To Build New Habits Get Comfortable Failing.
Most of us don’t wake up in the new year resolving, “This will be my year of failure!” But perhaps we should.
If you want to succeed at new habits, you need to first learn to succeed at failing. Sociologist Dr Christine Carter says our success at adopting a new habit depends on our willingness to be bad at it at first. And no matter how smart or skilled we are, new habits — at least any worth pursuing — are going to feel clunky at the outset. We are more likely to falter than achieve an instant state of flow. Because our minds automatically steer us away from that outcome, we need to learn to fail in small steps.
Here are four strategies to consider:
1. Inoculate yourself to build strength by building small experiments where you can experience small failures and bounce back from them.
You can immunise yourself against big letdowns by implementing experiments where you will fail in tiny ways. Don’t like public speaking? Your voice wobbles and you stumble over your words, feeling more self-conscious by the moment? Make your experiments small. Record yourself speaking one sentence and then watch the video, or simply ask one question aloud in a meeting where you don’t have to speak up. By exposing ourselves in small doses to the strength we’re trying to build, we are less close likely to suffer serious consequences if we fail — and we might even triumph. With each step, we strengthen our immunity to the downsides of a new habit, increasing our chances of acing it in the future.
2. Make a commitment with someone else before your self-doubts cause you to you chicken out.
Our enthusiasm at setting big goals for ourselves is matched by our fear of failure down the road. We readily convince ourselves that today is the wrong day to get started — to write that strategy document or have a difficult conversation. But there’s a window of opportunity between when we dream of our goal and before our self-protective reasons scream at us to retreat. Use this window to make a commitment to someone else. For example, you might tell your peer with whom you need to have a frank conversation, “I’d like to discuss our approach to design. Can we set up time next week?” Or just compose an email that will accompany a daunting deliverable before even starting the project. By beginning with the email, we create momentum to get out of our heads and make ourselves accountable to someone else. Once the declaration is out of your head and received by (or scheduled with) someone else, it’s much harder to retract.
3. Publicise what you’ve learned with others.
As the saying goes, it’s not that you fall that matters, but how you get up. Similarly, when you fail in small ways, identify what you’ve learned in the process. We tend to evade the limelight (maybe even take a sick day or two) when we haven’t landed the perfect formula. Instead, amp up the advantages of learning to tamp down the shame of failure.
4. Keep a progress meter and allow yourself to stop when you’re at your peak.
The best way to progress from couch to marathon is not by beating ourselves up each morning we miss a run. Each time we shame or blame ourselves, we undermine our motivation to continue. Instead, track runs over time, rather than assessing each day individually. By keeping a log of your efforts, over time you’ll notice how far you’ve come. Additionally, stop when you’re at your peak — while you’re doing well with your new habit and still enjoying it. To know you’re stopping before your performance starts to decline, allot a time limit and don’t exceed it, or take note of previous days and identify when your mood changes from excited to deflated. This way, you will eagerly anticipate the next session instead of battling the blahs of a B performance.
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Adapted from: HBR, To Build New Habits, Get Comfortable Failing, Sabina Nawaz, 2022.
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