Every year on or around January 1st, I resolve to honor the birthday of each and every one of my family members and friends by writing a card, posting on social media, or making a phone call. The journey is always the same. By the end of the month, I’ve missed a few people’s birthdays; around mid-February, I’m eating the dust of my resolution; and by March, I’ve slid into a ditch, wheels up. In frustration, I yank the keys out of the ignition and throw them out the window. Sound familiar? Like you and millions of Americans, I love the idea of a fresh start but usually don’t get past the beginning stage.
At the start of each year for the last four decades, I’ve planned my soon-to-be perfect life. I’ve made vision boards or created lists divided into categories such as Health, Relationships, Finances, and Home. I’ve written manifestos that proclaim the exemplary qualities of the soon-to-be new me. “I’m fit and fantastic; I have plenty of money; I do lunch with my closest friends every week, call my parents on Sundays, and take my wife on a fantastic date every Friday.” And yet, none of these attempts has changed my life trajectory.
I fail to make myself anew, slumping back into habitual behaviors with the promise that I will try again in the coming year. Given the evidence, why do I, and millions of others, bother to engage in this fantasy of remaking ourselves? I don’t have the answer right now, but I do have a few books that may illuminate the process of gradually and successfully making positive changes.
I admit that I am a self-help book junkie and a perfectionist. In my lifetime of striving for perfection, I have read several hundred books about becoming a better person. That said, I’ve only kept six books, the ones that have impacted how I think and how I live. Three of those books I refer to whenever I need support reshaping the direction of my life.
One of these is The Power of Small, Why Little Things Make All the Difference by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. The opening chapter describes a man with high aspirations but a bad haircut. One day on a whim, he walks into a salon and gets a flattering hairstyle. That leads to a cascade of events (his coworkers notice and compliment him, increasing his confidence, which enables him to make small changes in his work leading to a slow but dramatic evolution in his career).
It’s not as trite as it seems. There are plenty of other examples in the book of seemingly small actions leading to life-changing events. My own experience with this has to do with a simple phone call.
I’ve put off calling my mom (and pretty much everyone else) for most of my life due to my dislike of talking on the phone. I feel bad about not calling people, but neglecting my mom haunts me the most. I’ve only ever called her when I had to, like to discuss logistics for a visit, but never to chat or check-in. And as she’s gotten older, I feel worse and worse about not staying in touch with her.
A few months ago, I took a deep breath and dialed her number. She answered the phone with, “My goodness! Is everything okay?” We had a noneventful and short conversation. As we ended, she said, “It is so wonderful to talk to you. You made my day!” I felt a flash of joy at her delight. With that reinforcement, I started calling her once a week, every interaction giving me a little flutter of happiness that increased the likelihood of me calling her again.
Then three weeks ago, buoyed by the success with my mom, I called a friend I’d lost touch with. We made a lunch date and have seen each other twice since. Just one phone call, and we are back in each others’ lives.
The authors of The Power of Small Changes point out that a powerful but small thing can be offering someone half of your bran muffin. This actually happened and led the authors to a life-long working relationship. Simple, kind, or generous gestures can change your or someone else’s life in subtle yet spectacular ways.
Another book I continue to reread is The Power of Habit by Charle Duhigg. He describes a habit as a three-step loop he labels “Cue, routine, reward.” For example, I used to habitually scroll through social media at breakfast. This became 30-plus minutes of wasting my most productive writing time.
The cue is sitting down to breakfast; the routine is opening my laptop, which I left on the dining room table overnight; the reward is the dopamine released as I scroll through my friends’ posts.
The trick to changing an unproductive or harmful habit is first to notice the cue and then log it for a week (I find logging unnecessary). The following week, replace the routine with another. Only the routine changes. Simply eliminating the routine leaves a person feeling deprived. Replacing the routine ensures a better chance at success.
The cue, in my case, was sitting down at the table for breakfast. To begin with, I moved my laptop to another room at night and put a literary magazine in its place. So the cue remained the same – breakfast time. But the routine changed to picking up the magazine and reading an article or story, which gave me a zing of dopamine that inspired me to write. The only thing that changed this scenario was the routine. The cue (sitting down to breakfast) and the reward (dopamine) remained the same.
The third book on my shelf I review annually is Organizing from the Inside Out by Julia Morgenstein. It’s subtitled, The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life. While that seems like an exaggerated promise, I did, and I still do find the book life-changing. Morgenstein does not preach specific ways to organize your kitchen or fold your clothes. Instead, she encourages you to identify your unique lifestyle and what matters to you. She then describes how you can gather the objects in your home to support your daily activities. Since my habits and life plans change yearly, her book helps me eliminate items I no longer need and streamline my life at home to support my current lifestyle and passions.
This year, despite my resolution to stop making resolutions, I must confess that yesterday, I gave into the impulse and wrote a detailed list of self-improvement goals for the year. It’s three pages long and would necessitate I not sleep for ten years to accomplish it. Then in a moment of sanity, I set it aside and instead wrote this blog post. On my dining room table are three books, ready for reading while I eat breakfast. For me, it’s a small thing, but powerful.
Which small but mighty changes will you make this year?