effect, but you keep lighting up in the meantime, then you’re sending mixed messages, and you’ll most likely slip back.
Your continued behavior is an affirmation too. But if you can manage to physically stop lighting up, even while you’re thinking you’re still a smoker, that behavior will tend to induce thoughts of being a nonsmoker. Behavioral conditioning works best when merely changing your behavior (regardless of how you think) is enough to guarantee a result. For example, if you stop making impulse purchases, you will save money, regardless of what you think about it.
I agree with behaviorists that motivation follows action. When you get yourself to take action, even when you aren’t initially motivated to do so, you will find that your motivation automatically increases. Having a productive day can be very motivating.
The basic idea behind behavioral conditioning is control and substitution. Figure out what actions you need to take to get the results you want (i.e. how you need to behave). Then condition yourself to take those actions. You’re always behaving some way — so make sure your behavior will give you the results you want. If you find you aren’t behaving in a manner that’s congruent with your goals, then take control of the situation and substitute the correct behavior for the incorrect one. For many goals it’s enough for you to simply put in the time — just investing enough time gets you 80% of the way there.
The problem is that most people unknowingly condition behaviors that will guarantee mediocre results. Look back on your behavior over this past month. Have your results been congruent with your actions? If you spend the next month behaving differently, will it change your results? Where do you see incongruencies between the results you want and your current habits of behavior? What changes would you like to make?
Here are several ways to use behavioral conditioning. All of these can be self-administered.
Eliminate the source of the undesired behavior.
This is the most severe approach (and not always the most appropriate), but it can be quick and effective when time is of the essence or when other options fail. If you can identify one or more sources of the undesirable behavior and eliminate them, the behavior will simply expire. For example, if your tendency to watch too much TV is hurting your productivity, get rid of the TV.
Eliminate the benefit of the undesired behavior.
This is a milder form of the above and is often more practical. Figure out why you exhibit the wrong behavior — what’s the immediate benefit? If you’re self-employed, and you sleep in late every morning, one possible benefit is that the later you sleep, the easier your day will be, assuming you stop working at roughly the same time each day. So one way to eliminate the benefit of sleeping in late is to give yourself an hourly quota to work each day. As soon as you hit your quota, you can stop working for the day. Now if you get up earlier, you’ll finish earlier, so there’s not much benefit to oversleeping.
Put the behavior on cue.
Control the undesired behavior by linking it an external cue, such as a certain time period. If you eat too much junk food and want to cut back, set aside a weekly junk food day where you can pig out on anything you want, and eat healthy foods the other six days.
Interrupt the behavioral pattern.
If you have a problem checking your email or web surfing too often during your workday, interrupt this behavior by hiding the programs’ icons in some inconvenient folder on your hard drive, so you can’t impulse-click them. Eliminate the visual cues that constantly remind you to check email or web surf. Or keep those same icons visible, but set them to link to different programs, so clicking on them launches a different program. Identify what’s triggering the negative behavior, and short-circuit it.
Introduce an incompatible behavior.
Introduce a new behavior or event that conflicts with the unwanted behavior. If you have a messy home but can’t get yourself to clean it, invite your boss over for dinner, assuming this would motivate you to clean up before s/he arrives. There are many creative ways to use other people as leverage to get yourself to take action.
To read Steve’s original post, Conditioning Yourself to Succeed, follow here.
Have you found any other ways of conditioning your behavior to meet your goals? If so, share them in the comments section below!
