Don’t Curse Yourself Out: Three Ways to Get Unstuck and Dump Your Dysfunctional Habits

One of the ways we keep ourselves stuck in damaging behavior patterns is by using language that predicts future failure.

Some examples:

“I always blow my diet on vacation.”
“I'm not a morning person.”
“I hate exercise.”
“Evening is my horrible time.”
“I avoid conflict, so I end up eating what everyone else is eating even though I don't want to.”

Notice that although each statement is in the present tense, its function is to predict (and to some extent justify) future failure. How am I supposed to get up at 5am to get my run in if I'm simply not a morning person? Obviously, I can't.

So what seems like a simple statement of fact turns out to be, in fact, a curse that we put on ourselves that becomes self-fulfilling.

The thing about these statements that makes them so powerful is that we truly believe them. So any attempt to argue with them feels like New Age Affirmation Bullshit, the kind spoofed by now-Senator Al Franken through his Saturday Night Live character Stuart Smalley: “I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”

But it's crucial to dispute these statements of self-identity that lock us into repetition of the same behaviors that got us into the mess we're in. The question is, how?

We're looking for a new statement with two qualities:

1. It empowers us to adopt a better behavior in the future.

2. It feels as true or truer than the original statement.

Disputation Technique #1: Put in in the past

If the behavior happens occasionally or situationally, you can create breathing room and space for change by changing the verb tense. For example:

“I always blow my diet on vacation” –> “In the past, I used to blow my diet on vacation.”

The magic phrase “in the past” acknowledges the truth of the statement, but doesn't continue it into a prediction. After all, by definition, predictions are neither true or untrue. They're predictions about things that haven't happened yet, and may never happen.

And putting the behavior in the past implies strongly that it's done. Over. History.

So you get to choose a new behavior and outcome from now on.

Disputation Technique #2: Add the antidote

Sometimes putting an ongoing, regular behavior in the past feels like bullshit. For example, “Evening is my horrible time.” If I find myself bored and annoyed and stressed out at 7pm every day and finishing off a too-big dinner with a bowl of ice cream after being golden with my diet the rest of the day, it might be too big a stretch to say, “In the past, evening was my horrible time.” It just doesn't feel true.

Remember, the goal is to replace the disempowering prediction with language that's as true or truer, and either offers empowerment or a prescription.

So if evenings still feel horrible, the “in the past” phrase may feel like bullshit unless we add some tools or strategies to deal with that experience.

“In the past, I was extremely vulnerable to binges in the evening. Now I'm overcoming that tendency by…”

The dot dot dot is the antidote to the unwanted behavior. We figure it out through a trial-and-error process: identify the thought that excuses or enables the behavior, and brainstorm a tweak to our environment or routine or self-talk that we think can disable the link between the thought and our actions. Rinse and repeat.

If it sounds simple, it can be. What's required is patience, and persistence, and a willingness to be wrong until we're right.

The central engine of change is what researcher Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset,” meaning an underlying belief that we can grow and change and improve. The growth mindset speaks a very different language than its counterpart, the “fixed mindset,” which looks at the past and assumes it utterly predicts the present and future.

The good news is, the growth mindset is also a self-fulfilling prophesy. When we intentionally challenge our fixed assumptions, we can change them. And that proves to us that we can change not only our self-talk, but a great deal else about ourselves that we always assumed was “just the way we are.”

Disputation Technique #3: Stop It!

In this technique, you allow yourself to get outraged at the behavior that's robbing you of health and happiness and self-esteem and joy. And you let that outrage fuel your resistance.

It's not a long-term strategy, because outrage tends to burn itself out long before we master the new habit we're trying to instill.

But the nice thing about arguing with absolute, “all-or-nothing” statements like “I always blow my diet on vacation” and “I cave to peer pressure” is that they are so easily falsified by one counter-example.

When I press my clients, they can always identify plenty of counter-examples from their own past. My advanced technique for this (pay attention: valuable coaching trick revealed) is to say the word “always” or “never” as a question and then shut up.

Like this:

Client: “I always blow my diet on vacation.”

Me: “Always?”

Client: “Well, no. In fact, last summer I went to Scotland for two whole weeks and managed to live on oatmeal and fresh fruit the entire first week.”

But even if you can't dredge up a single counter-example from your past, you can still disprove the disempowering prediction with a single episode of “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to do it anymore.”

And then add one of the other disputation techniques to build a sustainable growth mindset that can carry you through habit change.

Next Steps

You can definitely try this at home. But it's often really helpful to have a guide and coach to accelerate your progress and help you avoid and recover from setbacks.

Right now, the Big Change Program is closed to new enrollment. Josh LaJaunie and I will be meeting next week to talk about how to shift to an admission policy that can take in a few people at a time, rather than forcing you to wait three months or more to join.

If you'd like to get on that waiting list while experiencing a test drive of the program, go to BigChangeProgram.com and click the blue “Test Drive” button.

Or, if you'd like to start changing your habits and health destiny immediately, check out my year-long unlimited 1-on-1 laser coaching program at https://plantyourself.com/laser.

Dr Howie Jacobson

This podcast is a labor of love and a way to give back to the world that has given me so much. That's why there aren't any sponsors (except me :).

My day job is helping leaders and their teams master their mindsets to remove all obstacles to heart-centered high performance.

Here are three gigs that I do:

1. Trigger-Free Leadership: Executive and Senior Leadership Mentoring and Facilitation

I work with high performing executive teams in organizations — and executive teams that need to become high performing. My focus is mindset mastery, because it’s our mindsets that either support high performance or get in the way.

At this level, everyone’s got the skills and experience to excel and contribute at the highest level. What holds people back is mindset stuff: specifically the triggers that get them out of creative engagement and into fight-or-flight defensiveness.

My practice is all about teaching people to respond differently to those triggers by updating old maps — essentially removing the glitches that the triggers grab onto.

2. Executive Coaching: Quick Wins for High Performance

I work with individual executives and leaders, one on one. The program is called Quick Wins for High Performance, and what we do is, we work strategically on one or two areas that are holding you back and keeping you from performing at your best.

We reverse engineer the presenting problems — too much work and not enough time, underperforming employees and teams, maddening organizational inefficiencies, etc — and identify and rewire the suboptimal mindsets that are behind those problems.

The work is all about updating your mental maps so your actions and responses are always appropriate, proportionate, and strategic.

3. High Stakes Conversations for Fast Growing Small Business Teams

I help small business teams have high stakes conversations with skill, humor, and grace. When people feel safe, they can do their best, most creative, most collaborative work.

So that's what I do. If you'd like any of those results, drop me a line and tell me about yourself.

You CAN Change Other People!

Well, that's what Peter Bregman and I claim in our provocative book of that title.

What we really mean is, you can bring out the best in the people around you. If you think you're powerless to help people change, it's because you've been going about it the wrong way.

Discover our straightforward, replicable process here: You Can Change Other People.

Music

The Plant Yourself Podcast theme music, “Dance of Peace (Sabali Don),” is generously provided by Will Ridenour, a kora player from North Carolina who has trained with top Senegalese musicians.

It can be found on his first CD, titled Will Ridenour.

You can learn about Will, listen to more tracks, and buy music on his website, WillRidenour.com.

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Don’t Curse Yourself Out: Three Ways to Get Unstuck and Dump Your Dysfunctional Habits

Disputation Technique #1: Put in in the past

Disputation Technique #2: Add the antidote

Disputation Technique #3: Stop It!

Next Steps

Dr Howie Jacobson

You CAN Change Other People!

Music

Gratitudes

Disclosure

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