30-Day Persistence Challenge: Motivating Yourself to Move Forward

On my way back from the Association of Health Care Journalists Conference this past weekend, I picked up a copy of Scientific American Mind, and, specifically, an article about how irrational behavior is hardwired into us. In a Q&A, professor Peter A. Ubel, author of Free Market Madness, made the following observation:

One reason we humans do not always behave rationally is that we have limited willpower. We understand that junk food is bad. But we cannot follow through on our rational desires. We plan to run for 30 minutes, but after 10, we get off the treadmill and convince ourselves we are a bit stiff today. We try to cut down on empty calories and then grab a handful of M&Ms from a candy bowl, almost unaware of our actions. No single M&M caused anyone to have diabetes. No one experienced a heart attack because he was 20 minutes short of his exercise goal. And yet our lives, or waistlines even, are the result of thousands of such decisions and behaviors.

Anyone who's ever dieted knows what he's talking about. Not that the desire is bad, or that a single outcome is bad. It's just the chasm between intention and action on a regular basis that undermines persistence. To develop persistence, and get the rewards from being persistent, you have to do the things you plan to do even if you don't feel like doing them. Something has to motivate you.

But where do you get the motivation? Here's what Ubel told Scientific American Mind:

To improve ourselves, we have to act as if each M&M matters, as if each decision has important consequences. To do this, it helps to make rules and follow them. Commit yourselves to no candy, no desserts, and you will become more mindful of M&M bowls. Run outside, rather than inside on a treadmill, and you will be forced to finish your running loop. Tell a friend you will walk with her for 30 minutes this afternoon, and you will be forced to show up. Do you want to save money? Have some money automatically deposited into a savings account that you cannot access easily through ATMs, debit cards or checkbooks. Sometimes the best way to behave better when you are weak is to impost martial law on yourself when you feel strong.

How does this sound to you? Do you like the idea of "imposing martial law," as Ubel puts it?

Unlikely. But Ubel does have a point. Structure is the key to persistence. If I tell myself (as I have) that I don't eat sugar, a red flag waves frantically when someone puts a baby tart in front of me, as they did several times at the conference last week. But for me, that's as far as structure goes: It just creates the red flag. How I cope from there is another matter.

Ubel hints at ways to make persistence work, though. This week, I'll lay out three ways to firm up your boundaries--with yourself--and keep on your persistence goals. Today, we'll start with...

Experience
I know I don't eat sugar. I have the experience of not eating it for five years now.* And I have the experience of not dying--of embarrassment or cravings--from any single instance of passing the dessert back to the waiter. I also have the experience of ease that comes with not eating it. It's not hard for me usually. People say they can't do it. But I think what they mean is they don't want to, that there's always an escape plan, an exception to their rule about dessert, etc. What Ubel is talking about is a hard-and-fast rule. A "no matter what" rule.

Action: Take a look at your rules around your persistence topics (querying, decluttering, invoicing, etc.). Is your rule;

• "I will do three queries this week no matter what?"
• "I'll do three as long as I'm not too busy with paying work."
• "I'll send three queries, but only if I don't feel too panicked at the time about it."

Don't judge. Just become aware of what your rules are for yourself. Then, at another time, look at them again and ask yourself a few more questions:

• Do they work for you?
• Are you getting the results you want or need, or are they feeding into bad habits that sap your energy and your serenity?

Once you've done that, you can take a leap of faith: Try doing the thing you know you should do everyday--even when you don't want to. How does it feel? Is it unbearable? Do you feel better or worse afterward? But a warning: Just like no single handful of M&M is going to undermine your diet, no single act of querying is going to quash your disdain for it. You have to do it over and over again, sometimes for months or years, before you start to have the experience of it being okay to feel uncomfortable and do it anyway.

and you find a few personal rules that don't work for you, you can apply tools we'll talk about tomorrow and Friday.

Photo by Phunkstarr.

*Please no attagirls. If I could eat it like a lady, I wouldn't have to eschew it entirely.

What comforts you?

You may have noticed that it's been more than two months since my last post. In that time, I had to contend with a triple whammy of very unserene things:

* That illness I described? Just today I was told I'm healed. I may still have surgery at the end of the month.
* Someone stole my credit card number and my bank shut down my card without telling me, leading to some rejected monthly expenses that I now have to make up. Now I'm going to start the process of ordering my credit reports to make sure there's nothing fishy on there.
* Our 17-year-old love-muffin kitty passed away rather traumatically in the middle of the night.
* Deadlines continued to come and go throughout. I queried, I networked and I worked on getting better at workflow and time management.

You may be asking, "How do you stay serene amid so many challenges?" The answer, at least according to my experience, is you don't.

You fall apart. And you hang on for dear life to the things that comfort and the things that keep you sane, if not serene.

It turns out that for me, that thing is gardening.

I have idyllic memories of running through my mother's garden as a child, eating strawberries and raspberries off the vine and hiding behind tall, feathery corn stalks in the arid heat of a southern California summer. From the time I put my first bean in a wet napkin and watched it grow into a plant, gardening filled me with hope: transformation, growth and life are all around us if we want it.

So I have lettuce and green beans to eat from my garden and every day I go out and watch the plants for a little bit. I do a little weeding, I sweep up, I water. I watch the basil seeds sprout. I feel hopeful.

What's fallen off is a lot of the more rigid structure I created for my day: I don't do yoga regularly right now, on the advice of my chiropractor, who is trying to correct a stuck s-bone in my pelvis. I don't take a break every hour and stretch right now. I don't turn off the TV at 10 p.m. sharp, and often leave it on till 11 or later to avoid thinking about the grief and stress that's always just under the surface.

What's perhaps most useful is to look at what I stuck with throughout this time. These are the changes that, so far, are sticking. And I think they show that some small changes can make a big difference.

* I still go to the gym two to three three times a week for gentle cardio and some good stretching.
* I still meditate and write about what's stressing me out first thing in the morning. I know meditating twice a day would probably bring me more relief, but when I'm in grief, sitting with my feelings isn't fun and I can only do it in tiny doses.
* I still go through all the emails from yesterday and today first thing in the morning and put them in their own folders. It keeps me up to date and following up on interview schedules.
* I still take the time to make nutritious meals for myself breakfast lunch and dinner. The garden certainly helps with that. I just planted chard and broccoli, and I can't wait for it to be ready in a few months.

I think I stuck with these things because they are very small things I can do to take care of myself when everything around me seems to be falling apart. I don't have the energy for an hour-long yoga practice morning or night right now, but I can spend 10 minutes meditating when I wake up in the morning.

It's the small things that keep me going.

What about you? How do you cope when you're at risk of being overwhelmed?