Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives (24 page)

When I began to think about my identity and my habits, I saw several instances in which my identity was getting in my way.

I identify as a reader, and as part of that identity, I'd developed the habit of finishing every book I read, because a “real” reader finishes books. Right? And I'm not alone. According to the book recommendation site Goodreads,
38 percent of readers
always
finish a book
. I vowed to adopt the habit of putting down a book as soon as I lost interest. What a relief. When I let myself abandon a boring book, I have more time to read what I love, and I feel more energized and happy, because I enjoy myself more.

But I had another identity-related habit that required more internal debate.

For months, I'd been trying to meditate—which had required me to change my identity, because for years, I'd identified as “a person who resists meditation.” But then I'd decided to try it.

I'd stuck with it this far, but it was time to reconsider. My Upholder Tendency and habit inertia had pushed me to continue with meditation, but except for a few times when I'd felt better able to calm myself, it didn't seem to make any difference. For me, meditation was difficult and boring, and seemingly fruitless. A bad mix.

I decided to stop meditating.

But once I made that decision, I discovered that I was reluctant to relinquish the new part of my identity. I was tempted to stick with meditation, merely because I wanted to be a “person who meditates.” Which is not the same thing, at all, as wanting to meditate.

No, I would quit. It wasn't a good fit for me. I was sorry that I hadn't embraced it, but as always, I reminded myself to do what's right for
me
.

Once again, I was “a person who
doesn't
meditate.” Be Gretchen.

Associate with people who are likely to improve you
.

—Seneca,
Letters from a Stoic

I
'm a gold-star junkie. I love praise, appreciation, and knowing that I've helped someone. For that reason, I loved to hear about Elizabeth and her treadmill desk. Thinking about a good habit that I'd helped
her
to form gave me far more pleasure than thinking about my own new-and-improved habits—especially when she'd told me that the treadmill desk had allowed her to get better control of her blood sugar. And now it wasn't just the treadmill. She called with a further update.

“Listen, I went to InForm Fitness!” My beloved strength-training gym had opened a branch in L.A. I'd forwarded the announcement email to Elizabeth, but she hadn't replied, so I figured she wasn't interested.

“Excellent! What did you think?”

“It's
hard
. But I see what you mean. Twenty minutes, once a week—how can I justify not doing it?

Elizabeth gave me full credit, which delighted me, but Jamie wasn't as free about doling out the gold stars. We were getting dressed one morning when I saw him contemplating himself in the mirror.

“I've lost several pounds,” he said. He didn't need to lose weight, but I'd noticed that he was looking leaner.

“Do you eat differently now that I eat low-carb?” I'd restrained myself from imposing my low-carb philosophy on Jamie or my daughters—who continue to eat sweets, bread, potatoes, and the like, within reason—but admittedly, I did talk about it a lot.

“Sure,” he said with a shrug.

“Really, you do?” I was pleased to think that he'd been paying attention. “How?”

“Well, I don't really eat much bread anymore,” he said, as he pulled a gray suit off the hanger. “On the weekends, I used to buy a quarter loaf of that raisin bread and eat it. Now I don't. I don't get bagels on the way to work. I don't eat as much granola.”

“Is it because of the way I eat, or because of the logic of eating low-carb, or you just don't want to anymore?”

“A little of all of that,” he said noncommittally. As usual, he wasn't very interested in plumbing the depths of his habits.

Then, not long after this conversation, my mother-in-law mentioned that she and my father-in-law had also started to cut back on their carbs—partly because of me, partly because of the Taubes book, partly because it seemed like a good idea.

It's a Secret of Adulthood: I can't make people change, but when I change, others may change; and when others change, I may change.

Up until now with my habits project, I'd focused on strategies that I use as an individual; now I wanted to explore how people's habits interact, in two directions. Other people's actions and habits exert tremendous influence on me, as mine do on them.

First, I considered how other people affect my habits. I tend to think of myself as a separate actor, working on my habits on my own, but what others do, say, and think rubs off on me. For instance, in a phenomenon known as “
health concordance
,” couples' health habits and statuses tend to merge over time. One partner's health behaviors—habits related to sleep, eating, exercise, doctor visits, use of alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana—influence those behaviors in a partner.
If one partner has type 2 diabetes
, the other partner faces a significant increase in the risk of developing it, as well. If one partner gives up cigarettes or alcohol, the other is more likely to quit. As a reader wrote: “I stopped drinking, and my husband has cut down a lot, too. Partly out of laziness, partly because ‘social' drinking isn't social anymore.”

Jamie's unwavering commitment to exercise has helped me stay dedicated. I also caught his habit of reading multiple books at one time, and buying books even when I have a huge pile I haven't read yet. (Before we were married, I read one book at a time, and never allowed myself to acquire more than five unread books.) Also, some of my habits bothered Jamie so much that I gave them up. For some reason, he objected to my snacking in bed.

Because we're
quite susceptible to “goal contagion
,” we may rapidly pick up someone else's habits, so it's helpful to be around people who are good role models. Other people can have a tremendous influence. In fact, I've found that I'm more likely to be persuaded by seeing one person's successful action than by the most impressive research. It's a data point of one—but for me that's a
very persuasive data point
. Once I thought about it, I was startled to realize how often I'd picked up a strong habit based on someone's passing remark. I saw a Twitter comment about Scrivener, the software program for writers, and now I use Scrivener every day. I read a short
New York Times
article that praised the Jawbone UP band, and now I use it every day. I switched from eating roasted, salted almonds to eating raw almonds after a friend told me, “Salt makes you hungry.” I don't even know if that's true, but it changed my habit. In
The First 20 Minutes
, Gretchen Reynolds notes, “
I stand on one foot
when I brush my teeth at night. … [which] may be one of the most transformative actions I've picked up from researching this book. My balance and physical confidence have improved noticeably.” I thought—well, I can do
that
. I decided to practice my balance when I rode up and down the elevator of our apartment building. Left foot on the way down; right foot, up.

Unfortunately, while people can be a good influence, they can also be a bad influence; by indulging in a behavior that we're trying to resist, they may tempt us to follow. “Look at what he's doing! I want to do it, too.” Or we may want to avoid feeling out of step: “Everyone's doing that, I don't want to be a wet blanket.” Someone told me, “I try to keep to a strict budget, and the biggest challenge to that habit is the way my friends spend money. They buy a lot of unnecessary things, and then I start to behave like them unconsciously.”

In fact, people may actively undermine our efforts to change. Someone's new habit may make them feel abandoned, or jealous of the healthy habit and its consequences, or guilty in the face of someone else's efforts, or hurt if the habit makes them feel rejected or judged.

Or maybe they're just annoyed by some minor inconvenience it creates. “I'd like to have the habit of exercising on weekend mornings,” one friend said. “I tried it a few times, but my family complained. I wasn't there to make breakfast, to get everyone organized, all that. What do I do?”

“Here's something I've noticed,” I said. “If I do something only occasionally, people don't adjust. If I make a habit of something, they adapt.” A friend had the same experience: “When I started shutting my office door for a few hours every morning, my coworkers learned to deal with it.”

The presence of other people can influence our habits in another way: when we're in a social situation, usually we want to fit in. This basic desire, to be in step with others, can become a stumbling block for good habits. As a friend explained, “I want to keep the atmosphere positive, for things to go smoothly. If I'm sitting across from someone at dinner—especially a client—I don't want to order an appetizer salad as my entrée. Or if they order drinks, I feel like I should get a drink.”

“Do you think people actually notice?” I asked. “And if they notice, do they care? Would
you
care?”

She hesitated. “I wouldn't care. But I think it does change things. Wouldn't it bother you?”

“No, I don't really think about it,” I told her.

I'm very susceptible to picking up habits from other people, but I must admit, whether it's because I don't mind violating these particular social norms, or because I don't have very good manners generally, I don't worry much about what people think of my eating and drinking habits. For a long time I was baffled by other people's anxiety in this area, but eventually I realized that my attitude is more unusual than I'd thought.

Before I started researching habits, I'd assumed I was fairly average; in fact, I'd come to realize, I'm fairly freakish.
Not everyone is like me.
I'm an Upholder and a total Abstainer, of course. Also, as I discovered when I took the Newcastle Personality Assessor, which measures personality according to the Big Five model (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, or OCEAN), for a woman I score “low” on agreeableness, which measures a person's tendency to be compassionate and cooperative and to value getting along with others. I suspect that my low agreeableness partly accounts for my willingness to appear fussy or out of step in social situations. Also, in all modesty, my lack of concern stems from modesty: I just can't imagine that others are paying much attention to me.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, I've found that the more matter-of-fact I am about my habits, the more readily people accept them—and me.

This observation brought me to the next question: How do I affect other people's habits? I'm an odd mixture. In certain situations, I shrink from prodding people to do things they resist doing—perhaps to a fault. One of my parental duties is to nudge my daughters to develop habits or to try activities that they may not want to do, and I worry that I let them off the hook too easily. I tolerate Eliza's habit of leaving wet towels scattered around. Eleanor learned to ride a bike late because I didn't make her practice regularly. My daughters—and Jamie and I—don't have very good table manners, because I don't enforce them.

On the other hand, it's often hard for me to resist playing the expert or giving a lecture about habit change. I have to remind myself that I can't convince people, they must convince themselves, and the more I push, the more I may inflame opposition. Also, I remind myself, the approach that works for me may not work for someone else. For instance, Elizabeth embraced the treadmill desk, but she never did go back to a low-carb way of eating. “I want to eat carbs sometimes,” she told me, “though I do eat healthfully at work,
always.
And I
never
eat French fries.” She found the approach that works for her.

Given my know-it-all nature, and my love for making suggestions, restraining myself from giving habit advice requires a lot of effort. It has proved much easier for me to give up sugar than to resist badgering people with advice about how to give up sugar. But I won't help anyone change a habit if I inspire a backlash of resistance.

Knowing where a person falls in the Four Tendencies is enormously useful when I'm trying to suggest a habit. Most people are Questioners or Obligers, and for a Questioner, an emphasis on reasoning, results, and logic is most persuasive; for Obligers, forms of external accountability are the biggest help. With Rebels, it's most useful to explain why a certain habit might be desirable, but make no attempt to encourage the Rebel to try it. They must choose on their own.

Also, I can help provide mental energy to support someone else's efforts. People fall into three gears when it comes to supporting (or opposing) other people's healthy habits.

Drive:
People in “drive” mode add energy and propulsive force to our habits. They can be very helpful as they encourage, remind, and join in. However, if they're too pushy, they may be a nuisance, and their enthusiasm can rouse a spirit of opposition. They may very well push a Rebel away from a good habit.

Reverse:
Some people press others to reverse out of a healthy habit. They may do this from a sense of love, such as the food pushers who argue, “You should enjoy yourself!” or “I baked this just for you!” Or their behavior may be more mean-spirited, as they try to tempt, ridicule, or discourage us from sticking to a healthy habit.

Neutral:
These folks go along with our habits. They support us whatever we do. Sometimes this is useful, but sometimes this support makes it easier to indulge in habits when we know we shouldn't.

I asked if Maria thought anything I'd suggested had helped her with the habit of drinking less. I'd definitely been in drive mode with her.

“Yes, it helped,” she said. “You talked to me in a nonthreatening way, you gave me ideas I could adjust, you followed up—and that helped. I'd think, ‘I guess I'll have to tell Gretchen.' ”

“Do you think your habit has improved?”

“For sure. Our conversations made me aware of what I was doing. In the past, I overdrank because I didn't think ahead, or register what I was doing. I just said, ‘Who cares, I want to have fun!' Now I drink more slowly, and really savor it.”

In some cases, as with Maria, I did help people with their habits. In other cases, not so much. For example, I'd made a few trips back to Marshall's apartment to help him finish clearing his clutter, but our efforts didn't seem to make much difference to him—other than to make his apartment more pleasant.

On my last visit, I said, “Wow, this place looks good.” I wished I'd taken a
before
photo of Marshall's apartment so we could compare it to the
after
.

“Yes. There's not much left to do.”

“Let me ask you,” I said. “Does this make any difference in your ability to work on your own writing projects?” I gestured vaguely around his apartment. “It would make a difference to
me
, but does it make a difference for
you
?”

He thought about it. “Well, I don't think so. But that's because what I need to figure out is so much bigger: what to do with my life. I do like to be home more than I did, because there's not so much stuff. Also now I have the habit of constantly getting rid of my clutter and things I don't need—which I think is very helpful to sanity generally.”