Behaviour Goals: Learn How to Use Your Environment to Your Advantage.

May 31, 2022

It’s the classic paradox: Which came first; The chicken, or the chicken egg? But if one results in the other, how do you break the behaviour/environment loop? Well, the fact that you’re reading this tells us that you’re already done the most important part!

Purposeful behaviour change requires awareness.

Make the Decision That Something Needs to Change.

For most of our lives, we’re oblivious to our behaviours and how we interact with our environment. We go about our day on autopilot without questioning why or how… Until something happens that snaps us out of it.

That “happening” can come in many forms:

A family health scare.
The realization that age is catching up to you.
Not being able to fit into your wedding dress.
Or realizing that your beach vacation is only 3months away.

Regardless of what triggers it, you now have a desire to make a change. An awareness that the status quo doesn’t sit well with you anymore. You’re no longer on autopilot, and you’re prepared to take the wheel.

How Our Environment Limits Our Ability to Change.

Here’s where your environment comes in to play. Remember when I said that it’s molded by your behaviour? Well if you’ve been doing something for a long time, it’s likely that your environment has settled to make it easier to do.

We don’t like doing things that need more effort than necessary. And we’re so good at making our lives easier. There’s a legit, scientific reason for that. We’re physiologically programmed to seek out ways to be efficient with our energy.

Strength training? – Sounds exhausting, no thanks.

Going for a run? – Then I’ll have to change my clothes. Nope.

Cooking a meal? – There’s an app for that. I don’t wanna.

Why spend time and energy cooking when you can open a delivery app on your phone without leaving the couch. See, easy. We set up our environment to make current behaviours as frictionless as possible…

That’s why you leave your snacks on the kitchen counter or within arms reach.

That’s why food delivery apps are on your home screen.

That’s why you skip your workouts to watch season 5 of The Last Kingdom on Netflix. (Guilty as charged.)

And that’s why when you DO try to make a change, it’s So. Fucking. Hard.

There are no "Good" or "Bad" Behaviours. Only Desirable and Undesirable Ones.

What’s good or bad is subjective, and completely dependent on a person’s perspective. To some, eating two slices of red velvet cake every evening is good. To others, that’s way too much, and makes it bad.

The second group is obviously wrong because red velvet cake is the bomb, but you get my point…

No one can determine what’s good or bad for anyone but themselves.

What we can all agree on is that there are behaviours that we want, and behaviours that we don’t want. What those behaviours are exactly is up to you, and remember, there are always two sides to that coin.

For someone wanting to make a change in their nutrition, eating homecooked meals may be the desirable behaviour. It’s what they want to do. On the other side of that coin, we have the undesirable behaviour of skipping homecooked meals. It’s what they want to stop doing.

If we’re going to make a change, we also have to stop not making a change.

Make Doing the Desirable Behaviour Easier to Do.

Let’s use our DNA encoded resistance to extra effort to our advantage. Once you’ve identified the behaviours that you want and the ones that you want to stop, it’s time to look at how your environment affects them.

Making those desirable behaviours easier to do gives you a fighting chance. It takes tasks that used to require a mountain of effort, and brings them closer to your reach.

Motivation represents the amount of effort you’re willing to put into an action to get an outcome. If we can reduce the effort needed, we’re more likely to stay consistent when our motivation dips. And it will dip!

For example:

If you want to eat homemade meals more often, don’t be afraid to slap that “Easy” button.

Buy frozen veggies. After all, frozen veggies are better than no veggies.
Focus on simple, “one-pot” recipes. Fewer dishes to wash and no multi-tasking required.
Store your most-used food prep utensils on a hanging rack for easy access.

Make the Undesirable Behaviour More Difficult to Do.

If the desired behaviour is to eat more homemade meals, then we also want to stop finding ways to skip homemade meals. We need to make it harder to do what we don’t want to do. It helps to increase the stakes or make the alternative need more effort to complete.

Adding to the previous example, here are a few ways to make skipping a home-cooked meal a little more difficult:

Delete food delivery apps from your phone and browser favourites. Even better, remove the credit card on file first.
Set a budget for take-out meals. Be accountable to more than just your choice of food.
Put the money you would have spent into an account every time you decide to not eat take-out.
Choose an appropriate reward for being successful, or hitting a streak.

The important thing to remember is that you don’t need to make the undesirable behaviour impossible to do. The idea is to make it require extra effort to perform. That extra effort helps bring awareness to it, and gives your willpower a chance to step in and say, “Not today, Satan, not today.”

Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts.

Hopefully, I’ve shown how your environment can make or break your behavioural changes. But regardless of environment or behaviour; change is hard. The Human Experience throws things at us from all angles.

Keep these takeaways in mind.

We transform our environment so that doing things over and over becomes easier.
Our present environment is full of resistance (see above) that makes it harder to change.
Improve the adoption of desirable behaviours by making them need less effort.
Improve the rejection of undesirable behaviours by making them harder to do.
Doing either/or will help, but doing both improves your chances even more.

Everyone experiences Life differently, and ultimately, you need to find out what works best for you.

If you would like some guidance and support, I’m here with open arms and an open door.

And if you found this information helpful, please share the blog with those you care about.

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Coach Rob

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