Have Media Will Travel

A blog about outdoor adventure, family travel, national parks, media, technology, marketing, fitness and me.

goals

We Are Of Many Minds; How to Leverage The Best One

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I wake up at 4 am three mornings a week to go to the gym and work out. Many people ask me, “How do you get up at 4 am to work out?” This question is not surprising; 4 am is crazy early. And of course the reasons I do it are numerous, but include the following: Getting up at dark thirty when everyone else in my family is fast asleep “creates time” for me, energizes me, which causes me to be more productive during the day, and provides a tremendous health benefit.

But the response really should be this: “Easy. I set my alarm at 4 a.m.; when it goes off, I get out of bed and go to the gym.” (See my humorous video response to this question from a while back.)

Seriously. It’s easy: You decide to do something, and then, you do it.

But if it’s so easy, why is it not so easy?

Um, because, in fact, it’s not easy. And the reason it’s not is we are of more than one mind. At 8 pm, when we’re setting the alarm, we are of the mind that we will get up and work out at the gym. But then the alarm goes off, and someone else is present in our mind and it’s not the same (crazy!) person who set the alarm and thought getting up early to go to the gym was a good idea. All too often, the person who reaches for the snooze, or that turns off the alarm entirely, wins the battle.

Alas, we are each of many minds and usually the “rivals” are not at the table at the same time. When they are, they duke it out, but chances are, the stronger one at the particular moment will almost surely win.

This scenario happens for each of us all the time. For example, yesterday was Halloween. I love all things sweet. We had pumpkin cookies, brownies and heaping bowls of candy at our home yesterday in preparation for trick-or-treaters and as a result of our sons’ own trick or treating.

I could have easily self-destructed by allowing myself to gorge on sweets all day long. To protect against this, I determined a day in advance, and again at dark thirty while working out at the gym on Halloween, that I would not eat a single piece of Halloween candy. I am no good at moderation, and I knew I’d feel physically miserable as a result of eating a bunch of candy.  I know that the only benefit of eating the candy is the taste of it, which lasts only as long as it takes to chew it. (And I “snarf” candy so it’s even more fleeting.) In other words, the upside of eating candy is very short-lived, whereas the longer-lasting result is not feeling very optimal. It’s not even a contest when you think about it.

And yet, how it is a contest, and not an easy one to win. While making the commitment was easy, honoring it was not. I am human, after all.

I am not good at many things. But one thing I am good at is setting and achieving goals. Still, as I put the Mounds into our bowl for trick-or-treaters, I was of the mind that “Halloween is just once a year. You love Mounds. You work out hard. You are so disciplined the rest of the year. You can have just one Mound. These are Mounds for crying out loud!”

You get the picture. This mind was clearly not the same mind that so steadfastly declared no sweets at the start of the day. It was a battle, except only the one side appeared to be present at the moment, the “weaker” one, which aimed to sabotage my earlier commitment.

I fancy myself as a strategist. I love experimenting and researching ways to win battles and achieve goals. I’ve been reading a lot about the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, and things that affect our behavior.

What I’ve figured out, as a result of both my research and my own experimentation, is there are ways to decide which mind we are serious about and want to honor, and ways to strengthen that one, while weakening the other. We can find ways to sort of “trick” the weaker of the minds.

To illustrate, let’s return to the waking up early to go work out at the gym example. Let’s say you’re serious about your commitment to rise early to work out at the gym. Ways to bolster your chance of winning that battle and honoring your commitment might include going to bed at a reasonable time, setting the coffeemaker to brew a cup for you for that early, having your gym clothes out and ready, placing the alarm clock out of reach so you have to get out of bed to tend to it, and  — if all these things still aren’t enough –– asking your significant other to remind you and enforce your desire to get up and go to the gym when the alarm sounds. There are yet more things you can do, such as thinking of those awesome designer jeans you want to fit into, or thinking of the way you will feel (disappointed) when you get up at 7 am and realize you let yourself down by not honoring your commitment to wake early and exercise. You can come up with more than these if you wish.

On the other hand, ways to sabotage your efforts and strengthen the lazier, less-committed mind, would be to stay up late watching a movie while drinking a bottle of wine and snacking late, and to not to do any of aforementioned “preloaded” things.

Following are some strategies that work for me when it comes to achieving goals and in an attempt to honor the “best” of my many minds.

Deciding your priorities is the first step, but committing is critical if you are serious about achieving something or making serious change in your life.  Deciding and committing are not the same thing. We decide all the time to do things. Committing is making them happen.

Once I commit to the people and things that are my priorities, I take my commitments very seriously, which includes making sure I don’t have an easy way to retreat, and wherever possible, creating habits and developing them into routine.

Routine serves me well. Making decisions requires energy and self-control.  Our supply of self-control is limited, so why wouldn’t we go to great lengths to preserve it? Dan and Chip Heath call this “preloading” — when you make a decision ahead of time, thereby preventing the use of self-control later. In short, if you decide and commit to something in advance, you don’t need to consider it or make a decision about it when it comes up in real time.  In my experience, this saves energy and helps my chances of success.

Examples of preloaded decisions I have built into regular routine are working out at the gym three mornings a week, not eating ice cream except during my ice cream social with our three sons on Friday afternoons, having tea with my parents every Wednesday afternoon, distance training on Friday mornings during spring and summer, shutting my cell phone down during the weekends, and so on.

I’m not saying that preloading prevents me from being tested. But it does mean the temptations are more limited and not as great of a presence if I’ve made decisions in advance about them.

By the way, I did not eat the Mound. I did not eat a single piece of Halloween candy. It was hard, but I stayed true to my commitment. Tying the consequences to short-term emotional feelings (in this case disgust and feeling physically lousy) tends to be effective in helping me choose to do the right thing. For that reason I recommend it.

Hope this of value to you. What are some ways that you honor commitments and achieve goals that you set?

I am a life/leadership coach. Services include on-demand coaching and consulting, with an option that includes an epic outdoor adventure. I also provide nutrition and personal branding consulting. Please email me if you’re interested in learning more about this.

Life is Full of Micro & Macro Route Decisions

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(Note: Here’s a 4-minute video blog of the same)

Most of us have an idea about what we want our life and future to be. Call it our destination. It’s where we’re headed. It’s the life that we’re trying to create. It’s what every day we’re working toward.

If given a choice, I will always choose the high route.

There are many ways we can get there. And I suspect most of us would agree that there is value in the journey.

So we “route find” our way through our lives. At times we follow paved roads, complete with signs and navigation. Other times we follow trails. And still other times we bushwhack, creating our own path. Life is a series of macro and micro route finding decisions. For example, a macro decision for me is deciding that I want to be a life and leadership coach. A micro decision might be determining what coaching program to enroll in.

In August, I embarked on a NOLS Backpacking course in the Brooks Range of Alaska. For two weeks we backpacked north of the Arctic Circle. There are no trails in the 700-mile-wide Brooks Range. So our course involved a lot of map reading and route-finding.

About halfway through the course, we had to make a decision about which route we’d follow to hike to the Dalton Highway to meet our pick up at the end of the course. We had two choices: Follow the Chandalar River bottom all the way out, or, take an alternative route, which we dubbed “the high route,” which would mean ascending at least two mountain passes.

Ascending a steep mountain pass in falling snow.

Thankfully we voted and it was decided, unanimously, to take the high route.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There are far worse ways to spend six days than hiking along the Chandalar River. However, it would be about six days of the same spectacular scenery and experience. It would lack adventure due to the unvaried aspect of the route and the predictability of the terrain.

The high route, on the other hand, would provide a variety of vantages from which to view the Brooks Range. It would also be more physically demanding, mentally challenging, while almost certainly providing more uncertainty. It would be the more interesting route, and there would be far more learning to come out of it. For all of these reasons I, and I think my course-mates, found it to be more compelling.

I think we chose well.

I remember one day my hiking group ascended a mountain pass. A light snow was falling on us, making the terrain, which was loose rock on top of loose rock on a steep slope, wet and slippery.

It took tremendous focus and determination for each of us to ascend the pass. Each foot had to be deliberately placed. It was not fun. It was hard work and extremely taxing on the body and the mind.

For which we were significantly rewarded. Standing at the top of the pass, we were elated about our accomplishment, as we took in views of mountains in all directions and a labyrinth of canyons. And, to top it off, one side of the pass had a complete, bright rainbow arching over its abyss, and the other side had intermittent sun shining through lightly falling snow. It was surreal, and it was unforgettable.

Gold at the end of the rainbow. Indeed.

We would have missed this amazing experience had we chosen the easier, safer route.

Life is like this. We get choose our route(s), and factors that will influence our decisions often include amount of effort required, degree of difficulty, level of uncertainty, and so on.

Following a well-traveled path is easier. The heavy lifting has been done. There are maps, textbooks, signage, experiences and wisdom shared from others who have gone before us. There is not a lot of new learning required. It’s predictable, and as a result pretty “safe.” There are few unknowns, if any.

Charting your own path is harder. It’s baptism by fire, trial and error. It’s bushwhacking. It’s climbing uphill, and over loose terrain. You’re more exposed. There are many unknowns, because it’s possible that no other person has gone before you, or where you intend to go. You might hike all day before arriving at a cliff, which will mean backtracking, re-routing, or possibly having to start over. There are no maps. It’s mostly work, and a lot of learning.

It’s a great question to ask yourself: In your life, are you following a trail, or are you charting your own course? And how’s it working out for you?

I am a life/leadership coach who provides on-demand coaching, combined with an epic adventure. Please email me if you’re interested in learning more about this.

RELATED POSTS:
NOLS Brooks Range Backpacking course — Not a Guided Tour
My Brooks Range People Made Me Better
Other Life and Leadership-related Posts

To Win, Back Yourself Against a Cliff

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I am a goal-oriented person. I always am working on a goal, or ten.

From time to time, I refer to the goals I set as Ulysses pacts. A Ulysses pact, or contract, is a self-made decision that binds one to the future. The term refers to the pact Ulysses (Odysseus) made with his men as they approached the Sirens. Sirens were the three dangerous bird women/seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.

Ulysses wanted to hear the Sirens’ song but he knew doing so would render him irrational so he put wax in his men’s ears so that they were unable to hear, and had them tie him to the mast so that he could not jump into the sea. He then ordered them not to change course under any circumstances, and to keep their swords upon him to attack him if he should break free of his bonds. (Source: Wikipedia.org)

I set many goals and achieve most of them. And while I don’t take it to the extreme that Ulysses did, I understand his thinking. I absolutely credit the achievement of my goals to my level of commitment to them, and to the fact I tie them to short-term consequence(s) with no chance for compromise. I’m sharing what works for me here in hopes it will be of value to others.

It’s pretty easy to decide to do something. How many of us decide we’re going to eat healthier starting this week? But we don’t. Or we’re going to start going exercising again, and/or we’re going to join a gym.  But we don’t. We are going to limit our alcohol consumption, or give up smoking. But we don’t. We are going to start saying “no” more often. But we don’t. We are going to spend less time watching television. But we don’t. We are going to read more. But we don’t. The list goes on. We all do it.

Deciding, while it’s a start, is not enough. I think pretty hard about something I want to achieve before deciding it is a goal. Then, I commit. (Deciding and committing, while they go together, are not the same things. The distinction is critical. Please watch this video for more.)

Further, if the goal is too big, or too vague then it’s likely the goal won’t be achieved. I would have little chance at succeeding if I were to say, “I want to be healthier” or “I want to watch less television.” The goal needs to be very specific, with no ambiguity. As Chip and Dan Heath so effectively put it in their awesome book, Switch, we should “shrink the change” (make the goal not so vague or big) to increase our likelihood of success.

For me to have any chance at succeeding at a goal, I make a big deal of it to those closest to me. I need not only their support, but also, very importantly, their accountability.

So commitment is the first requirement. Tying the commitment it to short-term consequence(s) is the second.

Neuroscientiest David Eagleman, in an EXCELLENT Radiolab.org podcast, called “Help!,” says one of the best strategies for breaking a habit or making a change or achieving a goal is to tie it to “some sort of emotional salience — some reason why they matter to us right now, otherwise they will never work.”

A personal example is my weight loss journey that started in March of 2009. After three years of growing lazy, overweight and out of shape, the feeling of disgust and regret that I met with every single night when I went to bed served as the best motivator and consequence in my mission to lose weight and get healthy again.

My goal was a long-term one – to be a vibrant mother and wife who takes care of her health and body. But the short-term consequences were what did it for me and kept me true to my commitment to good health once I set that goal. I tied the future goal to a short-term feeling of disgust and regret. I did not want to feel that way. So my battle became a battle of disgust vs. desire (to not exercise and to keep eating too much junk food). In my humble opinion and experience, disgust almost always wins over desire.

Thomas C. Schelling is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist who has written a lot about the idea of commitment. (Being a fanatic about commitment, I enjoyed his Strategies of Commitment, which I highly recommend.)

In the same, aforementioned Radiolab podcast, Schelling talks about arranging commitment “so you can’t compromise.”

An example he gives is from ancient Greece. A Greek being pursued by a huge army of Persians had to make a stand on a hillside, and one of his generals said “I don’t think this is a good location to make our stand. There is a cliff behind us. There’s no way we can retreat if we need to.” He told the General, “Exactly.”

Schelling personally enlisted this strategy in his own life. In the Radiolab.org podcast, Schelling tells of his own win over smoking. In 1980, after many failed attempts to quit smoking, he gathered his children together, and told them, “I quit.” But that wasn’t all. He told them they “should never have respect for their father again” if he returned to smoking. Guess what? He never smoked again.

I will give one more example of a goal of mine with short-term consequence, which is far less significant than giving up smoking, but illustrates the effectiveness of the strategy this post is about.

I’m on Day 7 of a 30-day “no nuts or fruits” pact. If I screw up, my short-term consequences for the week are: 1) I cannot have the scoops of ice cream I have on Friday with my sons during our traditional weekly ice cream social, and 2) I have to train/exercise in the streets of Lander, which would mean forgoing the trails in the canyon, foothills and mountains above town, where I prefer to train. (Of course, fruits and nuts are good for a person. But I eat an excessive amount of both, so this is simply a pact to clean my slate on these items before reintroducing them at reasonable and healthy levels.)

By the way, upon hearing the Sirens’ song, Ulysses was driven temporarily insane and struggled with all of his might to break free so that he might join the Sirens, which would have meant his death.

But this is beside the point. He survived AND he didn’t give in to the Sirens. Right? Thanks for listening, and good luck with your goals.

Shelli Johnson is a life/leadership coach. Her business, YOUR EPIC LIFE, Life Should Take Your Breath Away, combines coaching with an epic adventure. Email her for more information.

RELATED POST:
Self Control is an Exhaustible Resource

Self Control is an Exhaustible Resource

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Disclaimer: I am NOT one of those people who abhors New Years Resolutions. I love them. What’s not to like or love about using the new year, fresh off of holiday goodies and the end of one year and the start of another to resolve to make positive change(s)?

Hi there. I like challenges, so I like the challenges of making change.

I know I’m a little weird this way, but I love change — if it’s positive. And, the harder the change, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I like the challenge it provides and the fulfillment that follows if I’ve remained committed to it — not to mention the benefits realized in my life as a result of making the change.

I read Switch, by brothers Dan and Chip Heath some months ago. It is an amazing book. Its subtitle is Making Change When Change is Hard. Yes, for me, this book resonates.

Among the most common — and important, I might add — resolutions people make for the new year are related to weight and fitness. To lose weight and to get more exercise. Both of these things not only will help prevent many illnesses, extend our lives and possibly even save our lives, but will also add vitality and energy to our lives. Who among us doesn’t want more vitality and energy? The other important benefits of being at our ideal weights with improved fitness are — let’s not hide these important realities — is that we will look better and be more confident.

Some of you may have been following my “fitness journey” blogging. I am 5′ 4″ tall. In March 2009, I weighed 158 pounds. I was soft and for a few years had gotten lazy. Sedentary by most people’s standards. Today, I weigh 132. I’ve lost 14% body fat and 26 pounds. I dropped three pant sizes. I started wearing a swim suit and joining my husband and three sons in the pool. I started tucking my blouses in. I became able to romp on the floor with three young, rambunctious sons.

But as important as these things is this fact: Everything in my life — every single thing — is better as a result of my improved health. The latter is not to be underestimated and should be a motivator for anyone to lose some weight and get moving.

One of the most important sections in Switch is about self-supervision. Things that we do that require self-supervision are often the hardest things we do because they require the most effort. Self-supervision means self control.

Many of the things we do in our daily lives are automatic and don’t require much self-supervision or self control. Examples are brushing your teeth, driving home from work along the same route for the 200th time, taking a shower, etc.

On the other hand, self-supervised tasks are those that require deliberate thought and action. Examples of this that the Heaths provide in their book are learning a new dance, or organizing a book shelf or giving an employee evaluation. You can’t just cruise through these things without careful thought, consideration and effort. This self-supervised work is hard, and according to the Heaths, can be downright draining.

So far, you probably find none of this too surprising.

But this is where it gets fascinating. We don’t have an unlimited supply of self control/self-supervision. True, some of us have a bigger supply than others and probably, depending on the time in our life, at times we may have a greater supply than other times. For example, in the first four years of operating our business, I’m sure my supply of self control was high, but that it still was often not enough, given the challenges and efforts and emotional and financial investment involved. Contrast that with my life currently, and I have a big supply still, but I often get through a day with excess to spare. Not every day, but often, and when it happens it’s a great feeling.

The Heaths explain it much better than I can:
Psychologists have discovered that self control is an exhaustible resource. It’s like doing bench presses at the gym. The first one is easy, when your muscles are fresh. But with each additional repetition, your muscles get more exhausted, until you can’t lift the bar again.

Here’s further explanation by the Heaths:
In one study, some people were asked to restrain their emotions while watching a sad movie about sick animals. Afterward, they exhibited less physical endurance than others who’d let their tears flow freely. The research shows that we burn up self control in a wide variety of situations: managing the impression we’re making on others; coping with fears; controlling our spending; trying to focus on simple instructions…

This is all important information to consider with respect to making a change, or changes. The Heaths write — and I can’t agree with this more as it’s definitely been the case in my personal experience — that when we try to change things it often means tinkering with behaviors that have come automatic. So making the change is a big deal. It requires supervision. Self-supervision. Self control.

And this is a bummer. Because when people exhaust their self control in an effort to make change, what they’re exhausting are their mental muscles needed in order to focus and think creatively, to persist in the face of frustration or failure, explain the Heath brothers.

It’s likely that our tendency is often to pass judgment on people who fail at making change or who have a hard time making change. We think of them as lazy or resistant. The Heaths say to do this is flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out… What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

Speaking of exhaustion, you’re probably getting exhausted from reading this long post. Sorry about that. Like I warned in the beginning, I love change, so I love talking and sharing about it. So I’ll start to wrap it up here, my friends, in hopes you’ll come back for more. 🙂

In my personal experience, here’s what I’ve found to be a most helpful tool in making change in my own life: Cement elements of the change(s) you’re making into routine and make them mandatory, not optional. Do this all ahead of time, before you start. And, speaking of starting, I also commit to a starting date for affecting a particular change.

By doing the aforementioned two things, I preserve that limited amount of self control that I have — that we all have — by “pre-loading” decisions ahead of time and committing to them. In other words, these are not optional. These are not simply decisions that can be reconsidered or changed at a later date.

For example, in March 2009 when I finally committed to losing weight and getting healthier, I determined ahead of time the following tasks: that I’m going to work out at 4:30 am at the gym on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, that I’m going to eat vegetables with every meal every day, that I’m going to not eat any snacks after 7 p.m., that our family is going to have a sit-down dinner at least four evenings during the school/work week, that I’m not going to eat pasta, pizza, bread or pastries for six months, and so on.

By making these decisions ahead of time, I’ve removed the decision-making tasks that can deplete that can of self control I start out with every day pretty quickly. In other words, I’m not making these decisions … they’ve already been made. There’s no supervision required and the need for self control has been largely reduced. This is not to say it’s easy, but rather to suggest that some of the heavy lifting which would otherwise require self-supervision and therefore deplete your limited supply of self control, has already been done. (By the way, I took a full court press approach to my losing weight because I’m impatient and wanted quicker-than-average results. A person doesn’t have to make so many changes at once like I did to realize positive results.)

I can tell you it makes a tremendous difference when you script such rules and commit to them, ahead of time.

As usual, thanks for reading. I would love to hear any tips you have in how you’ve been able to affect positive change. I’m sure they could inspire and help others during this time of resolving to make change in 2011.

Happy new year!

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By the way, I’m studying with Coaches Training Institute to become a certified life coach. One of my biggest hopes/goals is to help motivate people to self-motivate to make positive change in their own lives. I look forward to the challenge of helping people make big change and to witnessing their fulfillment as a result. I continue to work on making changes in my life, as well.

Some of the posts I’ve shared during my life coaching learnings thus far are:
I Want to Be a Life Coach, Part 1
I Am Here. But I’m Not. Not Really.
Lost in the Middle of Somewhere
An Inquiry: What Does Hard Work Get Me?
Are You Deciding or Are You Committing?

My Upcoming Fitness Goals

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This is POST 30 of my “fitness journey.”For backstory, see Post 1,
Post 2, Post 3, Post 4, Post 5, Post 6, Post 7,Post 8, Post 9, Post 10, Post 11, Post 12Post 13,Post 14, Post 15, Post 16, and Post 17,Post 18, Post 19,Post 20,Post 21, Post 22,Post 23, and Post 24, Post 25, Post 26, Post 27,Post 28 and Post 29.

Elemental Gym has a fantastic gym, some terrific programs and classes that will help you achieve better fitness. And, I might add, some great personal trainers: Steve Bechtel, Ellen Bechtel, Jagoe Reid, Sophie Mosemann and Lee Brown.