“I think of myself as kind of someone who has got to think my way through the game, has to understand coverages, anticipate things. I have to work my butt off all week and work really hard to get to the game feeling confident with what I am trying to accomplish and get down the field to score some points. I guess for me, because I have to work so hard at it and try so hard at it, that’s part of enjoying it for me, but I look at other players and say, ‘Gosh, I wish I could make it look as easy as they make it look.’”
--Tom Brady, quarterback, Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
I am a performance video junkie. In following people on Facebook or perusing YouTube videos, I have watched an abnormally crazy number of great performance videos related to all types of activities. What has been amazing to me about the comments (beside the incredibly inappropriate and/or negative ones) is the frequency of comments about how talented the performer is. The second most frequent comment is how the viewer wished he/she could do that.
These comments provide great insight into the type of mental conditioning that is so pervasive and so counterproductive to success and excellence. Many people incorrectly assume that performance, success and excellence are primarily a result or function of talent (by definition, a seemingly fixed asset). Thus, their wish is that they had been anointed somehow with the talent for that activity, sport, etc. Alas, they weren’t lucky when talent was handed out. But, what’s luck got to do with it?
What they do not realize is that those so-called talented people were also simply highly invested in learning to do the activity. Ultimately, each of those individuals spent an incredible amount of time mastering the steps involved in achieving the result that you see: the performance.
As Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, points out, successful people approach problems as a learning process. While invested in the result, they see it as an opportunity to learn and grow and, therefore, are not paralyzingly afraid of an imperfect result. They view their skills as capable of change, growth and improvement. Dweck identifies this as a growth mind-set.
Individuals with a fixed mind-set, on the other hand, see their talent or ability as finite (and, typically pre-determined). You’re creative and artistic, or you’re not. You’re good at math, or you’re not. You’re a great player, or you’re not. If you see yourself this way, Dweck says, any mistake or failure is dreadful. But also, any attempt to learn and grow is also to be avoided.
So, if you possess a fixed mind-set, you think your future success is determined by the hardware and software package (i.e., talent or potential) that was given to you at birth.
Dweck’s work has had major implications for coaching and peak performance. The way we talk about performance to others and ourselves, she says, tends to foster one mind-set or the other. “You’re so talented,” is praise from someone with a fixed mind-set. That message might trigger doubt and fear in young, developing athletes, performers, and students in their performances. This type of “feedback” is such that any failure, setback, or less than optimal performances could suggest they aren’t so good. not so talented. Perhaps, the talent assessment was wrong. This dynamic sets up the development of anxiety and aversion of the activity itself.
“You must have worked very hard to do that well,” is an example of a more effective communication of praise. This statement is more rewarding, reinforcing and encouraging of more hard work. It leaves room for more risk-taking and discovery.
People with a fixed mind-set are constantly judging their underlying talent, Dweck says, and think others are judging them, too. “The growth mind-set is not about universal judgment,” Dweck says.
If too focused, people get caught up in their self-concept and identity. I am good or I am bad. I am talented or I am not. Learning and growth takes a back seat to the protection of the self.
What Facebook and YouTube video posts don’t typically provide are the images of the long hours of grueling and monotonous practice that goes into the performances that we see posted. Of course you don’t see those posted. That would be too boring. Nobody would sit in front of their computer, tablet, or smartphone watching that. But that is what you need to understand, acknowledge, and praise when you comment on those videos.
If I could, I would create coaching software that allows you to see a great performance video once and then the video would become unavailable to the viewer until they had watched a follow-up video that showed them all the necessary steps to achieve the results. After a specified number of hours of viewing the practice video, the performance video could then be viewed again. That would be great coaching software.
Until then, I challenge you to consider that the next time you are on Facebook or YouTube and see a video of a great performance, you comment: “I bet that took hours and hours of practice.” Now, that would be a useful comment.
Bill Walsh: The Master of the Game Plan Bill Walsh, ever the innovator, conceived a plan, now routine in the NFL, to “script” in advance the offensive plays he would call early in a game. Walsh still remembers the criticism and skepticism from the NFL coaching establishment that greeted him in the 1970s when, as an offensive assistant with the Cincinnati Bengals, he started scripting plays. All the planning could be done in the office during the week instead of on the sidelines during the frenzy of a game. With a script, the offensive players could devote more study time to plays that definitely would be used in the game, as opposed to studying an entire game plan that invariably included a bunch of plays that would not be called.
“It got to the point where our offensive team really wanted to know those plays,” Walsh recalled. “The players really appreciate the idea that you’re giving them a (head) start on the game. You can sleep easier, you have more confidence going into the game, and you’re more at ease. For the coaches, you can feel comfortable that the game is almost on automatic pilot when it starts.”
“You know what’s going to be called and there’s no reason to make a mistake,” veteran tight end Shannon Sharpe said of the system in Denver, where head coach Mike Shanahan scripts the first 15 offensive plays every week. “You already know if (the defense does) this, who we’re going to. So that makes your job a lot easier.”
Just about every team in the NFL now uses some form of scripting. Walsh used to do 25 plays, but most teams now script about 15 plays.
There are, of course, some misconceptions about scripting. While there might be a long script of plays, they are not called blindly in order.
“Would you run 25 in order? No,” Walsh said. “Let’s say, of the 25, you’d run 18 or 19 sort of in order. If something really worked or you saw something in the defense, you’d go back to (a play). To me, it was just sort of a safety net because there’s so much emotion to start the game, you want to think clearly, and this, in a sense, forces you to stay with a regimen that you clinically planned prior to the game.”
“The scripting saved us because I couldn’t think,” he said. “It was minus-35 wind chill, and there was no way I could look at a game plan or pull something out of my head. All I wanted to do was run for cover, go in where it was warm, for survival. So in that case, the plan was what saved us.”
Learning to Mentally Prepare
“I love winning. I just love getting out there and mixing it up with the guys here; they’re trying to beat me and I’m trying to beat them. That’s fun.”
--Tiger Woods, responding to the question about his drive and motivation.
When asked what his best attribute as a golfer was, Tiger Woods quickly replied, “My mind.”
“I think it’s a process of learning. A lot of junior and amateur events I played in, I didn’t win that many. But you live and learn. You apply that knowledge. And over the years when I’ve put myself in position to win, I think I’ve done a better job of that as I’ve matured.”--Tiger Woods, discussing his development as a winner, after winning his 13th major title at the PGA Championship in 2007.
At that point in time, Tiger Woods had won 79 of the 264 events he had entered as a pro, including 52 on the PGA Tour. He had lost only 6 of 52 events after holding or sharing the 54-hole lead.
“I believe in the way I play golf that you turn the switch on the first hole and you have it on the entire time. You don’t try any harder on each and every shot. You have the same effort level, you give it everything you have on every shot.”
“For some reason in my past, I’ve seemed to pull things off at the end, and I think that’s just due to the fact that I feel comfortable being there. I’ve been there enough times.”----Tiger Woods, discussing keeping cool under pressure and how he handles closing out a match.
Mental conditioning takes practice, just as the sport you love does. It will often feel unfamiliar. It might seem uncomfortable at first to consciously “prepare” your mind. After all, you’re used to thinking a certain way and getting yourself to change that thinking requires mindfulness, effort and repetition.
“Before I got here, I never took notes,” – Emmanuel Sanders, ex-wideout of the NFL Denver Broncos, who noted how his quarterback, the now-retired Peyton Manning, had profoundly changed his classroom work.
Manning’s leadership, resilience, adaptability, and sustained success are now legendary.
But one teammate after another over the years has raved about his study habits and how they compelled each of them to pore over the playbook a little longer, watch a little more film or take that extra time to be on point.
When Sanders came to Denver, his study habits weren’t anything like they became as a Bronco.
“Before I got here, I never really took notes,” Sanders said. “But Peyton has made me a better player because I sit right behind him, and I used to watch him, and he would take notes about everything that the coach said.
“So I’m like, ‘I’m going to pull out my notebook.’”
And that was just the beginning for Sanders, who got the full immersion into all things Manning during the 2014 training camp, his first as a Bronco.
“He invited me into his room because he wanted to teach me the playbook,” Sanders said. “And I saw how he had his whole room set up, of how most hotel rooms have desks, and he would go and put his playbook on the desk.
“So I started putting my playbook on the desk, and I started having success because I started studying.”
It would be hard to argue with the subsequent results; Sanders advanced from a No. 3 option as a Pittsburgh Steeler to a co-No. 1 receiver with Demaryius Thomas in Denver, posting back-to-back seasons with at least 75 receptions and 1,100 yards.
“If you apply yourself to anything, you’re going to get great results out of it, and that’s one thing that I learned from [Manning], just to apply yourself, take the game seriously [and] know your job, because it’s more than physical. Peyton showed you [that],” Sanders said.
“I mean, he’s the oldest starting quarterback in the National Football League. Some of that is physical, but a majority of it is mental. His mental edge over the competition is great.”
Emmanuel Sanders found excellence and greatness after learning study habits from Peyton Manning.
Your A-Game Replication
I know the title of this section sounds like an episode of The Big Bang Theory, but bear with me.
Asad Rezzvi is currently the CEO and founder of Veritas Ventures, an international management consulting firm that works exclusively with high-growth companies and startups. He has previously worked with professional athletes in the U.S., helping them condition their peak abilities and conducts intensive training for athletes utilizing the latest research and methodology. He also has helped professional athletes such as Serena and Venus Williams, Andre Agassi. and many others on their mental and physical conditioning.
Following Pakistan’s devastating loss against India at the cricket World Cup in 2019, he offered a mental conditioning analysis of the Pakistan team.
“The degree to which skill/talent is engaged is 100% dependent on the psychological strength of the person,” says Rezzvi.
He points to the famous viral clip of Sarfraz Ahmed, the Pakistani wicketkeeper-batsman who is the current captain of the Pakistan cricket team, yawning on the field during last Sunday’s match against India. It was a display of Pakistan’s emotional commitment to the game, physical readiness and, most of all, mental focus toward winning.
Rezzvi blames the Pakistani Cricket Board for the team’s lack of readiness The PCB is charged with managing and preparing the team, but seems to lack the commitment to support the team in playing an elite, international-level game.
The team was also blamed for the loss. Rezzvi pointed out that physiological and physical wellness and fitness is required for winning. Without those “you don’t have an athlete; you have a weekend warrior dabbling in a hobby.”
Rezzvi, who competed in martial arts, understands the mind-body connection. When your health and physiology are at their peak you can push yourself beyond your perceived limits.
Rezzvi believes that eighty percent of the game is mental, while 20% is physical. Once physical skill is honed to its peak, the next level is attained by mental conditioning.
It’s the difference between a Virat Kohli, India’s famed cricketer, and a yawning Sarfarz. Who would you want on your team?
What is A-Game Replication?
As we have discussed, to achieve an optimal level of readiness for performance, you need intensive mental conditioning. Rezzvi calls it A-game replication; He believes every elite international athlete has access to A-game replication technology; however, success can only happen when “the requisite physical energy and vitality is deeply conditioned into the body.”
Rezzvi believes that there are three primary requirements for A-Game Replication:
Health targets: Nutrition, health and fitness protocols need to be set up specifically for each player; including incorporating blood testing, supplementation (not to be confused simply with protein shakes) specifically targeting increases in strength, speed, stamina, and concentration.
Pressure management: “Stress and pressure management psychology” that teaches the team to respond to events rather than merely reacting to them. These skills provide the team with higher levels of confidence, in their skills and talents and collectively raise team morale. The result will be enhanced levels of focus, concentration and skill engagement.
Mental conditioning: Psychological protocols This involves isolating specific actions, and movements, coupled with physiological triggers that allow a player to automatically engage their top performance in real time, on the field and under pressure. This is best done by using biofeedback technology during training and allows the development of neurological conditioning for instant readiness in high-pressure environments.
Neuroscience research has shown that when the psychology of an elite performer is fine-tuned, their A-game shows up most consistently. And consistency is key.
If you watched the performance of the Pakistani team versus the Indian team, you could see it in their body language. When they were doing well, they had great body language, but when they’re under pressure, it clearly showed in their physical posture. The opponents also perceive it. This leads to a downward spiral and further diminishes the confidence of the Pakistanis while lifting the confidence of their opponents.
A key difference between peak performers and average players is that peak performers do not allow external circumstances to affect their mental game . They condition their inner game as much or more than the physical outer game.
For example, in martial arts, many fighters start their sessions with practice kicks and punches, followed by conditioning exercises, then heavy bag practice and finally—after 90 minutes of intense exercise—they get in the ring and spar for another hour. That last hour is not for physical practice but to condition minds to stay sharp, alert and develop emotional staying power even during exhaustion.
Of course, there has to be a systematic conditioning of the entire body—you neglect the physiology, the mind functions at a lower and compromised level. Elite performers have known this for thousands of years. Centuries ago, legendary Japanese swordsman Musashi spent 80% of his time meditating, which he called “sharpening the sword.”
Revzzi worked with the Pakistani team in 2016, and witnessed their mindset and lifestyle. He was horrified by their nutritional habits. They had no specialized diet. The team laughed about mental conditioning.
Having great skill in a specific sport is just the starting point for an elite performer. To achieve outstanding results consistently requires far more than just physical skill. For example, if you were to take the blood profile of Virat Kohli during the game and compare it to the blood profile of Sarfraz Ahmed, it is likely that there would be a vast difference.
Bypassing The Body’s Reaction to Pressure
Under pressure, the body releases adrenaline and cortisol. That cocktail diminishes mental and emotional sharpness and explains why an average person panics under pressure. But an experienced professional will have practiced and detoured around the pathway of doubts, fear and panic. This deliberate practice allows the athlete to be able to bypass the cortisol/adrenaline “cocktail” and instead have endorphins, anandamide and dopamine in the bloodstream. This enhances mental and emotional sharpness, leads to enjoyment and creates a neural pathway to breakthrough performance.
If you listened to Kohli prior to the match he emphasized that he wanted to enjoy the match—that’s only possible when you know you’re mentally conditioned to successfully handle extraordinary levels of stress and pressure.
When the basic skills required of an athlete are missing you can’t expect the team to perform at a world-class level against elite players that have the best resources and have conditioned their mind and body to function at peak levels.
The Wizard of Westwood: UCLA’s John Wooden
“Be quick but never hurry.” - John Wooden.
“He never talked about winning. The only thing we can control is our preparation,” said John Vallely, former UCLA basketball player, talking about the approach to preparedness that John Wooden took that led to multiple NCAA basketball championships.
“Watching that team get off the bus, watching that team walk on the floor, they had a certain strut that forced you not to like them.....their whole demeanor, ‘You can’t beat us,” superiority, winners, champions.” - Don Chaney, former University of Houston player, retired NBA veteran and former NBA head coach, discussing the greatness of the UCLA teams and the dislike it fostered in others.
So focused was Wooden on preparing his teams on fundamentals from the ground up that he began each season by teaching his players the proper way to put on their socks. Lacking a dominant big man after losing Lew Alcindor (now known as NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) to graduation the previous year, the team was not supposed to win the title game against Jacksonville University, featuring 7-2 center Artis Gilmore. Vallely and his Bruins teammates didn’t necessarily expect to win. But they expected to execute the fundamentals and be as well prepared as possible.
Still, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Bruins did, in fact, win the game. Vallely noted that Jacksonville’s practice session before the game was a loose affair with lots of laughs and loud music.
“Then when we went out, it was 35 minutes of perfection. Dribbling drills, running the fast break, everything working,” Vallely said.
Indeed, in basketball as in life, winning and losing happens to everyone. But extreme preparedness provides peace of mind over the result.
An Architect of Success
“There is no perfect season. You can have a season where you win all your games. But that is far from perfect. The other teams you played scored points and your team made mistakes. Maybe a lucky bounce actually won you a game or two. No, winning doesn’t make you perfect,” John Wooden once said, responding to questions about coaching during his four perfect undefeated seasons with the UCLA Bruins.
“I never even mentioned trying to win games to my teams. I did talk about perfection. I said it was not possible. But I said it’s not impossible to try for it. That’s what we did in every practice and game,” he continued. He believed in lengthy practices for conditioning and endless drills to perfect fundamental skills.
The John Wooden-coached UCLA teams scaled unprecedented heights that no future organization in any sport is likely to approach. Under the masterful guidance of Wooden, the Bruins set all-time records with four perfect 30-0 seasons, 88 consecutive victories, 38 straight NCAA tournament victories, 20 PAC 10 championships, and 10 national championships, including seven in a row.
Wooden’s big break came in 1948, when he accepted the head coaching position at UCLA. Although he would not win his first national title until 15 years later, Wooden began laying the groundwork for what would become the dynasty of all dynasties.
Commitment to Deliberate Practice
“Won’t call no names cause that’s not my job. It just applies to whom it may concern. You know who you are, but if you don’t you never will.”
--Outkast, lyrics from “Mainstream.”
You all know the drill. We live in a society of instant gratification. We like swag. We learn to posture and pose early. We have parents who have been brought up to believe that everybody deserves a medal just for showing up. You might even demand a medal even if you didn’t show up. We perceive and expect success to happen overnight. We have few effective role models. We never see all the hard work they did to achieve success. Often, those few role models we do have eventually, tragically, crash and burn. So, success seems sudden and short-lived and, thus, based on celebrity and fame. Facetime is important, substance isn’t necessary.
We move and talk fast and often, perhaps to hide the lack of substance. Sustainability and the long view doesn’t matter. The ice caps are melting anyway.
A good buddy of mine talks about Po-ZZers. Yes, that is how he spells it. Po-ZZers are the guys who wear the t-shirts that have the slogans. You know the slogans: “Witness.” “Watch My Swag.” “We Are Gonna Shock the World.” “Shock and Awe.” As if the t-shirt is all they need to impress and intimidate. But, when it is time to perform, they don’t, they can’t. They haven’t earned the jersey, then just wear the t-shirt. Po-ZZers.
I get it. If we work hard, it might not pay off. The lizard brain rules. Pleasure and satisfaction should be immediate. I get how it should work. But
However, success doesn’t really work that way. Excellence is achieved through repetition and the difficult and slow development of competence. It takes time, it can be repetitious and tedious. It’s not exciting. It’s not fun. The 10,000 hour rule is real. What counts is the love of the game, not the love of the fame.
“Society is obsessed with the idea of talent and genius and people who are ‘naturals’ with innate ability. “People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.” --Carol Dweck, Stanford University psychologist and author of “Mindset: The Psychology of Success.”
Stanford University Psychologist Carol S. Dweck’s 2006 book ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success’ focuses on the positive implications of what she calls a ‘growth mindset’ – the belief that success is determined by hard work. This contrasts with what she refers to as a ‘fixed mindset’ – the idea that talent is innate and there is nothing we can do to change it.
So, put the work in. If not, it will show. You will get embarrassed. You can’t expect the outcome without going through the process. If you take the easy way when preparing, it’s probably because you haven’t really seen anyone work hard to succeed or you don’t really want the outcome. You just want the attention that comes with being a Po-ZZer.
So, do you just want attention or do you really want to win? Do you want to achieve excellence?
Did you leave it all on the practice floor today? Did you give it all you have?
Po-ZZer.
The Importance of Hard Work
Science is providing consistent findings across a wide array of fields that suggests that talent is not a trait and that excelling at something is not a consequence of possessing innate gifts.
In virtually every field of endeavor studied, most people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.
The late professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University and others have concluded that nobody achieves peak performance or is great without work.
It’s a myth that if you find the particular field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without extreme experience or practice.
The Ten Year Rule
“There is no such thing as natural touch. Touch is something you create by hitting millions of golf balls.”-
-- Lee Trevino, Hall of Fame professional golfer.
Overnight success is a myth. Research suggests that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of extremely hard work before becoming world-class performers, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.
John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University found that: “The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.”
In many fields (music, literature, etc. ) elite performers need 20 or 30 years’ experience before hitting their zenith.
So greatness isn’t granted to anyone; peak performance requires a great deal of hard work. Yet that isn’t enough, since many people work hard for decades without achieving or even approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What is still missing?
“Deliberate Practice”: Stretching Your Abilities, Repetition, and Feedback
“If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don’t practice for three days, the world knows it.”
--Vladimir Horowitz, famed concert pianist.
The best and most accomplished people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what is called “deliberate practice.” This is activity that is explicitly intended to improve performance. Deliberate practice is designed to be just beyond one’s level of competence, provides specific feedback on results and typically involves high levels of repetition.
For example, hitting a bucket of golf balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don’t get better. More specifically, hitting an eight-iron 500 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 25 feet of the pin 75% of the time (repetition), continually observing and measuring results (feedback)and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day.......that’s deliberate practice. Ericsson says,“Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.”
In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, it was found that the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. The same has been found in the fields of surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Even more deliberate practice may mean great performance.
Donald Kirkendall, a member of FIFA’s Medical Assessment and Research Centre, has researched and written on soccer physiology, says that after thousands of hours of “deliberate practice” soccer players internalize their moves and can increase the speed at which they can move and operate.
Cristiano Ronaldo, who scored an incredible 42 goals for Manchester United at the age of 23 and led his team to England’s Premier League and UEFA Champions League titles, is a classic example.
“Ronaldo does not think about these skills. He just executes them. The brain says, ‘Alright, step over.’ Then the motor areas of the brain and the spinal cord handle all the details. The film of all his skills flies past him at a wink of an eye. He settles on the right move, and then executes it.”
--Donald Kirkendall, discussing what makes Cristiano Ronaldo, so successful and so special.
The results of “deliberate practice” are seen in the skills Ronaldo has with the ball and the ability he has to go full-speed and change directions.
“I’ve always had a good relationship with the ball.”
--Cristiano Ronaldo.
“I don’t think anything like that is ever rehearsed. It’s just something that happens from hard work and practice. That’s just not rehearsed. That’s what makes it so great. You don’t think. I think if you think, then that’s how you mess up. You just got to let it fly and not think.”
-- Angel McCoughtry, WNBA Atlanta Dream, discussing her buzzer-beating shot to win a game in 2018.
There is no memory without pain and discomfort. There is no muscle memory without pain and discomfort.
One of the most useful traits of successful elite athletes is their ability to put in the work that is required of their sport. They must be able to tolerate the monotony of training, workouts and seemingly endless repetition and rehearsal. They also must often in solitude to perfect their craft.
If you hate the monotony of training (running on a track or the treadmill, cardio workouts, strength work, stretching, etc.) and consider it self-torture, training will be difficult to maintain over the long haul.
According to B.J. Fogg, a psychologist and researcher at Stanford University who has studied behavior change for more than 20 years, doing something you don’t enjoy and subsequently failing to make it habitual is actually more detrimental to you than doing nothing at all. To create sustainable habits, the focus should be on training your brain to succeed with incremental changes, relatively minor improvements or small adjustments. These small gains increase confidence based on those small successes, he states. To do that, one needs to design behavior changes that are both easy to do and can be seamlessly and unnoticeably slipped into your existing routine.
Fogg points to the massive experiments for which we’ve all been the lab rats: the success of tech giants like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, companies that have made fortunes testing—and figuring out—how to make millions of people use their products as automatic habits.
To help people figure out how to make new behaviors they actually want as routine as turning to Google to search the web, he developed the Fogg Method, which references several psychological theories and is comprised of three key steps:
1. Identifying your specific desired outcome: Do you want to feel less stressed at work? Lose 10% of your body weight?
2. Identify the easy-win behaviors—he calls them “tiny habits”—that will put you on the path to that goal. Fogg emphasized in an NPR interview , that maybe you’d find short walks more meditative than meditating, for instance, or perhaps jogging with your dog sounds more interesting and less intimidating than a spin class at the gym.)
3. Finally, find a trigger—something that you already do as a habit—and graft the new habit onto it. That might mean putting out an apple on the counter every time you start the coffeemaker in the morning, For example:
“After I finish brushing my teeth, I will floss one tooth.”
This process works by eliminating the need to feel highly motivated to get a task done. Motivation comes and goes, but flossing a single tooth is achievable no matter what your mood or emotional state. Besides, most days you’ll find yourself flossing a few other teeth because—well, why not?
Then you simply reward yourself with an acknowledgement.
After carrying through with a tiny step, participants in the online seminar are instructed to give themselves a celebratory pat on the back. That might be by saying, “Yay,” or “Victory,” for example.
The organizers admit it sounds goofy to celebrate because you managed to floss a single tooth, or do a push-up after using the bathroom (another popular example), but, Fogg says, “You’re rewriting your identity as someone who succeeds.”
Research of 28,000 people using this program found that 80 to 90% of participants say they feel confident about their ability to change their habits. More than two-thirds of their participants report they’ve also noticed other, unexpected improvements.
This ripple effect is common, and psychologists aren’t sure exactly why it happens. One theory: Thanks to the small victories, people might consciously or subconsciously break down other barriers in their lives.
well written piece!