With these 4Rs, How about feeling good about your New Year's resolution!
The simple path to turning your intentions and practices into habits
Why make a bet on when you’ll quit your New Year’s resolution when you can set yourself up to achieve it naturally? Here’s a little secret, we all have 4Rs available to us for moving an intention or practice into a habit. Unlike the 3Rs, reading, writing, and arithmetic, of which two of the Rs don’t exist, the 4Rs, well, they are for real. Like, scientifically real and built into your brain! This may get a little nerdy but I’ll keep it relatable.
Your New Year’s resolution succeeds when you stop thinking about it and you’re still doing it. Versus, “Oh, I forgot I was going to do that… I suck.”
Our intentions and practices turn into habits when they leave our system-two brain area that does all the analysis and figuring and gets embedded in our system-one brain, the more autonomic side of things. That is to say, all our intention has to get to a neural place where it’s no longer intentional. Instead, it just happens. It’s in the system-one space that doesn’t require thinking about the thinking. Then you automagically respond how you want to in being and doing, in a given situation in context. In this place, your brain in high-performance mode, makes all these autonomous adjustments on the fly to do the deed, without you having to contemplate. Think about all the complex elements there are to driving a car? And, you successfully made it home, well hopefully. And you were thinking about many other things along the way. Automagic! (Pun intended.)
The easiest and fastest way to get in the habit, incorporate these 4 R's as you create your practice.
R1 Relationships - your brain wants belonging, first and foremost, love & accountability, with all the oxytocin + serotonin. Your brain isn’t thinking, don’t die, that is, until you’re aware you’re at risk of dying! What it is doing in the background, is continually re-factoring- can I with my tribe: survive, grow, and continue, while taking in all of the data at approximately 11 million bits-a-second? Here’s where belonging comes in. As humans, we don’t survive, grow, or continue on outside of belonging. We’re wired to belong first, then, everything else. And on the obvious side, we can’t even reproduce alone.
What to Do:
(Tell or attach your NYR intention/practice to someone you really belong with, the #feelowncare type. Get it out of your head, so it gets real, it’s now part of the 2-way belonging street)R2 Recurrence - your brain must create well-used neuropathways, like repeated rains carving a canyon of ability.
What to Do:
(Set a recurring cadence in thought and action. The more your neural gears of a practice turn, the more myelin grease they get)
Medina, John. Brain Rules Brain Rule #7 Repeat to remember. 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (pp. 158-160). Pear Press. Kindle Edition.R3 Resistance - your brain loves to work less hard.
What to Do:
(It’s just that simple, easy for the brain is easier done. So, create less resistance for things you want, or, add more resistance for things you don't. Physical and emotional resistance end up in the end, being it’s just neural resistance.)
Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life (p. 161). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.R4 Rewards - your brain must feel good for doing it (dopamine + serotonin). Neutral and negative makes the brain set that circuit aside.
What to Do:
(We consistently do what feels good, so, give yourself something to feel good about each time. Note: But you only have 30 to 60 seconds for dopamine to mark that circuit with, “Hey, this is cool don’t forget it, and let’s do it again!”)
Wood, Wendy. Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick (p. 116-118). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
Now, set up your life conditions to support these 4Rs, your built-in neural functions, and you’ll stack the odds in your favor to achieve your New Year’s resolution! Or, if this feels a little bit better tend to your neural garden for your better life.
Tie your New Year’s resolution to someone that you really belong with
Create a recurring cadence with whatever means you need to make it easier for your brain until it doesn’t even notice you’re doing it
Whatever it is you want to do, make it physically and emotionally easier to do
The moment you make the mental commitment, or you physically do it, intrinsically or extrinsically reward yourself! Remember you only have about 30 to 60 seconds to splash that circuit with dopamine. Long-term success is simply the added-up short-duration rewards your brain loves!
Find your ways to do these four R's from your strengths, and you'll move your New Year’s resolution into the unconscious ways you do things (habits) in place faster.
Happy New Year’s 2024!