015 Link Up & Level Up: Quick Start Behavior Change with Tethering

This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good. Okay, in this episode of the Influence Every Day podcast, I want to talk to you about a really simple strategy that should be added to any plan for behavior change, whether this is for an individual or a group. But specifically, I want to talk to you about how you can address your own personal change, anything that you desire to sort of change a habit or an action or a behavior, or even a way of thinking or an emotional response to certain triggers. This one simple step can really help you a lot. The first thing I have to say is that intentions are not plans. It's really common for us to hear something that's like a motivating talk or listen to a podcast that you say, yeah, you know what? That's it. I need to take action on that thing. And you start to feel really motivated about that. Or you talk to somebody and you're really motivated by their story or something like that. We set this intention, and while we're motivated, it seems reasonable. While we're motivated, it seems doable. While we're motivated, it seems like we're committed and we're going to actually stick this thing out. But motivation waxes and wanes. And sure, we can sometimes set it up so that we maintain or nurture or encourage our motivations, but a lot of times we fall short. Don't rely on intentions alone. Intentions are vital. Motivation is vital. But in that moment of intention, in that moment of motivation, when you're actually experiencing like sort of a visceral like, I'm gonna do this, that is the time to set a plan. And part of the plan, it doesn't have to be this big drawn out mind map or brainstorm or set aside a half hour and work on some worksheets. No, you can actually just simply think about something to tether it to. A tugboat is tethered to a massive ship to then tug it through, you know, sort of more dangerous or crowded waters, right? It's tying something so that they move together. A tether. You can implement this with all kinds of things. It could be another habit. It could be a simply a repeated behavior. By the way, all repeated behaviors aren't habits, but it could be a repeated behavior. It could be something you see in your day to day. And the reason to tether it to something else is that first of all, it makes it easier to remember, especially if it's something you encounter or do again and again and again. It makes it Easier to remember because you've tied the two together. The other thing is it reduces the cognitive load. Now, here's the thing. Our brains desire ease. They desire the least cognitive effort, the least amount of energy to process something. If we have to manage our intentions, manage our motivation, and manage our actions and independently sort of conjure up all of those and the thought and all the other things that come with a behavior, we're not going to do it. We're going to fall short. So instead, reduce the cognitive load, reduce all the other things that have to be done before you implement such a behavior. The other thing about tethering is it doesn't rely on motivation as much as it does early. But eventually you start to implement it, and the two things are tied together so that if you're motivated enough to do one or you're going to do one anyway, it's easy to just tie on the other one. And what's really interesting is sometimes when you tie two things together, sometimes we slip on one. We think the thing we're going to actually have trouble maintaining is the new behavior, but sometimes the new behavior reinforces the other behavior we've already tied it to. It's got benefits all around. The other thing is it makes us consistent earlier in the process. Sometimes we get demotivated. Sometimes we beat ourselves up with self talk about, oh, I've been trying to exercise, but I just keep not doing it. I keep not showing up, or I'm not ready, or I. Or I find some excuse. If we are consistent early, we're less likely to have that negative self talk. We're less likely to demotivate ourselves. So let's talk about what you can tether things to. And let me give you some, like, really practical examples. For example, you can tether something or tack it to or staple it to another habit. So if you, for example, want to start to be a little more mindful, okay? And you've read all the things about mindfulness. You've tried these mindfulness exercises that people mention. You've tried meditation, you've tried journaling, but it doesn't seem to work for you. Well. Well, that doesn't mean mindfulness is something you should abandon. Instead, try tethering it to something you already do. You wash your hands, right? Well, at least I hope you do. After you use the bathroom or before you eat, or after you eat, like when you're washing your hands. Be mindful about washing your hands. That's one place to tether something while you're washing your hands. Be mindful. What does the water feel like? What is it? This, you know and do mindful hand Washington. It could be mindful bed making. When you make your bed, do it in a mindful kind of way. These are ways to build in mindfulness and you'll start to find yourself practicing it in other spaces. So that's. If you want to implement mindfulness in your day to day, you could pick something else. It could be brushing your teeth. Okay, that's a habit you do all the time. You could do that with mindfulness. Let's say you want to start a gratitude practice. Well, practicing gratitude. You know, I've tried multiple things. Like first of all I actually I'm kind of a really grateful person. Like I always look for things to be grateful for. But it wasn't until I finally found the way that I could implement gratitude in my own way. I've heard the so called gurus, I've seen all the advice on all the social media posts and, and all the things that people are spreading out there. I work in a center for well being. So I also help people with like implementing gratitude in their life. But I'll tell you what it was for me, for me, it was simply tying it to something that I do every single day. In the morning I happen to have a treadmill desk. So I walk when I start walking on my treadmill desk, which I do every morning when I start that, I write down five things that I'm grateful for. I tried journaling and it wasn't working for me because that was a lot of activation energy. I had to find the journal, I had to pull it out, I had to turn to the page and. And then I felt like this is gonna last. So I have to write all this stuff. It has to be. And also in my head, like I'm one of those like self editing kind of things. Like as I'm typing something, I'm like editing it right? And then that actually sometimes loses your train of thought. So what worked for me though was I use mind maps like on a computer. And so it's very easy to type 5 things I'm grateful for and to pause on one for 10 seconds, think about why I'm grateful for it and, and then write the next one and think about why I'm grateful for it and then write the next one and think about why I'm grateful for it. What's happened is now gratitude has become a habit. Even so much so that before I walk into a meeting, I think about the people that are Going to be there. What am I grateful for those people for? Right? What's happened is I've tethered it to something that I do every day. It's a habit already. I tied it to that, and now it's become a habit on its own. And in fact, it's actually started to add itself to other elements in my life. Other examples of tethering things to habits might be working out for me personally. Working out, I, I, I feel great afterwards, but to start it takes a lot out of me. So I tie it to something I already like to do. I happen to love learning. I'm always like, taking courses. In fact, that's probably my major dysfunction. I buy too many courses. I love learning and I love listening to audiobooks and things like that. If I tether audio books with working out, I get to learn something. If I work out. That's the way I did it for my own. I hacked my own psychology. I get to learn something if I work out. Otherwise, I'm not going to listen to the audiobook. I need to work out to listen to the audiobook. That's just something I did for myself, My own personal hack to get myself to work out more. And consistently, that's become a habit. One thing I just said, you can tie it to habits. Another thing you can tie it to is repeated behaviors. Now, repeated behaviors aren't necessarily always habits. For example, we open doors, we log into the computer, we log into meetings. Those aren't necessarily habits. Those are things that we do that are part of other activities that we have to do. So these everyday repeated behaviors can also be things that we tether things through. So if you've ever heard me give the talk, the simple rules of influence kind of talk, I talk about how I use doorknobs, which are everyday objects. The act of walking through a door is a behavior we do all the time. But I've used the everyday object of a doorknob as a thing to tether a behavior to, meaning to tie the act of. For me, it was managing my state. At first. I would start off by when I would grab the doorknob, I would basically briefly think about, okay, there's people on the other side of this door. I need to serve them. Just get present with that. Like, I'm entering this door and I'm going to serve people on the other side. Whether it's my family when I'm coming home from work, whether it's a meeting that I'm walking into, whether it's a lecture hall, Or a conference that I'm about to speak in, or it's say a one on one consult or consulting kind of thing. I, when I grab that doorknob, I think I have to serve the person on the other side of that door. What's happened is over time. At first I started with this, like, okay, grab the doorknob, be really conscious. Okay, so there's someone on the other side of this door, Let me think about them, let me do this, and then walk in. But eventually it became so much so that now I just touch a doorknob or walk through a threshold or a door and it's automatic. It's become a habit. Manage my state, get into the optimum state for whoever's on the other side of that door. That's something I've implemented in my own way by taking something that we a repeated behavior and just tying it to a habit that I want. You could do this with driving. You can do this with putting on shoes. You can do this with logging into a computer. You can do this with logging into a meeting, clicking join meeting. You can do this with anything that any repeated behavior that you have to do after you finish in the bathroom or before you, you eat your food, you can tie it to those behaviors. Another thing you can tie things to is a real world object, which I alluded to with doorknobs. You can pick any real world object. It can be picking up a pen, grabbing your phone. You can just tie a behavior to a real world object. You can also tie it to a real world experience. For example, when I experience negative gossip, right? For a while I was like, you know, first of all, I just really can't stand being around people who are constantly negative gossip. Like, it really bugs me. I struggled with how do I get out of that conversation? Do I just abruptly like remind them, like, hey, let's not talk about them behind their back. Sometimes that's awkward. Especially if it's like in the workplace and somebody's senior to you or they don't really know you yet and you have to interact with them later, it can be awkward. So I struggled with that for a while. But here's what I did. Essentially, I started to make excuses for other people. So the moment I hear something negative, I would practice the act of making excuses for someone, basically assuming the best thinking about something that they do well or something that is good about them. In fact, there's one person that I honestly like really struggle with any interaction with her. You know, even just hearing her name for a While was like, a trigger for me, what happened is I really worked on that. Like, I. I just basically tried to tie it to. Anytime I felt that negative emotion about that particular person, I would try to make an excuse or think something good about them. And the only thing I could come back to with that particular person was, okay, she's a mom, all right, so she loves her kids. And, like, so I would get to this, okay, she loves her kids kind of thing. Like, I would just make excuses or think about good traits that the person has. For me, I tied the act of thinking good about people with when somebody is having a negative conversation about that person, or I would make excuses for them. Let's say they say, oh, I saw him do such and such. Okay, well, maybe he was. Maybe he was doing something else. Maybe it was a different intention. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe it was, like, start to make excuses for the other person. That's something I did in my own personal life. The point here is tying something to an everyday experience or a regular experience that you have so that you can implement habit change and behavior change in your own life. And by the way, why is habit change and behavior change. Why are they two separate things? Because not all habits are behaviors. Some habits are emotions. My emotional response to hearing that person's name, that is a habit that was like. I mean, sometimes we call them triggers, sometimes we call them other things, but that's essentially a habit. And you can break that habit and insert a new one. And one of the best ways is with tethering. In addition to emotions, in addition to behaviors, thoughts can be habits. Somebody brings up a topic, or a certain person walks in a room and you have certain thoughts. Those thoughts are habits. Those. Those sort of, like, immediate early thoughts. You can change some of those. And the biggest one of those, and I am, like, guilty through and through, is the negative self talk about myself. If I have an interaction. Like, for example, the other day, I was doing the keynote address, and afterwards there were. There were a Q and a session. The talk was, you know, I got phenomenal feedback. All the ratings were, like, amazing and all these things, right? But there was one person who asked a question, and I went on a tangent, and I didn't give her a complete answer. And I was beating myself up about that, beating myself up. And so I realized that that's something I need to work on. So now I'm looking for something to tie to that. The moment I start to beat myself up about something that just went really really, really well. What am I going to tie to that? If you want to change your behavior habits, if you want to change your thought habits, if you want to change your emotional habits, then tie them to other things. Tie them to other habits, tie them to other actions, tie them to real world objects. Keep this in mind. This is a small action that can yield massive change in your life. So just tie these things together. It's super high yield. I hope you found this helpful. I'll see you in the next episode. This is only the end of today's show if you let it be. 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