by Owen | Dec 20, 2019 | Articles, Habits, Practices
The New AA
Throughout my journey with habit development, I have relied on many sources of accountability. Perhaps the most crucial source of accountability came from a cohort of friends we referred to as “Artists Accountability” or “The New AA.” We would meet weekly or bi-weekly to discuss our lives and the struggles we had been facing in our development as creatives. This group became a playground for developing our identities and establishing the habits and developments we wanted to see in ourselves.
The most crucial aspect of this group was the development of personal challenges. Every week we would meet to discuss the things we wanted to try or change. Perhaps to try a new routine or work to rid ourselves of a specific pattern or mindset. One by one, we would propose the goal we wanted to set for ourselves and why we thought it would be useful and meaningful to our lives. The rest of the group served to pick apart these challenges, point out flaws or potential roadblocks, all to better prepare and tailor the week ahead for the participant. With our challenges settled, we would develop a group goal for everyone to follow, a collective master goal we would all participate in together. Examples of various objectives, personal or collective, might be experimenting with routines like daily meditation, journaling, or abstaining from all television or media. Simple, measurable, and meaningful.
The challenges were tracked and updated in a running document. Week to week, we could see the progress, successes, and failures of everyone in the group. If we faltered or failed, we were honest with the group, and in turn, we could encourage each other and offer insight or propose a new angle. At the end of the week, we met once again to discuss and reflect. At the end of the meeting, we would grade our success on a scale of emojis from the classic smiling poop to a shining sun. The emoji branded next to our name until the following week’s results. I regret to say that I had the honor of wearing the poop emoji more than once.
By the time the group had dissolved, we had become masters of accountability and experimentation. We formed a deep bond and a genuine passion and care for how each of us fared. However, without the group, my source of accountability dwindled. Trying to hold onto the challenge tracking idea, I began to track six daily habits, including the meditation, exercise, and journaling practices I developed in the group.
What I didn’t expect was for this simple act of checking a box every day to turn into a source of accountability. As the daily checks began to grow, a larger and larger streak started to form in my practices. It became like a game. By the time I had checked off two continuous weeks, I had become obsessed with keeping this streak alive. I felt compelled to make sure every streak kept going up and up and up. First 30 days, then 50, then 100, then 150. I couldn’t bring myself to let the numbers I had worked so hard to go back to zero. Six months later and the checks are still going. No more poop emojis here.
Though they are just numbers, they indicate meaning in my practice. My streaks are a record of my consistency, proof of change, and progress. They represent my new identity in physical form. To watch them grow is to watch myself become more in tune with the person I want to be.
Investment
What I now realize is that both the tracking and the group contained the same source of accountability. We often think of accountability as a surface level exchange. Its sort of deal between friends or system. The more profound and perhaps more important aspect, however, is the investment.
The common link between the group and the tracking was that both required and insisted on a personal investment. The only difference between the two is that the group needed a two-way investment over the single point idea of streaks.
This investment cost is what makes accountability so unique and essential in habit formation. All other aspects of resolutions require a minimal personal cost. Even our fundamental purpose is easily dismissable on our worst days. However, when we take the time to stake our claims on an external relationship, whether that be a group, a tracker, or even a self-imposed punishment, we are forced to consider real and tangible effects outside of ourselves.
If we can find something worth investing in personally, we give ourselves accountable incentives to keep pursuing our goals. A habit or resolution requires a sunk-cost, the more personal and responsible we are for that payment, the more we will get out of our experience.
Moving Forward
As we continue to look forward to the new year and the better selves we want to create, let’s find something significant we can invest in. Perhaps we can find a group of friends we can help and support. Maybe we impose deadlines for progress with a reward and punishment system. Whatever it is, we need to remember that it is a cost we must be accountable for, and that will genuinely affect us on a personal level. Take the time to consider the things that inspire you or motivate you, use them to your advantage. Investing at the surface level guarantees nothing. Driving ourselves at the fundamental level requires a profoundly personal and meaningful investment.
by Owen | Dec 15, 2019 | 2019-2020, Weekend Reflections
What I’m Reading: Range by David Epstein
I will be recommending this book to absolutely everyone. It is one of the most exciting, applicable, and thought-provoking books I’ve read thus far. Epstein deconstructs the popular ideas of our pro-specialization culture, such as tiger-parenting, the 10,000 hours theory, and much more. In opposition, Epstein offers support and validation for the notion that generalists, those with a wide range of experience and knowledge, are far more valuable and necessary than we tend to believe. I would strongly recommend this book to teachers and educators, those currently facing career struggle, or those who are confronting an unknown future such as high-school and college students.
What I’m Discovering for Myself: Stoicism
My journey with personal philosophy has been slow and wavering. I have been drawn to various philosophical ideas over the years, most strongly associating myself with existentialist thought. However, over the last few years, I’ve found myself more and more attracted to the ideas of Stoicism. It first started when I read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. I found many of the ideas and questions inherent to his journaling were things I was considering and facing in my own daily life. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I began to dive more into the practical ideas of Stoicism in other texts. Perhaps it is its practicality that I find so engaging. The more I explore its tenets and beliefs, the more I find they are readily applicable and hinged on the action and practice. I’m unsure of where this will take me, but I am enjoying discovering a new way of thinking and interacting with the world.
A Quote I’m Thinking About: “You can’t eat your brothers and have them too.” – Budd Schulberg
From Schulberg’s book What Makes Sammy Run?. I have never found such an exciting way of considering egotism as it relates to the communities we have. It is impossible to maintain friendship and collaboration if we seek to abuse those for individual gain.
by Owen | Dec 13, 2019 | Articles, Habits, Practices
In Part One of our New Years Resolution prep, we focused on how our internal mindset and personal identity can affect change. This week we start down the road of the external. The most important external factor is our immediate environment. How we control and interact with the things readily accessible to us can have drastic effects on breaking bad habits and establishing new ones.
The Self-Discipline Fallacy
Every night before bed, I put a glass of water and my journal on my bedside table, I make a protein shake and put it on the dresser, clean off the yoga matt directly next to my bed, and finally, I lay out all of my gym clothes.
The next morning I wake up, drink the water, write in my journal, do some light stretching, get some protein in me, put on my clothes, and I’m out the door for the gym in 15 minutes, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. All of these steps have been put in place the night before to make sure that the untrustworthy and sleepy future Owen has the most streamlined path to a perfect morning.
Before I started to put these things into place, I would wake up and stumble my way through the morning, finally trodding my way to the gym 40 or 50 minutes later, if at all, my mind still restless and confused. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t convince myself to get up and get started.
It took me years of horrific, sluggish mornings to realize something that no one wants to hear.
Willpower is overrated.
You see, I believed, like most people, that the best solution to becoming a better person was to work harder. I felt, through the power of psychological discipline, I could whip myself into shape. But as any food addict or social media fiend can tell you, it’s just not that easy.
The problem is that we often think of self-discipline as an overarching conceptual engine. An internal mantra, magically generating motivation and consistency. In practice, however, willpower better serves a resolution in motion. Discipline can help to fuel the fire but is almost useless without a decent starter and the right conditions.
It turned out that creating a smooth and streamlined environment, like a path of crumbs, gave morning me a no-brainer path to follow to a successful start.
The truth is that we don’t need to rely so much on self-discipline. The best way to ensure success is to make positive outcomes convenient simple while making adverse decisions near impossible. We can’t guarantee what or how our future selves will react or feel when it comes time to make an important step, but we can guide them through carefully creating guidelines around us. By shaping our environment through strategic tension and relief, we can guide our future selves to better and healthier decisions.
Tension
By applying positive tension in the way of bad habits, we can generate an environment where making bad decisions is almost impossible. Although tough at first, the goal is to change the way we relate to our bad habits and the things that trigger them.
The process of generating tension begins with observation. Take a week to think and meditate on what triggers and sustains the bad habits you are looking to overcome. Then, believe about ways you can circumvent or put up roadblocks restricting access to those triggers or patterns.
If driving by the pizza joint on the way home triggers you to buy a slice, try driving another route home.
If tempted by junk food around the house, throw it out, make it impossible to get without going to the store.
If you spend too much time on social media, interrupting dinner dates and family outings, put a content blocker on your phone, and give your friend or partner the password.
By strategically creating tension in channels of negative patterns, we can slowly start to break our relationship with them.
These practices may sound life self-flagellation, but that’s not the idea. The idea here is to start to change the way we think about our addictions and bad habits. By applying tension in the right areas, we begin to change our mindset. These practices don’t need to last forever, and they aren’t cure-alls either. However, when in place for long enough, we break the hold that our patterns have over us, we begin to see the potential of a life without them. In this way, we take the pressure off of self-discipline as a central force. Instead, our willpower can begin to passively maintain the positive mindset and lifestyle we develop when the conditions are in our favor.
Relief
Now that we understand the potential for tension as a tool, we can flip it on its head. By relieving the areas of negative tension, we can facilitate the conditions for positive habit development.
Let’s return to the example of my morning practices. One of the habits I knew I wanted to establish was stretching first thing in the morning. It seems simple enough. What I found, however, was that the idea of getting out the yoga matt, making space, and getting around to stretching first thing in the morning felt like the most daunting task from the comfort of my bed. It was a roadblock keeping me from a positive habit.
So I flipped the tension on its head to try and relieve it. Now my yoga matt stays rolled out next to my bed at all times. I can roll out of my bed directly onto the matt. A little less daunting and a little easier to accomplish.
Though simple in practice, applying this relief can make seemingly tricky tasks reasonably simple. The more we can automate the paths to positive habits, the better chance we have of doing them with consistency.
If you want to journal every day, keep your journal next to your phone charger or your alarm clock, reminding you to write every night or morning.
If you want to become a better photographer, keep your camera on you at all times. Chances are you’ll miss some great shots if you only take it out with you when you think you need it.
The more readily available and easily accessible good habits are, the more inclined we will be to do them complete them but also to feel excited about them.
Moving Forward
Using our tools of tension and relief, we can shape our environment to create perfect conditions for success and consistency. Informed by our intrinsic identity, these tools begin to form our external world and motivations in our favor.
by Owen | Dec 8, 2019 | 2019-2020, Weekend Reflections
What I’m Reading: What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
I’m enjoying this book. I rarely read a work of fiction these days, but this book has quickly become one of my favorites. The story follows the ever-ambitious writer Sammy Glick, squirming, betraying, and weaseling his way up the ranks of Hollywood. The central question of the book “What Makes Sammy Run?” is asked by our narrator, Al Manheim, as he follows Sammy along his journey, studying his egotism from the perspective of a slightly jealous, slightly curious, and slightly obsessed “best friend.” The commentary on the relationship between hollow pursuits and the ever-hungry machine of commercial entertainment has struck home in multiple ways for me. I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
What I’m Reminding Myself: It’s Rarely Important
If there is one thing, artists need reminders of its that it (whatever the current issue is) is seldom as important as we think it is. That’s not to discourage the work or the value of the art. I want to be very clear about that. But sometimes we artists get a little too caught up in our world. It’s not life or death. Sometimes it may feel like that, but that doesn’t mean it is. In reality, it only takes a toll on our stress levels and anxieties. One of the best things we can do for ourselves is to step back and try and see the situation for what it is. Not only can this help us find a solution, but it can also give us the perspective we need to put some distance between us and the martyrdom that lurks in every artistic endeavor.
A Quote I’m Thinking About: “There’s no glory in being a rich, 50 year old boy; the same child at the end of the journey as the beginning, only with a fatter wallet.” – Ryan Holiday
by Owen | Dec 6, 2019 | Articles, Habits, Practices
With the sight of New Years on the horizon, I am devoting the coming month of articles to the things I have learned and practiced in the art of resolutions, habits, and personal challenges. Hopefully, some of what I discuss in the coming weeks can help us all prepare to make and maintain the changes we want to see in our lives and practices.
Perhaps the most crucial aspect of resolutions is how we identify and find the purpose of the goals and systems we are looking to develop.
All the Wrong Reasons
One of the most consistent sources of insecurity over the years has been my weight. Since early elementary school, I was always heftier than most. My weight was a constant source of ridicule from friends.
By the time I was in high school, what I now understand as body dysmorphia, was gasoline fueling the psychological destruction of my friend’s “jokes.” Junior year I decided I had enough. I was tired of the treatment and tired of how I looked. I would do anything to lose weight. In a short and starved seven months, I dropped 70 pounds, all for the wrong reasons. Praised replaced the ridicule, a small victory. My dysmorphic monster-in-the-mirror, however, could not be fooled.
What I didn’t understand was that this harsh and unhealthy response wasn’t a sustainable source of motivation. Without a real sense of purpose behind my decision, external motivation could only sustain for so long. Since that first bout of weight loss, I yoyoed back and forth for years. I was sure that if I could get the numbers down, I could overcome my dysmorphia. But the goal post kept moving, and the numbers were never good enough. Soon depression and lack of motivation put the weight back on. And around we go.
This past summer, I decided to dig a bit deeper. I figured I was focusing too much on the wrong ideas. What was it that I wanted to see and feel about my body that made me want to lose weight?
I discovered that I wanted to see and experience the qualities and feelings of someone who is physically fit, not merely obtain the body composition of someone fit. I needed to expand my vision to see that the weight was just a superficial element of the whole identity that I was looking to project.
So I re-aligned my practices to go in search of that feeling. I made fitness a part of my identity. Proclaiming this new identity promoted the importance of consistency and excitement over a number on a scale. The only way to validate the feeling and prove my new character, to myself and others, is to put in the work. Developing this more profound sense of identity gave my goals a real purpose.
Since then, it has been eight months of consistent and endless motivation. My health and fitness are no longer objective qualifications but personal and purposeful measures. I feel better and healthier than ever. Even more important, I get to prove that to myself every day.
Discovering and Maintaining Intrinsic Identity
We rarely, if ever, want the superficial or material outcome, even if we may think we do. What we are truly searching for is the feeling, ideology, status, or lifestyle that comes with owning that object or achieving that goal. For example, when someone says they want to be “rich,” they often seek a financial threshold, when in reality, what they long for is the lifestyle and status of those who are “rich.” Attaining, the former does not constitute the latter.
The point here is not to invalidate or shame any superficial goals. The first step in finding intrinsic motivation is to dig deeper into that desire and figure out what the deeper, ideological need is. Why is this goal important to you? Once we have a better understanding, we can begin to change our vocabulary and how we visualize our goals.
“I want to read a book a week” becomes “I want to be a reader.”
“I want to lose 30 pounds” becomes “I want to be athletic.”
Qualitative goals, while specific, can only ever be transient. Identities and feelings, on the other hand, require sustenance. Our “book a week” is a step. Defining those steps can be necessary along the way, but that step has to lead to something bigger, a broader sense of purpose of identity. Without this understanding, the steps will feel unfounded and arbitrary.
The second step is to proclaim our new identity to the rest of the world. Tying our practice to our identity, and being open about that, guarantees self-fulfilling consistency and devotion. We’ve hinged our accountability on how we define ourselves. Is there anyone who prides themself on being an athlete that isn’t actively athletic? We either are, or we aren’t. Our actions support and verify our identity.
Once we have established our identity in ourselves and our actions, we have taken a significant step towards long term change. Consistently reminding ourselves of our purpose will maintain our resolve and efforts for as long as we choose to define ourselves by it.
Moving Forward
As we prepare for our looming resolutions, let’s spend some time thinking about what it means to us and who we are. Establishing our purpose as it relates to our identity will prove to be an essential source of motivation. It is the foundation on which we will develop our practice, encourage consistency, and inform the methods that we use to maintain our resolution for the long term.
