Changing behavior 1/2
tl;dr you can't bully yourself into it
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This piece was originally written for the Handbook of my defunct self-sovereignty membership program, REAP&SOW. It’s the second in a series of about half a dozen or so lessons that I’ll be publishing here. Working with yourself rather than against yourself is one of my biggest passions that I seek to share & share & share. The first.
You cannot change your behavior with only your mind...
...and your mind is also the key to significantly changing your behavior
So. What is behavior? It's a beautiful blend of those four elemental layers of Self I'm always yapping on about: physical/earth, mental/air, emotional/water, and desirous/fire.
When I make breakfast: I'm moving my body (physical), planning what to eat and how to prepare it (mental), feeling a little anxious about my ability to cook while also eager to eat (emotional), and acting on the urge to satisfy my hunger (desirous).
When I bite at my hands: I’m moving my body (physical), my thoughts are spinning my attention away from my body, likely tunnel-visioning into a video or a social media scroll (mental), I’m emotionally keyed up in anxiety or feeling pressured or stressed (emotional), and I feel the urge to move away from the stressor and move towards something soothing (desirous).
Can you see why changing behavior is such an insurmountable challenge sometimes? If you’re not addressing all four of these layers, you’re dealing with an - possibly invisible/unconscious - obstacle.
Most recommended methods of changing behavior encourage you to manipulate yourself
In the sense of 'manipulation' being a one-way forceful power dynamic and 'influence' being a two-way reciprocal power dynamic, I highly recommend developing an influential approach to changing anything about yourself.
Forcing yourself, tricking yourself, punishing yourself — these are emergency tactics. They're not sustainable (aka not healthy) for ongoing use. Manipulating and over-disciplining yourself is just more getting away from yourself, getting away from the present, getting way from reality, and adding more unaligned against-ness.
The smoothest way for behavior change to happen is in a self-sovereignty mindset and off The Drama Triangle1 (the victim, savior, perpetrator dynamic of deflecting personal responsibility and playing the blame game instead). If you're like, "I don't really know when I'm riding The Triangle" — doing this work will easily & quickly highlight where you do, because Triangle behavior loops where sovereignty spirals.
Due to this spiraling nature, there's no perfect system of linear steps, that will work every time. But I do have small set to start you off with that will become more intuitive & less rigid over time:
1. Stop judging your behavior (the specific one(s) you want to change)
2. Start empathizing with your behavior
3. Get to intimately know your behavior
4. Set a “stupid small” next step2
5. Review, reflect, repeat
Before I go on to explain each of these steps in more depth (in part 2/2), I have two important tips to keep in mind when rebuilding the framework for how you approach changing your behavior.
First, you must acknowledge the momentum a behavior already has
It will be easier to change a behavior you’ve been at for two years than one you’ve been at for ten years, just like it would be easier to dig up a tree that’s been growing for two years instead of ten. This doesn’t mean you can’t change old ways; it just means we need to account for the particular qualities of your behaviors when you go to shift them.
Your current behavior has momentum to it and a purpose it is serving. Each behavior of each person is developed in a unique context/environment. So while you and your friend may share a similar behavior - that could even serve a similar purpose - those behaviors could have very different momentums, which therefore will require different tactics for changing them.
Repeatedly, I go back to "momentum" because I tend to think about behavior as flowing water. Every time you do something, more water flows down that track. More silt gets displaced, the water deepens and rushes with more force. Diverting it also will now require more effort/force.
Compare that with how much time and with how much effort have you begun to desire, to think about, to plan, to take action on changing that behavior. Each of those things are scoops of sand in the new direction, aiming to redirect the flow of behavior-water.
I quit piano when I was ten and going into my second year of lessons, because suddenly the teacher said my hands were all wrong and needed to be up between the black keys. Frustrated that he'd let me build a rushing river of my fingers low on the keys - and without the skills or support to manage my emotions & change something like that - I abandoned the behavior/hobby entirely.
If you don't acknowledge how much momentum a behavior already has, you're probably going to fight yourself to change it, leading to either a) no change + exhaustion/frustration or b) some short-term change + mystery bonus negative consequences with your health or your relationships or just in starting up a new, unwanted behavior.
Second, you won’t always understand a behavior fully before you begin to change it
Waiting until you do understand is a top notch avoidance tactic. Seriously, I’ve tried it. It works wonders for basking in victimhood. This is me explicitly stating not to use my recommendation of getting to intimately know a behavior to fuel any perfectionist fires.
Because look at it this way, each time you try to change the behavior and get to witness what happens, you’re like a scientist or investigator collecting more data on the situation. Do you see how if you were in a mindset of shame & blame, of right & wrong, that you might miss this critical data and therefore how to update on it, how to spiral instead of loop?
So yes, real life is messier and more chaotic than this system, but that’s just the nature of 'maps & territory'. My changing behavior system is the map you can keep coming back to in order to orient yourself to the territory of life.
Read part 2 here, which expands on each of the 5 steps.
Want to join a community of people exploring their kaleidoscopic Self?
Join the waitlist for the Stupid Small Steps Club where folks with wonky, inconsistent, or wildly misused capacity gather to work with ourselves instead of against ourselves. We’re building personalized life systems together - exploring nervous system regulation, behavior change, mindset work, boundaries, emotional processing, and desire - all while operating on two wavelengths simultaneously: the mystical and the mundane.
No hustle culture. No toxic positivity. No forcing yourself into systems designed for brains and bodies unlike yours. Just stupid small steps, radical approval of reality, and a community of Know Thyself journeying baddies who understand that working hard has never been your problem — working against your actual capacity has been.
Join the Stupid Small Steps Club waitlist here to get first access when doors open, to lock in founding-member pricing for life, and to help shape the early community culture.
My workshop Seeding Sovereignty: How to compost your victimhood, all about The Drama Triangle, will be hosted on Tuesday, December 3rd. Subscribe to learn how you can attend. In the mean time, here's a link to my favorite article on the topic
The idea of using “stupid small” steps to achieve goals comes from the book Mini Habits by Stephen Guise