Baby Boomers U. S. (The Blog)

Why People Fail to Change and What to Do About It

Posted: 08 Jul 2012 03:58 AM PDT

The real BBUS post can be found here… Why People Fail to Change and What to Do About It by Joe Hauckes © Baby Boomers U. S. (The Blog) . Not on Senior Zen!

This is a Guest Post by Doug Kelsey, PT, PhD. If you would like to Guest Post for Baby Boomers US, check out our Guest Post for Us page.

“The successful person has the habit of doing what the failures don’t like to to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.” – E.M Gray

Holding on to your health and fitness as you age isn’t easy. It means, usually, changing.

Lose weight. Exercise more. Watch less television. Sleep more. Eat fresh, whole foods. Stop snacking.

But, day after day, nothing’s much different.

Our lives are nothing more than routines and changing the routine or creating a new one is not as easy as it seems.

Routines conserve energy. With a routine, we don’t have to think about whatever it is we’re supposed to do next. We go to bed about the same time, get up, breakfast, kids, school, work, commute, kids, dinner, and again. So, to break this up, something has to give. Something in the routine has to make room for something else.

Why People Fail to Change

In a recent survey by the American Psychological Association on stress and motivation, 93% responded that they had a goal to change something about themselves – something in their behavior – in 2012. ((American Psychological Association (Feb. 12, 2012). Lack of Willpower May Be Obstacle to Improving Personal Health and Finances. Press release.))

And the number one reason people give for failure to make a change?

Lack of willpower.

I suspect it’s not just willpower – the ability to make the best choice when faced with other, more tempting yet less optimal choices – that’s the only issue.

Why it’s hard to disrupt your routine and create a new one is that the new routine has a lower perceived pay-off compared to whatever the current routine is.

Let’s take the issue of changing what you eat and drink.

You want to drop the sugar, pastas, breads, tortillas and chips from your diet. But, you don’t. You say you will but then a friend asks you to join her for a drink after work and before you know it, an entire basket of chips has disappeared into your mouth. How do you change this?

Well, the problem is that there’s no penalty; nothing immediately negative that will happen to you if you eat the basket of chips. You’ll live. You won’t gain 20 lbs over night. The sun will rise and set.

The pleasure the chips brings you is greater than the yet to be realized benefit of denying yourself. So you eat the chips.

How to Start Doing Something You Say You’re Going to Do

If you want to stop eating so many chips, you’ll have to figure out a way to make the current routine (eating chips) less desirable or make the new routine payoff a lot better.

Some people will use a penalty to force behavior change, to make the current routine painful, but the research on penalty induced change also shows you get some unanticipated consequences.

Parents who routinely were late picking up their kids from daycare were fined and guess what happened? The parents still picked their kids up late and after the fine was lifted, they were still late. ((Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini The Journal of Legal Studies Vol. 29, No. 1 (January 2000), pp. 1-17))

The authors concluded that the parents just viewed the fine as a cost; a price they were willing to pay.

What seems to work better is a nudge; something that "alters people's behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives" ((Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness))

A nudge for you and your chips would be to recognize the cues that make you want the chips and then change the cues. A cue might mean that hitting happy hour makes you feel less stressed, more relaxed so you associate just about everything with the happy hour as being a good thing. If you can separate the the two things – relaxing and happy hour – then you have a better chance of sticking with your diet. It can be, literally, just telling yourself that you know what’s going on here, you know why you want the chips and substitute a new thought. This then leads to a new routine (happy hour no longer means chips, queso, and four or five beers).

Basically, you have to wake up. It’s what a teacher of mine liked to say – “being awake”; knowing or recognizing why you’re doing something.

And when you wake up and make this new choice, also make a conscious effort to feel good about it. The payoff, positive or negative, translates into feelings. Bottom line, you like the way you feel when you make a certain choice. So, make yourself feel better about the new choice.

Change is one decision followed by another. To make better choices and to start doing things you say you’re going to do, look for ways to nudge yourself into a new routine.

About the Author: Doug Kelsey, PT, PhD is an international educator, author, inventor, and expert in human movement and performance training. He has authored numerous articles and books, is the inventor of the world's first anti-gravity exercise device and has created hundreds of training videos. He also developed a very popular, holistic and athletic model of performance training, Fusion Performance Training, for people who want to feel younger as they get older and live a healthier and more vibrant life.