On Saying “No” and Shoring up Empathy . . . In Memoriam: Alan Rickman
Another Approach to New Year’s Resolutions . . .
Do you still use New Year’s resolutions? Or do you have any alternatives to them, as you seek to establish and achieve goals in your personal or professional lives? By late January, the gym I’ve belonged to for a decade will get “back to normal,” after newbies have given up on their 6:30 am exercise. Meantime, I have to arrive very early or very late to get the machines I most want to use.
Writer Daphne Gray-Grant wrote in her blog last January 5th that although “45% of Americans” make new year’s resolutions, “fewer than 8% manage to keep them.” I’d imagine that the statistics for Canada (with our long, cold winters) are not much, if any, better.
So what alternatives do we have, if we still want to make and achieve goals that will chart a potentially better course of behaviour for us (be it work, exercise, hobbies, leisure) in 2016?
Gray-Grant recommends “if/then statements” as a way to talk to ourselves about our activity and motivation.
So a writer like me may say: “If I haven’t drafted my blog posting by 4:30 pm, then I must write it before I can read for leisure, tonight.”
Or here’s one more reminiscent of Seth Godin: “if my prospect hasn’t replied to my email by tomorrow noon, then I will definitely call him early tomorrow afternoon.”
Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer says that if/then statements work by getting us to consider “contingencies” (what psychologists like him call “implementation intentions”). “Contingencies” are a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty. The term also refers to a provision for such an event or circumstance—what we can do, Gray-Grant says, “when things go wrong” or other than we hoped.
She blogs on (and tested) this concept of contingency, observing that when we make an if/then statement, our brains immediately begin checking our environment to find the “if . . . [like] a dog seeking treats.” Once we’ve found the “if,” the “then” follows automatically, without our having to think or track our goal. The identification of the “if” doesn’t require us to have willpower to complete, as part of an if/then statement. As Gray-Grant observes, the statements “allow us to conserve our self-control for when we need it and compensate for it when we don’t have enough.”
So we can set up goal-directed behaviour as a response “to a particular future event or cue.”
Gray-Grant concludes that by “deciding in advance when and where we will take specific actions, [we] can double or triple our chances of success.”
What do you think of using if/then statements to attain goals? Try practicing some statements for a few days and let me know: do they help you to exercise and apply your self-control, as an entrepreneur, writer or artist?
And here’s to a happy, healthy and successful 2016!
December 24, 2015
Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors! My blog will return in two weeks’ time.
Need a stocking stuffer or holiday gift? Read my new eBook, a collection of interviews of local creatives who fight adversity . . . .
Getting Past It: Five Creatives Face Adversity . . . I’m happy to update you that today, my new eBook of this name has become available online!
Saskatoon designer and artist Kat Bens and Toronto based designer Oliver Sutherns have collaborated with me to produce an electronic collection of interviews with five Creatives who have battled adversity in their lives.
One interviewee faced nearly certain death from a heart attack brought on indirectly from faulty cancer treatment. Yet he moved on with painting, doing business and travelling . . . .
Another responded to the trauma of losing jobs by teaching herself HTML and volunteering “tens of thousands of hours” on a far-reaching anti-domestic abuse network for women . . . .
And more . . .
The phrase “Getting Past It” refers to the losses, traumas and other challenges that these people have “gotten past,” as well as any assumption we often make that life ends (i.e. we get “past it”) at age 40 or 60 or 100.
The issue is not whether these creative people dealt with adversity, but how, and the extraordinary achievements they’ve made, along the way. The stories are compelling and may inspire others in our community to facing adversity in similarly quiet, unsung lives.
The collection makes a great holiday gift or stocking stuffer!
The eBook, the first in a series to come in the future, is now available for purchase on the home page of my website at elizabethshih.com
I hope to hear from you and Happy Holidays 2015 to all of my readers!