#4

Welcome to Weekly Whispers #4

What did you pick up and explore from Week #3?

Did you embrace any of the happiness tips and tools?

Have you considered beginning your 2nd life if you haven’t started yet 😊

Did you consider the step a future you would want you to take? I’d love to hear what it was.

Here's what's struck me this week:

1. Goal achieving tip - If-Then statements.

I’ve been having some success with changing some habits using the "If-Then" concept. If X happens then I’ll do Y.

As far as I can tell/research the concept was originally created by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer in the 90’s.  

In one experiment with his students regarding submitting an assignment, he asked one group to be very specific with when, where and how they would submit the assignment whereas with the other group they were asked simply to submit the assignment without any more instructions.

Incredibly, the group who were more specific had a 72% success rate whilst the control group hit 32%!

X can be a time; a place; an event; a feeling; a current habit – anything that is current in your life.

Y is the small step you can take to build a different/better habit.

The X triggers the Y.

For example, if it’s 5pm I’ll close my laptop lid. If I’m arriving home I’ll say hello to my family first; If it’s a Tuesday I’ll exercise; If I’m feeling hungry I’ll drink a glass of water; If I brush my teeth I’ll follow that with 10 push ups.

I’m sure the concept has been called other things too but I came across the following links that brought it to life for me.

Psychology Today - The Science of Success: The If-Then Solution

Harvard Business Review - Get Your Team to Do What It Says It’s Going to Do 

2. Question of the week: What uncomfortable truth do you need to face?

Given that we are meaning-making, habit-driven, comfort-seeking machines (most of which happened unconsciously), when we are confronted with an uncomfortable truth for ourselves it’s so easy to avoid and ignore, or promise ourselves we’ll get to it later. Why wait? The more we keep it in the dark the more it has power over us. Bring it out from the shadows and make friends with it.

3. "If people knew how hard I have to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all" – Michelangelo

That’s the thing about getting better – unless it’s by luck and chance most of our improvement is achieved by doing ‘the work’. The problem being that ‘the work’ can be dull, boring and monotonous producing invisible progress. I was struck by seeing this short video of Tom Brady still practicing the basics prior to the Superbowl this year. Click on the image below to take a look.

4. Freedom Fridays - My weekly experiment with time and focus

My intention is to openly share a change I’m making within my life. I’m hoping you can take the lessons learnt and apply it to any change you want to make.

This week was predominantly all about judgement – my own, about myself! Even to post the first podcast I had to ignore a series of judgements I was making about myself. Had I listened to them and acted upon their judgement I’d never have got started. Click below to listen to Episode 2.

That's all for this week and I hope you enjoyed Weekly Whisper #4 - let me know if you did.

Cheers

Pete