Think back to a time when you were making progress toward a personal goal, but then you fell off the wagon. How did you feel about yourself the next day? If you’re like most of us, you felt miserable. But your disappointment probably didn’t last very long because if you’re a normal human being, you picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and then blamed yourself for being a wimp because you didn’t have the personal motivation to follow through with your plan.
Now, why would anyone point the finger of blame at their own lack of motivation? Because it seems valid. Consider your last setback. You faced temptation, and temptation won. Your life partner did something insensitive, and a fully formed sarcastic comment presented itself to your brain. Then it began traveling involuntarily down a series of neurons toward your mouth. You had a moment of hesitation in which you thought better of taking a cheap shot—but only a moment. And you let your lips fly. If you had only held firm, you wouldn’t have suffered the subsequent two-day cold war. So, what is there to blame besides your lack of willpower?
Actually, lots. There are at least five other forces acting on you—all possible candidates for blame. In fact, willpower is rarely the sole solution to any problem. Personal motivation is the “big dumb one” in your personal-change arsenal. It hunkers down, toughs it out, and pushes hard against all odds, even when the easier solution might be simply to work smarter. In this chapter you’ll move away from sheer willpower and toward smarter tactics for improving your know-how. You’ll learn to develop an intentional strategy to master the skills to overcome your weakness.
Every time you try your best to do what you know is right and you fail, there’s a good chance that your failure can be traced in part to a gap in knowledge or a missing skill. Knowledge and skill can be just as important as will in any personal change program.
For example, the calories in a daily can of sweetened soft drink are enough to add fifteen pounds to your weight a year. This information isn’t exactly secret, nor is it difficult to calculate, but research reveals that obese children and their parents are especially unlikely to be aware of it.1 They have a knowledge gap.
Unpaid credit cards double their debt every four years. Again, this is common knowledge in some circles but a blind spot to most couples seeking bankruptcy counseling.2 Smokers who rush their asthmatic children to emergency rooms are the least likely to realize that it was secondhand smoke from their cigarettes that caused the asthma attack.3 Our own research into problems at work revealed that 70 percent of employees who were aware that their boss was unhappy with their performance couldn’t tell you what they were doing wrong or how they were going to change it.4
The findings are clear. Many of our personal problems are partially rooted in our inability to do what’s required, and rarely do we think about this, because our lack of skill or knowledge sits in our blind spot. When this is the case, simply enhancing your personal ability can make a huge difference. When you learn how to do what you can’t (by either adding a behavioral skill or becoming aware of what’s happening to you), change comes faster and easier.
For instance, Changer A.J.W., who was trying to quit smoking, also realized that for the health goals she had set, she needed to lose weight too. In reviewing her crucial moments, she learned she needed to get better at recognizing her own emotions. For most of her adult life, A.J. had labeled any bad emotion “hunger” and grabbed a bag of chips and lit up a cigarette.
As A.J. developed a wider emotional vocabulary, she found other ways of identifying and responding to her feelings. Eventually A.J. learned to distinguish hunger from boredom, hunger from hurt, and hunger from worry. Then, instead of responding with a trip to the refrigerator every time she felt any emotion, she chose other, more appropriate responses to her feelings.
For instance, when bored, A.J. now sought out a stimulating conversation or an intriguing book rather than a snack. When worried, she learned to seek comfort by focusing on corrective action, not by consuming comfort food. As A.J. learned to respond to her diverse feelings in more skillful ways, it became far easier for her to avoid both smoking and snacking. By turning to Source 2 and adding the right skill, A.J. no longer required massive doses of willpower to create the change she was seeking.
How about you? When it comes to fighting your demons, what skills or knowledge do you lack? The answer to this may be harder than you think. Consider Changer Michael V. He became quite skilled as he perfected a life of crime and drug addiction. As a talented addict he could find drugs within minutes of entering a new city. With time and practice he became a master burglar and world-class mooch. At one point he even became an expert at Dumpster diving. And although none of these talents made it onto Michael’s résumé, they were a big part of his skill repertoire.
Unfortunately, as Michael tried to transform from addicted criminal to ordinary citizen, he discovered he was missing other skills, that is, the skills for living a law-abiding and sober life. He was completely ignorant about self-control, emotional regulation (his anger often led to binge drinking), and resisting temptation, to name a few.
Or how about Sarah D., the Changer who finally broke her credit card addiction? She was a genius at kiting credit cards, hiding expenditures from her husband, and creating plausible stories, but when it came to just saying no to her shopaholic friends—well, that was a moon shot for Sarah.
Until Sarah learned how to create a livable and smart budget and then monitor her expenditures against it, her ability to invent clever stories that explained her behavior trumped her ability to spend wisely. Until Sarah crafted a script and practiced it—a script for telling her friend that she wouldn’t be shopping today (and doing it in a way that didn’t look self-righteous or feel insulting)—Sarah gave in to every single request to “hit the mall.”
Sarah never imagined that bringing her spending under control would require an assertiveness workshop—but it did. After studying her crucial moments (one of which was saying no to her best friend), she realized that until she mastered the ability to stand firm against an unrelenting onslaught of “Puh-leeze go with me!” from someone she really enjoyed being with, she was destined to sink deeper into debt. While Sarah had a PhD in sniffing out a bargain, she had a grade school education in responding to peer pressure. In order to move ahead with her change plan, she needed to rectify this skill imbalance.
You’ll need to do the same. When it comes to your personal change project, conduct a skill scan—that is, scan your ability to do what’s required before you implement your plan. Find out what you know and don’t know as well as what you can and can’t do. This can be surprisingly difficult to uncover at first, so seek help from others who are a bit further down the change path.
When it comes to learning how to do what you can’t, few subjects are more resistant to learning a new behavior than people with debilitating fears—say, snake phobics. Imagine that the very sight of a snake paralyzes you. The mere uttering of the word “slither” gives you the heebie-jeebies.
Now, in order to rid yourself once and for all of the crippling fear, do you think you’d sign up for a class that teaches snake wrangling? And for the course final, do you think you’d sit by yourself in a chair and willingly drape a boa constrictor across your shoulders? Probably not.
This was the challenge renowned psychologist Albert Bandura decided to confront back in the mid-1960s when it was common therapeutic practice to put snake phobics on a couch and guide them through Freudian analysis of critical childhood events to determine the root cause of their paralyzing fear of snakes.
In truth, Bandura was disgusted that his colleagues relied on talking cures: “So, did your mother fear snakes?” He suspected that there was a shorter path. Rather than conjure primal memories, Dr. Bandura would train patients to handle snakes. In short, he’d teach them to do what they couldn’t.
To do so, Bandura took people who had undergone decades of useless talk therapy into a lab. There he guided subjects step-by-step through a process of seeing, approaching, and eventually lifting a large serpent from a terrarium and wrapping it around their unprotected body. If they couldn’t sit by themselves in a room and wrap a serpent around their shoulders, they couldn’t graduate.
To effect their extraordinary transformation (remember, these were people who were so frightened by snakes that they willingly showed up at the basement of Stanford’s psychology building in order to receive help), Bandura broke the challenge into small, doable parts (touching the door of the room containing a snake in a terrarium; walking arm in arm with a guide into the room—then exiting slowly; donning protective clothing and approaching the terrarium; etc.). The participants practiced each in short intervals—while receiving feedback from a coach. By following these tenets of rapid skill acquisition (formally called deliberate practice), 100 percent of the subjects eventually hoisted the serpent onto their shoulders and graduated.
And now for the surprising part. The entire process took about two hours!5
So, take your pick. Option 1: you can endlessly discuss your personal challenges with friends, co-workers, and loved ones, or option 2: you can embrace a promising new skill-development tool known as deliberate practice.6 It may be your quickest route to skilling up to any challenge. It certainly was for Patricia S.
Patricia, a high-energy critical-care nurse and nurse educator from Minnesota, faced a common challenge. She desperately wanted to improve her marriage. Patricia’s skill scan helped her realize that she approached sensitive conversations with her husband, Jonathan, with the speed and subtlety of a gunslinger. As an interaction unfolded, Jonathan often struggled for words, moving his end of the conversation at a snail’s pace. By the time Jonathan had figured out how to express himself, Patricia was loaded with three angry counterarguments.
Patricia recognized that if she wanted to improve her marriage, she’d have to develop the skill of conversing at his pace, not hers. She’d need to learn patience. She’d also need to truly listen and ask questions rather than simply judge and attack—skills she had honed mercilessly in her loud, combative upbringing.
So, she and Jonathan practiced together. They started by working on Patricia’s skill of listening to her colleagues at work—also a problem Patricia faced. She and Jonathan broke the skill of listening into discrete elements, then picked a topic she needed to discuss with a colleague at work—something that was really bugging her—and then for ten or fifteen minutes (no longer) Patricia practiced while Jonathan gave her detailed feedback.
For instance, Patricia practiced taking a full breath and letting it out as she thought carefully about what the other person had just said. She practiced asking questions, and Jonathan gave her feedback when she appeared too eager to respond or too caustic in her reply. Then she tried again.
Patricia says that by following the tenets of deliberate practice she did more to improve her communication skills than she could have by reading a score of books. Of course, not only did she make progress in how she listened at work; she also learned how to apply the same skills when talking with her husband—her reason for practicing the skills in the first place.
When it comes to learning how to do what you can’t, here’s how to make the best use of deliberate practice.
Practice—and Practice for Crucial Moments. Most people think about, talk about, and think some more about what they need to do—but they never get around to actually practicing with a coach or friend. That’s a mistake. Everyone needs to practice. You’re no exception. And when it comes to practice, remember the oft-quoted words of legendary NFL coach Vince Lombardi: Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.
How do you perform this “perfect” practice? Crucial moments point the way. Patricia recognized that the moments that either hurt or strengthened her marriage the most were those when she needed to discuss a problem with Jonathan. So those were the moments she prepared for and the skills she practiced. Look to your own crucial moments and ask: What do I have to be able to do to best survive those high-stakes circumstances?
Break the Skills into Small Pieces, and Practice Each Skill in Short Intervals. Patricia avoided the mistake of holding a long conversation and then seeking minor feedback at the end—when any mistakes she’d made in the conversation were already becoming part of her style. To keep the practice elements short, Patricia studied each skill, broke it into small pieces, and then practiced each piece. First she practiced managing her emotions—even when she felt she was under attack. This involved rethinking her judgments about the other person and controlling her breathing. Then she practiced the skill of restating the other person’s view. Next she worked on sharing her view by using tactful and tentative language. Breaking the task into pieces made it manageable and much easier to learn.
Get Immediate Feedback against a Clear Standard, and Evaluate Your Progress. As Patricia immersed herself in deliberate practice, she quickly learned that she was on the “wrong side of her eyeballs.” That is, she had an image of herself as she talked, but she couldn’t see what others were seeing. So Jonathan gave her feedback—from his side of her eyeballs. He pointed out her strong tone, averting glance, and inflammatory language. Until Jonathan pointed it out, she hadn’t realized that she emphasized her arguments by pointing her finger at others—as if flinging an accusation.
Prepare for Setbacks. Finally, Jonathan helped Patricia prepare for very specific crucial conversations in advance so she could be on guard for difficult twists and turns. She would also debrief conversations that didn’t go well and use them as opportunities to develop greater skill in the future.
Deliberate practice is complicated enough that another example might be useful here. In this case, we’ll look at how Micah N. used deliberate practice to improve his ability to write project reports. He wrote several of these each week and found them tedious and time-consuming. Yet he knew his mediocre quality and efficiency at this crucial element of his job was keeping him stuck at his current pay level. So he set a goal to be able to complete a report within one hour without sacrificing any quality.
Micah began by breaking the skills into small pieces and practicing each skill in short intervals. These pieces were the project’s purpose, its progress, immediate risks to its timeline or budget, and decisions he needed to secure from his manager. Micah began with the “Purpose” section for a single project, writing and editing it down to its bare essentials.
Next, Micah created a way to get immediate feedback against a clear standard and evaluate his progress. He took his model for the “Purpose” section and applied it to several other projects. He sat with a timer to see how quickly he could go from blank page to completed section. Then he compared the section to his model. After a couple of hours of this deliberate practice, Micah could consistently finish a clear and concise “Purpose” section in five minutes flat. Then he moved on to complete the same kind of practice with the other sections of his reports.
Micah also prepared for setbacks. Some of his reports were unique, and these remained more time-consuming. But Micah found that his practice helped even with these more customized reports. He had discovered shortcuts in writing and expression.
You too can enjoy the same success. Research shows that if you use the same tenets of deliberate practice, you can learn two or three times faster than you could if you followed less structured methods.7
Many of the toughest challenges you face are difficult because they test your willpower. Everyone knows this. But what far too few people know is that will is a skill, not a character trait. Willpower can be learned and strengthened like anything else, and (no surprise here) it is best learned through deliberate practice.
Consider Martha A., one of our Changers. Martha is trying to lose weight by avoiding high-calorie foods. She has a plan that includes the foods she’ll eat and the foods she’ll avoid. She has also identified a number of crucial moments when she is especially likely to fail. Martha’s goal is to improve her willpower during these crucial moments.
For example, Martha feels at risk every time she enters an espresso shop. She can’t seem to avoid ordering drinks with calorie-packed add-ons. What might be a double espresso or black coffee with five calories becomes a sixteen-ounce chocolate mocha with over five hundred calories. So her rule has been: Don’t go inside espresso shops, period.
But this rule isn’t ideal. Martha likes coffee drinks, and she often gets together with friends at the espresso shop near her work. She’d like to develop the willpower to walk into the shop, order a double espresso, “No cream, no sugar, please,” and enjoy the company of her friends. But Martha knows she doesn’t have that much willpower.
So, should Martha run the risk of going into a coffee shop to be with friends yet face a temptation she can’t withstand? Or should she avoid the temptation altogether and give up on the chats with friends?
If Martha is merely going to enter the shop with her friends and stare at the high-calorie offerings, she’s better off staying outside. Without some kind of plan to shore up her willpower, she’ll be torturing herself needlessly.
So Martha lays out a plan, including the following list of crucial moments, ranging from least to most risky:
Morning break. I feel like a coffee, but I don’t want anything sweet. Least tempting: I can usually avoid drinking calories.
After lunch, my co-workers and I drop by the espresso shop before returning to work. A bit more tempting: I often order a calorie-filled drink.
Saturday morning. I haven’t had breakfast. I meet friends at the espresso shop before shopping. Very tempting: I can’t resist drinking five-hundred-plus calories.
My spouse takes me to the espresso shop as a Sunday afternoon date. He orders a sweet drink and gets me one too. Extremely tempting: I can’t imagine having enough willpower.
Next, Martha prepares for her crucial moments by turning to a helpful source of influence: First, she asks her husband and a co-worker to act as her coaches—to encourage her to make low-calorie choices. Just knowing the coaches are there helps her resist the temptation.
Then Martha begins deliberate practice by placing herself in a tempting situation. Her goal is to experience the desire but not give in to it. To avoid caving in, Martha brings in the main tool for enhancing her will skill. She tries several different ways of distracting herself. Instead of riveting her view on the caloric concoctions and dreaming of how they might taste (her usual tactic), Martha averts her eyes. Next, she steps back and reads a poster on the wall. Then she starts a conversation with a friend. As Martha continues to wait, she pulls out her cell phone and checks her e-mail. She also shifts her emotions by slowly reciting her Personal Motivation Statement in her mind and thinking about each word.
Martha learns that as she distracts herself, she dramatically reduces her cravings. She also learns that urges, even powerful ones, usually subside over fifteen to twenty minutes.8 Martha doesn’t have to distract herself endlessly. Distractions simply cause delay, and delay lessens the craving.
Next, Martha practiced her distract-and-delay tactics with increasingly difficult situations—first on an empty stomach, and then with someone encouraging her to indulge her chocolate fantasy. Naturally, here’s where it can get risky, so Martha increases the risk only when she has a coach standing by. Her goal should be to put herself in reasonably tempting situations and to develop the skill to survive them.
It’s important to be careful on this point, because there may be situations that are impossible to withstand. For instance, many experts suggest that alcoholics may never be able to develop enough willpower to be safe in tempting situations. Consequently, many never walk into a bar. Others never stock alcohol in their home. Martha decides that walking into a coffee shop when hungry and with a friend who always encourages her to indulge is pushing her limits, so she avoids such temptations. She weighed the odds of caving in against the benefits of facing new temptations head-on and chose carefully. You’ll have to do the same.
Fortunately, the experts do agree on one thing. The key to safe, deliberate practice in risky situations is to have a coach nearby.9 As you’re building will by learning how to delay and distract yourself, involve a trusted friend who is empowered to pull you out of the situation if the temptation turns out to be too much.
If you’re like most people, when creating a personal change plan you’re far more likely to rely on willpower than to enhance your skills. You figure that toughing it out is the one best response to all of your urges. Besides, what skills could possibly help you face your temptations?
However, as you watch effective Changers in action, you note that in some form they learn to recognize their crucial moments, create vital behaviors, conduct a personal skill scan, discover where they have to learn new skills, and then work on them.
Patricia responded by learning how to hold high-stakes conversations. Micah practiced the skill of creating project reports under the pressure of a deadline. Martha learned how to improve her willpower. You need to be equally vigilant when enhancing your skill set.
Employ Deliberate Practice. What actions will you need to take? Do you know exactly what to do and say? Is the skill complicated, and if so, what are the component parts? Against what standard will you measure yourself? Who is qualified to give you feedback?
Learn the Will Skill. What is your most tempting scenario? How can you avoid the circumstance altogether? If you don’t want to duck out completely, how will you withstand the temptation? Exactly how will you distract yourself? Who will help you through your toughest moments?