Nudging toward change

Nudging – instead of shoving – yourself toward change

The New Year’s Resolution is riddled with psychological traps that work against us. New Year’s resolutions are too ambitious, the goals to big, such as perfect grades or working out for an hour every day.

We need a handbook – a step-by-step training -  showing us how to reach the goal.

And we need mini-goals instead of the extensive decisions we can’t really even relate to or even imagine. Otherwise, we set ourselves up for stumbling many times along the way, tripping over the numerous stumbling blocks that seemingly pop up from nowhere, despite our best intentions. Each of the trip-ups give us more opportunities to give up.

A nudge is a gentile shove. Nudges focus on the how, not the what. Tiny steps toward positive behavior instead of a mega-leap.

Thinking about the good things we want to implement into our lives make us feel more excited and motivated. After all, we are just taking tiny steps of improvement not giant, threatening leaps.

We need to aware that there is a whole lot of process between resolve, decision and execution before reaching the end goal, be it “health”, “fitness”, “kindness”, “organization”, etc. We might need to drop the long-term goals and focus on turning each step into a positive experience.

I might want to run ½ hour but that is torture for me. Yet a short lope to the car after shopping or some faster steps to the door of my house are rather fun. I can handle that. Maybe it’s not about becoming a runner at all. Maybe it’s about focusing on my love of being outside or my enjoyment that my legs can move quickly. I actually love that little jaunting feeling when taking a brief scamper toward something. No marathon for me, folks!

Researchers are discovering small tweaks we can make to strengthen our psychological welfare, change out behavior, and improve our persistence.

Reframe anxiety as excitement

If you are trying to get over performance anxiety, try tweaking your way of looking at it. Reframe your super-active nervous system as excitement and heightened awareness. Take the time before your next “performance”, be it a speech, a report during a meeting, a musical performance. Focus on each new moment to come instead of the performance outcome. This is a self-nudge from anxiety to excitement on the way to enjoying performance more. Transform your stage fright into stage presence.

A nudge in favor of your future self

The more exactly you can imagine yourself in the future, the more likely you are to improve your behavior in the present. If you can’t really imagine an image of yourself in 10-20 years, create an image online of yourself age-progressed and print it out. That is the person you are working for now by improving the decisions and choices you make today.

Research has shown that posting such an age-progressed picture where subjects were making a decision about saving for that future-self increased the amount of money they put into a savings account.

The goal is to create a closer connection between the present self and the future self.  We can incrementally change the future by gradually changing how we behave now.

To quote Amy Cuddy in her book “Presence”: “With each self-nudge, pleasure builds upon pleasure, power upon power, and presence upon presence”.

Where could you use tiny, pleasurable tweaks to improve your life?