Category: Change

Longitudinal Learning

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Our days are made up of repeating patterns.

The same walk we take, or transportation we ride in. The same elevators we stand in and lunch spots we frequent. The places we take our kids.

Try this: instead of going on auto-pilot in these spaces (or, worse, reflexively taking out your phone), stay present.

Use your eyes, your ears, your nose, to take in your surroundings.

If you do this, in time you’ll discover:

  1. Things you’ve literally never seen before, even if you’ve walked by them hundreds of time
  2. Subtle changes in a seemingly fixed landscape, changes that reveal surprising truths over time

Our brains are wired for pattern recognition, sense-making and storytelling.

This also means that we create shortcuts, losing the nuance of wherever and whenever we are, calling it “this elevator”, “that bus,” “that conference room” as if it’s fixed for eternity.

But our reality is not fixed, it is ever-changing, if only we take the time to notice.

Here’s an experiment: imagine each day in these “same places” is one frame in a movie that plays over time.

Then, imagine yourself watching that movie, with one frame from each day, over weeks, months or years.

What story would unfold?

What surprising changes would you witness?

And how much of what evolves comes from changes in the landscape versus changes in the viewer?

Structure Beats Effort

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

I’ve had a running for the train problem for two decades now.

My current house (like my last house) is a brisk 10 minute walk from the train I take in to New York City.

On average, for the last 20 years, I’ve walked out of my house 7 to 8 minutes before the train I’m taking. While I never miss the train, at least half of the days (maybe more) I run some or all of the way there—arriving to the platform panting, sweaty, and stressed.

Once, fifteen years ago, a neighbor stopped my wife and said, “I see your husband running for the train every day. Is everything OK?” At the time I had two kids under the age of five. Today I have no excuse.

This behavior is, of course, totally crazy. If can leave my house 2 to 3 minutes late, every workday, for decades, you’d think it would be blindingly easy to leave my house on time, right?

Apparently not.

In the past couple months, for the first time, things are improving. I’m leaving 10 minutes before the train, and sometimes 11, 12, even 14 minutes early. And when I leave that early, I see other people—strolling, relaxed. Who knew?

The change I’ve made is about structure, not attitude or effort.

I’m not trying any harder, I just bought cereal and milk in the office so I don’t eat breakfast at home any more.

Of course, it’s possible I’ll eventually revert to my old, running late ways. But I don’t think so. Because structural changes are the changes that stick.

This means that if you have any “always” in your life, you need a structural change. As in…

I’m always tired.

I’m always stressed.

I’m always in back-to-back meetings.

I’m always craving something sweet after a meal.

I’m always having a drink or two at the end of a workday.

I’m always under-investing in my friendships, or my marriage, or my kids.

The answers to these “always” will start with things like deleting social media apps from your phone; cutting your default meeting time in half; or taking a two week sugar fast.

Structure beats effort, every time.

Less Intense, More Frequent

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I strained my right hamstring back in April playing squash. It wasn’t too bad at first, and I figured I’d be back to 100% in six to eight weeks’ time.

I spent the subsequent four months trying, unsuccessfully, to fix my hamstring myself.

My approach, as always, was to barrel straight at the problem: intense stretching or strengthening workouts focused directly on the area that hurt.

Four months later, in early August, I had to accept the obvious: my hamstring was no better; if anything, it hurt more.

Chastened, I resigned myself to stopping most of my regular activity and starting physical therapy.

Happily, two months later, I’m finally seeing good progress.  And, as I watch how PT works, it’s easy to see how different its approach is than what I’d been doing.

Everything we do in PT feels more moderate and measured than what I would do. Very little strain, absolutely no pain.

But, miraculously, real gains over time thanks, no doubt, to the consistency of the effort. Week in, week out, whether convenient or not, I’ve been putting in the time, even in the absence of obvious improvement. I’m finally getting somewhere.

It’s easy to make the mistake I made with any new thing we’re trying to learn: we get inspired, decide to “go for it,” and put in a bunch of effort for a few weeks, expecting results. When we don’t see them, or when the novelty quickly wears off, we give up. As in:

  • Vowing to get more organized, finding a new To Do list software, filling the list, and feeling super-accomplished in week 1…and then giving up when the list gets too full to manage
  • Reading a great article about setting aside quiet time in our schedule, crushing it in the first week or two but then schedule a “really important” meeting during that time, and then another, and another…
  • Going to a training about the value of professional feedback, studiously setting up three formal feedback sessions with peers per the facilitator’s instructions, and then snapping back to the old way of doing things
  • Dreaming of becoming a better writer, writing for an hour a day for a week and then being so terrified of the blank page that we close Word, convinced that we tried and we failed.

The too-large dosage, the version of the story where we dive in with massive commitment and enthusiasm, can be part of the problem. This is because big, symbolic shifts start with fanfare but are often hard to sustain. Worse, when our “new thing” requires a lot of effort, we invariably look too soon for results and, when they don’t materialize, we take that to mean something about our ability to learn or do this new thing, and we desist.

The reality of most change is that it is much slower than we expect or hope it will be.

So, in planning to make change, we must ask not only “what is the new habit I would like to nurture” but also “what is the new practice I believe I can sustain, not for a week or two, but for a few months until it becomes ‘the way I do things?’”

Drip, drip, drip.

Changes that become part of who we are happen because we make them part of our lives over a long period of time.

Small, consistent doses make that kind of sustained change possible.

Many Doors

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Part of the experience of getting older is physical change. Whether injury or illness, our bodies react differently than they used to, often showing less resilience. Often, these changes present new, frustrating limitations.

These setbacks are challenging. They require us to give things up, to change our routines, sometimes to recast our self-image.

And it is natural to experience many of these changes as one-way doors: “I used to be able to do this, now I can only do this.”

If we’re lucky, and if we commit to rest and recovery, they are, in fact, two-way doors: “right now, I can no longer do this, but I will be able to come back through this door in a few months’ time.”

We can have the same experience when we learn something about ourselves. Imagine a colleague says something that really hits home—a new truth about how she experiences you. Have you just walked through:

  • A one-way door. “I am (or am not) the type of person who is good at _______. End of story.”
  • A door that swings both ways. “I have learned that I am (or am not) not currently the kind of person who is good at _____, and I’m going to use that information to do _____ so that this will change over time.
  • Two doors: “I have learned that this is (is not) my strength, and I’m worse at (better at) this other thing. So I’m going to choose to do more of this and less of that.”
  • Multiple doors: “I have learned this new thing about myself, so I’m going to walk through this other door for a while, and maybe come back here later. And, lo and behold, at the other side of this door there’s a whole new series of doors, and…”

The analogies, and the opportunities, begin to multiply.

While this is easy to embrace analytically, feeling it in our gut sometimes takes a bit more work.

Whether a physical change we don’t like, or a hard truth we didn’t want to hear, the biggest risk is that we mistake something that is true now for something that is simply true.

That incorrect conclusion will shape our actions, turning something temporary into something permanent.

“True” almost always means “true right now.” And “now” is different from “later” because of how we respond to the new information.

How to Make a Big Pot

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I was chatting with my son, who is a potter, about what it takes to make really big pieces on the wheel.

Last year, he’d often come back from class to report that the piece he had thrown had collapsed. Week after week he’ spend two hours at the wheel and have nothing to show for it.

That’s not happening to him this year and I asked him why: is he being less ambitious with his projects or has he just gotten better?

He said the answer was pretty simple: speed.

Last year he would try to get a piece from tall to tall-and-wide really quickly – in two or three minutes. A new teacher this year explained that the process needs to take closer to 30 minutes. The simple fact is, the clay cannot transform and stretch that fast.

We often ask ourselves whether we are able to change as if it’s a binary thing. More often still, we notice our pace of change and feel it’s not fast enough.

Of course, change is possible, we just need to recognize how slowly or quickly we can stretch and transform.

Old habits, old mindsets, old attitudes, old limitations. They’ve made themselves part of our psyche and part of our personal story. We took years, maybe even decades to build them up. Should we expect that they’ll just fade away after a few minutes, weeks, or even months?

Our biggest barrier to change isn’t ability, it is attitude: the willingness to stick with things long enough to have  our efforts bear fruit.

Don’t let your results after a few days, weeks or even months dictate what you can accomplish. Your change, your stretch, your transformation – they’re all happening.

The trick is to understand, and to embrace, the pace of what is possible

 

Nothing’s Changed

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So often, we’re easily convinced that we have an objective view of ourselves.

That thing we’re working on, the new skill we are cultivating, the organizational improvement that we’re spearheading? We believe that we can see where we are today relative to where we’ve been.

And yet our children grow up before our eyes, and, were it not for photos, bigger shoes and the occasional new bike, we’d never see it.

The truth is, real change happens daily, incrementally, often imperceptibly. It also is rarely linear, meaning even a plateau can be the precursor to a leap forward.

Yet when a change requires our sustained effort—as most important change does—our “nothing’s changed” assessment can be an excuse to slow down or even stop.

Find objective measures and use them to mark your progress.

And, when in doubt, keep at it. You’ve already come further than you think.

10 out of 30

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Two weeks ago, to address some recurring pain in my knee, I made a 30-day yoga commitment: a minimum of 30 minutes of yoga a day for 30 days. I even have a big ol’ Austin Kleon 30 Day Challenge calendar hanging in my kitchen, with giant red-crayon X’s for each day I’ve completed.

10 days in, I noticed a few things.

The beginning is not the hard part. In fact, beginning big commitments is fun. There’s a bit of fanfare as you tell folks. A sense of self-validation that you’re doing something big and courageous. You spend time imagining the amazing results that will come at the end of 30 days.

This glow remains for a few days. Those first days are a living, breathing validation of all that excitement. They’re still fun.

Then, about a third of the way in, the excitement dies down.

You’re by yourself, alone with your commitment.

There’s no fanfare, no fans.

It’s just you, stuck in the middle. You’re tired and struggling for time and motivation. Maybe you’re noticing that you’ve not made as much progress as you originally imagined.

What a tempting moment to quit.

“Who will notice, really? Maybe I’ll just skip a day.”

I know that my motivation to start on Day 10 was zero. Same for days 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Here’s a dirty little secret about hard work, especially the kind that leads to real and lasting change: the middle bits (and lots of the bits) aren’t all that glamorous.

They’re hard not just because of the actual challenge of doing the hard thing we’ve decided to do. They’re also hard because the act of following through is itself sometimes a grind.

All of us, 3-4 months into this pandemic, find ourselves past the beginning stage of this new world and new life. We’re far from the shore we left, and we’ve got no clear end in sight. No doubt we have felt, or are about to feel, a dip.

Whether or not you’ve specifically made a 30-day commitment, you’re no doubt spending your days doing new things, trying on new approaches, working on new ways (slowly…but also surely) of becoming the person you’re meant to become: a healthier you, a stronger you, a more accepting you, a more confident you, a more grounded you, or maybe a you that’s more at piece with the fact that kid(s) + job(s) = a different calculus on what “productive” really means.

In case you find yourself stuck, I thought it might help to hear this reminder: just because the middle bits are hard doesn’t mean it’s time to give up.

In fact, the middle bits being hard are the best indication that you’re doing something worthwhile, something that will yield important results.

Keep showing up for yourself.

The results will come in time.

 

Right Thought, Right Action

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You’d think they go together nearly all the time.

But when we’re trying to change, especially when someone has asked us to change, they rarely do.

Thankfully, right action is always available to us.

We just start, we do this new thing, once, a second time, over and over again.

We might not understand why. But we can choose to start by acting, and in so doing we show our faith in and respect for the person who suggested the change.

If it helps, you can see this right action as an exploration: once we genuinely engage in right action, we will see its results. Often, at this moment, our blinders come off. The limitations of our arguments defending our prior, not-as-right action, get exposed.

Right thoughts will follow, because the actions and their results speak for themselves.

The other path, the one where we only act after we’re convinced it’s right, is a mirage.

Because our mind has this terrible tendency to believe itself.

Old Dog, New Tricks

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

old dogs, new tricks

It is simply not true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Yes, you might not be able to teach an old dog to run as fast, or jump as high, or even see as well. Old has its disadvantages, to be sure. But old dogs are actually better than young ones at learning new tricks: they have better attention spans, and are less easily distracted.

No, the old dog’s problem is the old tricks: having spent a lifetime getting positive reinforcement for those old tricks, she just can’t seem to let them go.

If you are one of my many non-dog readers, think about it for a minute: isn’t what got us here all our old tricks? And aren’t we quite well-trained to seek the praise get when we do them?

Couple the power of that lifetime of reinforcement with our recommended daily allowance of pride, fear, unwillingness to admit fallibility and surrender authority. Then top that with a cherry of the smidge of shame we anticipate if we try something new and unproven in front of other dogs. After all of that, we may not even know if we’re any good at new tricks, because there’s so much underbrush to clear away before we even let ourselves get started.

Perhaps we can motivate ourselves by another adage, this one less famous but more useful: if we fight for our limitations and win, our prize is that we get to keep them.

Symptoms and causes

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You tweak your knee and start limping a little, only to find that your lower back on the other side starts to ache.

Your job has gotten overwhelming, you are working too many hours, and now, no matter what kind of day you had, you’re finding it hard to get a good night’s sleep.

Two colleagues have misaligned expectations for who will do what, the deliverables get botched, and, going into the next client presentation, they are reticent to work together.

We’re all told to work on the root cause, and not just the symptoms. But often the symptoms become just as real as the thing that caused them – whether pain in your back, learned anxiety, or another deliverable that’s not up to snuff.

If the thing you can work on today is the symptom, and you know how to do that work, then that’s the right place to start.

Often, we behave our way into new attitudes, not the other way around.