Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 243 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Have you shared an episode lately? Have you given me a 5 star review? When is NOW the best time to do that? That’s an old Tony Robbins saying, I love it. OK
How many of us have some behavior that we wish we could change? Maybe less drinking, eating less or working out more, maybe limiting your time on social media. How many have tried to change only to fall right back into the old habits?
I’m going to show you today how studies have shown a better way to positively change a behavior. We have all probably tried the use of fear, maybe warning ourselves or threatening punishment to our kids, to get a behavior change.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s use the goal of wanting to eat less, because I’m willing to guess we have all been on a diet at some point in our life. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. If you’re like me, I will say Heidi, if you keep snacking on macadamia nuts all day, (very delicious and healthy but also high in fat and calories) if you keep grazing on those all day, you’re gonna put on weight. So that’s kind of like a warning to myself, hey if you do that, this bad thing is gonna happen. Sort of like a threat.
Maybe you have a teenager and you have warned them that if they smoke it could damage their lungs, ruin their health, all the things or if they don’t do their homework, they could fail.
In other words how many times have we tried to use a warning or a threat as a way to change our own behavior or someone else’s? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
So what is the most effective way to change a behavior? Well, there is a study that is so fascinating to me.
It was done at a New York state hospital, and their goal was to get everyone to wash their hands, for obvious reasons in medical settings its extremely important to prevent the spread of disease. The medical staff is repeatedly made aware of this, and warning signs about the consequences of unwashed hands. There are signs in several places near sinks, the sanitizing gel station anywhere they thought it might help. Even with all those warnings, cameras monitoring every sink and hand sanitizer station in that hospital, revealed that only 10% of medical staff sanitized their hands before and after entering a patient’s room. This was despite the fact that the employees knew they were being recorded, they knew there were cameras.
So they tried something else. An electronic board was placed in the hallway of the unit that gave employees instant feedback. Every time they washed their hands the board displayed a positive message (such as “Good job!”) and their team score would automatically go up when they got the positive message. Guess what happened? Within four weeks, 90% of staff were washing their hands. To make sure it wasn’t a fluke they did the same study in a different area of the hospital and got the same results.
So why did this work so well?
- They got immediate positive feedback
- They were able to measure their progress
- They could affect that progress in a positive way so their team score went up
So what can you do instead of threatening yourself, your kids or your husband with their life if they don’t do something?
Brooke Castillo, the founder of the life coach school actually created an idea called the “urge jar”, you find a beautiful glass jar that you love and you also find a bag of marbles or stones that you love, that you love the feel of and you love the way they look. For me mine are veery natural, they are actually stones, river rocks. So….
How does the urge jar work? The reason we do anything is because we have the urge to do it. You can do 3 things with an urge: You can give into it, you can resist it, which means you’re acting like it’s not there which will cause it to sneak up again any minute, and you can allow it. Allowing it is what we are going for here. Allowing it means you notice the urge, acknowledge it, notice how it feels and where you feel it, and watch as it fades, usually in under a minute or two. And listen people often get the resisting and the allowing confused.
You have a plan for yourself. For instance I’m only going to have one glass of wine at the party tomorrow. The plan in advance is a big part of the success. The reason why is there are two main areas of your brain from where you make decisions. One is your primal brain and one is your pre frontal cortex. The primal brain is where you make your instant gratification decisions, the pre frontal cortex is where you make your well thought out good decisions. When you don’t plan, everything is left up to your primitive brain which will justify anything you decide to do.
So you have to decide in advance at least 24 hours so you’re pre frontal cortex is the one making decisions. Ok, So you have this plan of what you’re going to do eat or drink the next day at the party and when you’re at the party, you’re going to want to have a second glass of wine but you know your plan is only to have one, so you allow the urge to be there, without the need to give into it, just notice that it’s there, don’t try to resist it, just allow it, allow how it feels to want the glass of wine and be ok with not having it, the urge will go away and you’ll be one step closer to mastering the ability to say no, to being able to trust yourself with a plan. When you get home, you take one of your stones and you put it in that glass jar. Your brain is immediately rewarded for allowing an urge and the more urges you allow the more stones you have in the jar, you see the progress and if you put the jar on the counter where your family can see it, maybe everyone has their own jar with their own beautiful stones or marbles and everyone can see the progress being made, it’s a fun solid way to realize that urges come and go, and just because we have an urge doesn’t mean we have to give into it, we just have to notice it, acknowledge it and then watch as it goes away because it’s lost it’s power over you. This has been proven extremely effective for Brooke in the area of weight loss and drinking less but it can also be used effectively for anything…your kids and their homework, keeping their room clean, your workouts anything you want to do you can do it and this is a plan that works.
It puts you back in control, you’ve mastered the power of your mind. My challenge to you is to get your own version of the urge jar and learn to reward your brain in a way that serves you long term by allowing urges to be there without having to answer them instead of giving in to them. And share this with friends. This works and you could really shift someone’s life by sharing it.
If you want to know more about it and how it works just email me here.
I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
