I realize this is a little different concept than Pick One Thing. If you've read anything I've ever written about NOT making New Year Resolutions, then you might even say this is contradictory to my previously touted philosophy. I've been saying for years we should evolve instead of resolve each year. We should become a better/happier/more knowledgeable/more capable version of ourselves instead of setting ourselves up for what often ends up being failure. I feel that way because a resolution isn't fluid, it tends to exist outside of you, it doesn't necessarily grow you. Instead of resolving to do this or that, or to stop doing this or that, you can make a goal of growth or revision or refinement. That helps you evolve.
So, kicking a habit seems a lot like a resolution. It can be, but in this case, it's not. Remember, we're talking about ridding one's lifestyle from a dominant vice. When we were last reviewing the subject, we learned that a major vice hurts you or takes away from your other priorities. Biting your nails is a habit you might like to kick. If you aspire to be a hand model, then it's probably an Alpha Vice.
If we're going to oust our Alpha Vice, it does involve kicking a habit, yes--but it's more than that. When you kick a habit, the process is usually one that requires awareness and dedication to the cause; the consequences are usually some sort of withdrawal, plus feelings of loss or even fear of change. When you challenge and replace your Alpha Vice, the process demands you stand up for yourself and fight for your best interests. The consequences mean you'll think, act and live differently. Your consequences will all end up tremendous and positive, though. Because the coup returns so much to you, including power you gave to your Alpha Vice.
Whether it's sugar or fast food or chocolate or junk food...smokes or booze or some other drug you feel you can chase out of town without professional intervention...shopping or cheating or tanning or plastic surgery or insecurities or perfectionism or sitting on your butt too much of each day...whatever it is, if you want it gone, it might not easy, but here are some excellent methods to help you overthrow the choices you have made that have overstayed their welcome or overstepped your originally intended boundaries.
1. Find the emotion in your reason for doing this, now. It won't work unless you believe it's worth it--not just in your head but in your heart. Human behavior tends to boil down to two motivators: avoiding pain and gaining pleasure. What is the pain today, and/or what will it be as time goes on, in your Alpha Vice behavior? What pleasure will be yours when it changes? What will you gain that could literally choke you up? More years with your children? Money to enjoy a special activity you once loved but had to give up?
What pain will you remove? The stigma attached to your vice and thus to you? The sickness of hiding something away from those you love? Hours of wasted time each week?
2. Don't do it alone. So many people don't tell others when they embark on a personal journey to leave something behind. I recommend you tell EVERYONE. Don't be sorry, just be true. Family first, including kids and spouse and siblings and even your parents. Everyone at work, at school, at church, and the neighbors, too. Invest a little bit of every single one of your interactions and relationships into your quest. Bring everyone with you--not just for support and not just for watchdog accountability, but also for true lifestyle change.
People in your environment are a big part of your environment. All around you, you should see, hear and feel your new version of yourself (sans Alpha Vice) reflected. You'll also get help. Possibly even annoyed. Oh well. It won't be annoying anymore once you get to a certain new stage. The one where the former vice has faded and simply isn't all that much of a hot topic.
3. Add desirable new behaviors to replace the old. And if a new Alpha rises to power, it should not be a vice. It should be a grace. When you add to your graces and charms, it makes the things you did before that weren't good for you seem so much less appealing now.
4. Identify and address triggers. What sets you off? Avoiding triggers isn't always possible, but expecting them and knowing what works for you at those times is very helpful. A journal can be useful in the identification process. Practice may be needed to learn what works for you when presented with a wooing from your Alpha Vice. If you do succumb to a trigger, you need to remember that it only means you learned something: what not to do. Good for you. Now carry on. Recover and shine.
5. Impose conflicting new behaviors on yourself to compete with your former controlling vice. This can be anything from going for a quick jog to see your friend instead of smoking, to eating a pickle instead of the daily donut at work, or brushing your teeth instead of lecturing your kid.
6. Reward yourself and make it good. Ousting the Alpha Vice is hard work. You'll reap plenty from what you sow, but an extra nudge along the way can work wonders. Each week you keep the vice at bay could buy you a new book or CD, or take you out to breakfast with the kids on the weekend, or earn you a hot bath with no interruptions. Each month, make it bigger. At the end of 3 months, boy oh boy, you deserve sumthin' real good. Spa day? New tree for the yard? New outfit, with accessories to match? It's up to you.
7. Know when you need more help. This is important. If you struggle with addiction, or have been self-sabotaging for the long term, or are dealing with psychological or personality disorder, or anything that you just can't get rid of on your own (so far) please get professional help! How do you know that's what you need? No reward seems great enough, nothing seems strong enough to combat your attachment and attraction, triggers are everywhere and you can't escape them, no new behavior can compete with the ruling power, or you have no support and no accountability and no one you feel you can tell.
You choose your life. If your life can move forward without some big vice that's holding you back, imagine how freeing that is. Imagine how your relationships--with yourself and others--can deepen and grow. Imagine how much pain you'll avoid and how much pleasure you'll gain. Imagine how great you will feel and how refreshing that will be. If you go ahead and give up One Thing, the very best thing you have to Kick from now on, is simply your own butt.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Take Me to Your Leader
Is there anything that you do, with unusual passion or with irresistible habitual regularity, that is bad for you? If so, then I believe we can call this thing a vice. A vice has different definitions, some of them referring to what is moral or legal, but for our purposes, we will define vice as something you do despite the fact that you know it is bad for you. It hurts you in some way, or takes something away from some other priority of yours.
Say you shop for expensive shoes and bags. That is not necessarily a vice. It is a preference, a hobby or even an obsession for some people. But if your shoe/bag/shopping habit makes you late with your rent or forces you to only afford .99 cent meals at the fast food window for a month, well, now it’s a vice. A potentially stylish habit gone ugly.
If this thing you do with unusual passion or irresistible habitual regularity detracts from your life--or your health, your goals and desires, your daily happiness or your relationships--and is so powerful of an attraction that all your other preferences, desires and obsessions pale in comparison, then we can call it your Alpha Vice.
The One Thing you can’t resist. The One Thing, which, if were you to rid yourself of it, would make the biggest difference once it was gone.
Not everyone has one of these, by the way. You could drink wine every day like I do and not experience any (known or suspected) negative effects on the rest of your life. You could smoke cigarettes and gamble away a thousand dollars once a year on New Year’s Eve, which is not great for you, but if it causes you no ongoing harm, it’s just a minor vice. On January 2nd you are tired as you do your new annual savings budget, and then you move on. If that’s really all you’ve got, don’t sweat it, those are small vice potatoes. We all have a few quirky obsessions. And fun treats on occasion should kept in our lives unless our aim is to live in Dullsville.
On the other hand, something like (the ever popular) sugar is a vice that often becomes more intrusive and derailing than the examples above. It feels more serious. It’s different--and you know it. I’ll use sweets as our main example in the section below.
Pick One Thing: Your Alpha Vice
Most of us have heard about the Alpha Male. In the animal kingdom he’s the wolf that leads the pack. He is king. He has earned his spot among his peers, and he is also “elected” in a way, to continue to hold this position. He will be challenged occasionally, and eventually there will be a successor who is stronger, with more stamina, more skills or more savvy. No matter what, though, Alpha Male, like Alpha Vice, rules. Until he is ousted or otherwise gone.
We should note, however, that Alpha Male is generally good for the pack, and Alpha Vice, as we’ve learned, is decidedly not. Your Alpha Vice has earned its spot by appealing to you above and beyond all reason, and then, is continually re-elected by you. But not out of respect: you allow your Alpha Vice into power out of weakness. That’s a rough position, because you’re the very one that has to put forth the challenge to oust your Vice. It’s hard to replace the Alpha. It takes strength, stamina, skills, savvy.
For some people, a prime example of an Alpha Vice is sugar. For example, perhaps there is sugar in your every day, in the form of sweets and colas, and then several times a day, and then in place of other healthier things you would also enjoy eating or drinking. Then it becomes sugar that you actively seek out when you have none available, as in rushing to a gas station get to a candy bar before picking someone up, or spending extra money you didn’t have at the bakery but it looked so good…then weight gain, or dental issues, or the jitters and the crashes, or heartburn…you do sugar in the face of the rising diabetes epidemic or even knowing that you are at higher risk due to your family history….
…until the frustrating realization that you have, indeed, appointed Sugar to be Leader among your eating Habits. If sugar (or convenience food or smoking or gossiping or the internet or porn or booze or an eating disorder or laziness or shopping or yelling at people, or a house filled with 18 cats, etc.) RULES, then you have yourself an Alpha Vice.
Time for a Coup
So, what will it bring you, to oust your Alpha Vice?
Vices can take over some of your better judgment, so you get that back. You get the satisfaction of knowing you are using your better judgment every time you do. Don’t underestimate what you get out of achieving something you set out to accomplish, or of being wise with your own choices. It feels good--and it will be more powerful than your weak choice on the side of the vice, for sure.
Alpha Vices hurt you, and not just once in a while. You get to stop doing things that make you feel worse, or that you know will be a problem when they catch up with you. You get to quit doing something that makes you feel bad about yourself, or that stops you from being your best self.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall and the more space they leave. You get to completely change your perspective and regular way of life just by giving up your Alpha Vice, because by the very nature of an Alpha Vice, you're being led into a certain way of being and a certain set of actions. Now you are in charge of filling in your To-Do and Way-to-Be Lists.
Everything good needs replacing. (That's Dave Matthews Band, in case it sounds familiar.) You get to replace your Alpha Vice with deliberate choices from a world of infinite possibilities! What will you do instead? How will that add to your life instead of take away from it?
Your mission at this point is to imagine the coup. Start some secret plans to oust your Alpha Vice and visualize how cool it’s going to be without it. Whether you’ll be saving calories or sugar grams or chemical additives or money or time or whatever, One Thing for sure is that you’ll be saving yourself the trouble of dealing with your Bad Leader.
Next time we talk, it will be about how to Kick One Thing… until then, prepare to fight!
Say you shop for expensive shoes and bags. That is not necessarily a vice. It is a preference, a hobby or even an obsession for some people. But if your shoe/bag/shopping habit makes you late with your rent or forces you to only afford .99 cent meals at the fast food window for a month, well, now it’s a vice. A potentially stylish habit gone ugly.
If this thing you do with unusual passion or irresistible habitual regularity detracts from your life--or your health, your goals and desires, your daily happiness or your relationships--and is so powerful of an attraction that all your other preferences, desires and obsessions pale in comparison, then we can call it your Alpha Vice.
The One Thing you can’t resist. The One Thing, which, if were you to rid yourself of it, would make the biggest difference once it was gone.
Not everyone has one of these, by the way. You could drink wine every day like I do and not experience any (known or suspected) negative effects on the rest of your life. You could smoke cigarettes and gamble away a thousand dollars once a year on New Year’s Eve, which is not great for you, but if it causes you no ongoing harm, it’s just a minor vice. On January 2nd you are tired as you do your new annual savings budget, and then you move on. If that’s really all you’ve got, don’t sweat it, those are small vice potatoes. We all have a few quirky obsessions. And fun treats on occasion should kept in our lives unless our aim is to live in Dullsville.
On the other hand, something like (the ever popular) sugar is a vice that often becomes more intrusive and derailing than the examples above. It feels more serious. It’s different--and you know it. I’ll use sweets as our main example in the section below.
Pick One Thing: Your Alpha Vice
Most of us have heard about the Alpha Male. In the animal kingdom he’s the wolf that leads the pack. He is king. He has earned his spot among his peers, and he is also “elected” in a way, to continue to hold this position. He will be challenged occasionally, and eventually there will be a successor who is stronger, with more stamina, more skills or more savvy. No matter what, though, Alpha Male, like Alpha Vice, rules. Until he is ousted or otherwise gone.
We should note, however, that Alpha Male is generally good for the pack, and Alpha Vice, as we’ve learned, is decidedly not. Your Alpha Vice has earned its spot by appealing to you above and beyond all reason, and then, is continually re-elected by you. But not out of respect: you allow your Alpha Vice into power out of weakness. That’s a rough position, because you’re the very one that has to put forth the challenge to oust your Vice. It’s hard to replace the Alpha. It takes strength, stamina, skills, savvy.
For some people, a prime example of an Alpha Vice is sugar. For example, perhaps there is sugar in your every day, in the form of sweets and colas, and then several times a day, and then in place of other healthier things you would also enjoy eating or drinking. Then it becomes sugar that you actively seek out when you have none available, as in rushing to a gas station get to a candy bar before picking someone up, or spending extra money you didn’t have at the bakery but it looked so good…then weight gain, or dental issues, or the jitters and the crashes, or heartburn…you do sugar in the face of the rising diabetes epidemic or even knowing that you are at higher risk due to your family history….
…until the frustrating realization that you have, indeed, appointed Sugar to be Leader among your eating Habits. If sugar (or convenience food or smoking or gossiping or the internet or porn or booze or an eating disorder or laziness or shopping or yelling at people, or a house filled with 18 cats, etc.) RULES, then you have yourself an Alpha Vice.
Time for a Coup
So, what will it bring you, to oust your Alpha Vice?
Vices can take over some of your better judgment, so you get that back. You get the satisfaction of knowing you are using your better judgment every time you do. Don’t underestimate what you get out of achieving something you set out to accomplish, or of being wise with your own choices. It feels good--and it will be more powerful than your weak choice on the side of the vice, for sure.
Alpha Vices hurt you, and not just once in a while. You get to stop doing things that make you feel worse, or that you know will be a problem when they catch up with you. You get to quit doing something that makes you feel bad about yourself, or that stops you from being your best self.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall and the more space they leave. You get to completely change your perspective and regular way of life just by giving up your Alpha Vice, because by the very nature of an Alpha Vice, you're being led into a certain way of being and a certain set of actions. Now you are in charge of filling in your To-Do and Way-to-Be Lists.
Everything good needs replacing. (That's Dave Matthews Band, in case it sounds familiar.) You get to replace your Alpha Vice with deliberate choices from a world of infinite possibilities! What will you do instead? How will that add to your life instead of take away from it?
Your mission at this point is to imagine the coup. Start some secret plans to oust your Alpha Vice and visualize how cool it’s going to be without it. Whether you’ll be saving calories or sugar grams or chemical additives or money or time or whatever, One Thing for sure is that you’ll be saving yourself the trouble of dealing with your Bad Leader.
Next time we talk, it will be about how to Kick One Thing… until then, prepare to fight!
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