Four Powerful ‘Life Alert’ Buttons for When We’re Stuck
"Please help. I'm so frustrated, I've gained weight, I'm not eating right and I've not worked out in weeks. Anyone out there have some advice for me?"
That was a recent message posted on this great internet fitness website forum that I read regularly: www.Cathenation.com. It's packed with fitness-minded people and information. The person who posted this message has earned the elite status of “Cathlete” because she’d been so active on the site, with over 3,500 posts.
With that many posts she’s spent A LOT of time reading and communicating with fitness people. In comparison, I have @ 50 posts and I’ve been on the forum for about 6 months. She’s had access to all the fitness advice in the world, for quite some time.
She's stuck. Something's hndering her success. Could what’s hindering this avid forum reader be the same thing that stops Harry from making changes in his behavior?
Harry’s a senior leader in technology. Harry can quote key passages from all the latest leadership best sellers. He’s completed numerous communication assessments and leadership training workshops. Recently he received results from a 360 feedback report, summarizing what his boss, co-workers and direct reports see as his leadership strengths and development opportunities.
Listening was the lowest scoring area for Harry. The books, assessments, workshops and survey results are clear: listening is a key leadership skill that Harry needs to develop. Harry agrees. He’s planning to work on it. He’s even written a development plan. It’s been three months since receiving his 360 feedback results and so far, nothing appears to have changed.
I can relate, changing old habits is not easy. Even with expert information and a desire to change, we can still struggle to do things differently, especially those things that we’ve been doing our entire life that are deeply ingrained, such as how we eat, exercise, communicate and lead.
If you’re trying to change behaviors in your own life, or you’re trying to help others who work for you to make behavioral changes, there are four powerful actions you can take - I call them Life/Medical Alert buttons people can push to get help when they’ve fallen or are stuck.
- Life Alert Button #1: Convince Yourself - This involves making a deep personal connection with whatever you’re planning to change. This simple exercise is very powerful and often gets overlooked. Answer this question over and over until you have a complete, deep and personal list of why the change is important to you : “When I get better at (state the skill/habit I want to improve, I’ll (how’ll you/others will benefit)” Ask and answer this question at least 15 times, searching for different reasons every time you answer.
When I do this exercise with leaders, initially their answers are surface answers and sometimes sound very correct. But when they have to answer the question over and over and over they uncover the real benefit to the change, which is often for more personal reasons. I did this exercise when I decided to get back to being fit and trim in January. I placed put my list of benefits in my day timer and read it every day, for months. Every time I read through it, it reminded me why this goal was important and helped convince me to stay on track until the new behavior became ingrained.
- Life Alert Button #2: Pick One Area and Attack it- Once you’ve internally convinced yourself that this change is personally valuable, beneficial and worth the effort, pick one area to focus on and attack it.
Marshall Goldsmith, in his bestseller: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, advises, “Successful people have a glaring tendency to over commit Pick one issue that matters and attack it until it doesn’t matter anymore.” This focused approach works with how the brain learns and changes – repeated practice will help ingrain the new behaviors, without focus and practice, change fails. (Listen to 12 minute review of Goldsmith's book here.)
- Life Alert Button #3: Be Bold and Advertise – tell everyone that you ‘re trying hard to change and specifically what you’re focused on changing. Repeat the message often. We view people through our own lens of expectation. If Harry's always been a poor listener, his co-workers will tend to interpret everything he does through that expectation, even when he’s trying to do things differently. This lack of support and affirmation can defeat even the strongest of wills.
Goldsmith predicts that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit from co-workers. He warns, “People aren’t paying as close attention to your personal goals as you are….you cannot rely on other people to read your mind or take note of your changed behavior. It may be patently obvious to you, but it takes a lot more than a few weeks of behavioral modification for people to notice the new you.” Be bold, advertise, let people know what you’re doing – so they can support you and start to look for the new you.
- Life Alert Button #4 Use the Feedforward Process to Get Feedback and Develop Buy-In. The feedforward process is very simple, but brings amazing results because it’s future focused, it gets everyone involved in supporting you on your change journey, it results in clear, concrete ideas for action in a positive way. When feedback is shared in this way no one feels threatened or nervous..
The process is easy. Use it often with as many people as you can. This process solves the feedback dilemma, which is that people hate to give and receive feedback, but without feedback people generally won’t buy-in to your change efforts. This process really works!
Feedforward process:
1- Pick one behavior to improve.
2- Share your objective with anyone, in a one-to-one dialogue.
3- Ask for two suggestions for the future that might help you achieve positive change in this area.
4- Listen aggressively, take notes, say thank you. (No judging or critiquing allowed.)
Medical doctors see evidence around the challenge we all have around changing our behaviors/habits,every day. When they tell 10 people they must change or die for health reasons, on average only 1 person is able to make long-term changes. Help yourself, and those around you, by using these 4 Life Alert Buttons: Convince Self, Pick One Area and Attack it, Advertise and Feedforward.
Share your thoughts and insights here...what do you do to help yourself or others "get back up?"
