Start with One
This time of year I find myself piecing together new routines, new products, new hacks, new systems that I want to adopt to have a more "successful" year. This rarely works and here's why...
it’s too much all at once.
Let me explain.
Change in and of itself sends red flags to your nervous system. And I mean ANY change. From changing your coffee order to changing your morning routine.
Say you want to order the burger and fries instead of your usual chiken tenders? Ever wonder why it’s so hard to deviate or go with that other choice? Why you become unsure if the burger is going to be as good, maybe they will cook it wrong, maybe it will have mayo and you hate mayo. And yet, it’s still not until the last second when you ask everyone at your table to go first and the server is waiting that you take the plunge and make a choice?
Seems like a lot for a basically inconsequential decision like your lunch, but your brain weighs all deviation like a life or death choice. It’s the exact same mechanism that’s deployed any time we drift, even slightly, from the well worn path of our current habits and routines.
Here’s another example…
Say you’re one of the people that typically plug any location you’re driving to into your GPS, but instead this time you get in and feel confident you know exactly how to get to the place you’ve been countless times before… but the instant you put the car in drive it’s, “what if there is a faster way this time of day?” Even when you have no timeline. Or even though you have driven there a million times before you second-guess if you make a right at the first traffic light or a left?
We won’t always recognize the symptoms as the pressure building, clammy hands, or weird sweating that comes from a waitress staring at your too long for your order (No, if you thought that was just you, you’d be wrong). Sometimes they come as second-guessing suggestions, what seemingly could be interpretted as helpful preparations or considerations are all still the safety mechanism of your brain trying to help you choose the same habits and routines it has already deemed perfectly good enough.
Now that you’re thoroughly or at least partially disheartened by how challenging our brains make it to choose anything other than things we already do, and if you’re a paid member and want to know why our brains do that, leave a comment below and I can speak on that somewhere for sure. Yes, even if it’s beneficial like going on a walk instead of sleeping in, even if it’s choosing an extra side of steamed veggies than fries, or putting down that second cup of coffee for a tall glass of water.
It’s. Still. The. Same.
So what do we want to do about it, because even if it’s hard, change is still possible.
Start with One.
Whether that means choosing one simple change to incorporate every day (which I think is the more triggering for your system IMO)
or a couple changes to incorporate ONE time a week.
Ex.
One time a week I’m going to go to the gym.
One time a week I’m going to write on Substack.
One time a week I’m going to sit down and record a podcast and schedule it.
One time a week I’m going to post something on TikTok.
These happen to be mine right now!
They always say it’s easy to do something one time, it’s the consistency of it that reeps the benefits. Yes, all well and good, but sending our nervous system into a tailspin with trying to set an expectation of consistency (which for whatever reason we have decided anything less than daily from the start and it’s not worth doing) when our brain doesn’t even want you to try new things even one time this expectation is (again, IMO) setting the bar too high.
So you want to change your habits, you have to be gentle with introductions and creating safety around something you’d like to try out before you give your brain the big old “H” word (habit).
Habit is a trigger word, whether we want to admit it or not it comes with baggage and expectations (daily or bust mindset) and even just notice how your body is reacting or feeling as you read this (as long as you’re undistrated while consuming this that is).
And again, say it with me, what does our brain feel about change?
Hell to the no thank you.
So start with one, tell your brain it’s something you’re just trying out, an experiment, if you will.
This works for two reasons:
It’s doesn’t create a huge margin for failure, therefore less pressure to meet an expectation that our brain doesn’t like from start to finish anyway.
The dopamine that gets released every time you do the thing (regardless of how long you wait between doing it) it then becomes a chemical reaction you want more of, and that will override a the fear response over time and therefore doing it more often will become something you want/crave vs have to do to uphold an expecation for change.
So when we don’t front load our brain with too much change (i.e. fear response) at one time. When we take the big old (H) word out of the mix because fun fact: you don’t actually have to name something as a habit to have it be one. When we stop harping on consistency, which by the way, the actual definition is:
“the achievement of a level of performance that does not vary greatly in quality over time.”
Which says nothing about how often something needs to be acheived to be deemed consistent.
When we take the pressure out of the expecation of change and we build a standard for sustainability instead, change is inevitable, and the frequency will increase with dopamine and safety.
Start with One.
Love you, Mean it,
Xx,
C
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