Step 8
Act In the Moment

Questions to get you started:

How will you realize that the moment to act has arrived?

Who will decide your actions, you or your self-addiction?

Two months after I quit my job to create my own consulting company, I heard a speaker deliver a presentation on how people who start their own businesses need to be a little bit crazy. I found him entertaining and insightful, but I didn’t realize how on target he was at the time. After a couple of years in business it was much clearer to me just how crazy people have to be to succeed as entrepreneurs. As the owner of a business there is no stability. There always seems to be either too much work, or too little. Busy is definitely better than bored, but sometimes it can be extreme.

I remember one time in particular when I felt as though all the opportunities I had been hoping for hit at the same time. All of a sudden I had a ton of work to do and no time to do it. I discussed my situation with a friend, and he helped me develop strategies to keep me focused and avoid the distractions that could eat away at 120 my time. It was a very useful conversation. It helped me feel like I could make it through the busy time and lowered my stress level considerably. One of our strategies was that I wouldn’t spend time on the Internet during the day unless it was for research into one of my client projects. All of the news that I usually read online would have to wait for the end of the day.

When I got off the phone with my friend I did two things. I checked my email to see if anything critical had come in while I was on the phone, and I opened up my Internet browser. It was true insanity. Only minutes after discussing how I needed to avoid the Internet, I hopped right on. I knew it was wrong. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but somehow my brain stood back and watched as my hand guided the mouse to this action. The moment for me to change my behavior had arrived, and I failed my first test. Fortunately, I did figure out a way to stop getting distracted from my work, but it was clear that changing in the moment was not as easy as my friend and I had made it out to be.

What can you do to improve in the moment?

A lot of people credit willpower for their success or failure in these circumstances. I spoke to a woman named Joan recently who was trying to lose weight and expressed frustration over setbacks to her diet program. She worked in a training department, so she was always going to corporate training events. These events carried with them several certainties:

1. The meeting rooms would be sterile and cold.
2. The participants would include a handful who didn’t want to be there and would give the trainers a hard time.
3. There would be donuts and Danish pastries at breakfast, cookies and brownies in the afternoon, and soda and coffee all day long.

She had just come back from a week of these events and had gorged herself on all of the fattening foods available to her. It made her feel awful, but she did it anyway. The food just tasted too good at 121 the time. I asked her what she thought she needed to do differently and she told me that next time she really needed to set her mind to the task, to just commit to having willpower.

It is a common belief about change that willpower is what makes the difference. People think, “If only I have the willpower, I can do better in the future.” Willpower is great, but in many cases it doesn’t hold the key to success. With all of the work you have done to this point, it is too much of a risk to leave the final actions to a test of willpower. In this chapter we will build:

• Understanding of the process of change in the moment of action
• Strategies you can use in the moment of action to shape your new behaviors.

Process of Change

When you reach the time when your self-addictions usually take over, you might have three different experiences in that moment:

• Recognition—Recognizing the self-addiction as you perform it but being unable to stop yourself from doing it.
• Recovery—Realizing you are engaged in the self-addiction and recovering to stop yourself during the act.
• Replacement—Recognizing the desire to engage in the self-addiction and replacing it with a favorable alternative before the behavior begins.

Understanding these three experiences will help you to navigate through them more effectively.

Recognition

There will come a time when you recognize in the moment that you are engaging in the addictive behavior. You might start to perform the undesirable behavior, realize that you are doing it, but be unable to stop yourself. If that happens then it means that your self-control 122 has not yet caught up with your self-awareness. Your awareness has risen to where you recognize the behavior during the event. However, your self-control is not up to the speed of your self-awareness, so the behavior continues.

When you experience awareness without control, rationalization and emotion are generally the key drivers. Rationalization takes place when we recognize the mistakes we are making but figure out some reason that this exact moment is not the best time to make the change. Perhaps we decide that Monday is a better day to start a new routine, or maybe we convince ourselves that this situation isn’t exactly what we had in mind when we made the commitment. Somehow, we satisfy ourselves that there are perfectly adequate reasons why we don’t need to start now.

Emotional causes are very different from rationalization. When emotion drives our behaviors we may have 100% conviction that we should not do what we are doing, but our emotions simply take over. It could be anger, fear, even joy that drives us. Some people even describe this as a near out-of-body experience. It’s as though we are observers with little or no control over our own behaviors. We know that what we are doing is wrong. We know we should be doing something else, but we are simply incapable of altering our behavior. That’s what used to happen with John.

John knew that he was in the moment of action. He knew it was time to change his behavior, and he was motivated to do so. Unfortunately, willpower alone wasn’t enabling him to change. However, he had reached the critical first step. Even though he wasn’t able to change that time, he was experiencing recognition of his behavior in the moment. This recognition is an important stepping-stone to reach in order to get to recovery.

Recovery

In recovery you adjust in the middle of the act. You recognize the behavior as you are doing it, and you stop in the middle of your action to replace the undesirable behavior with the desirable substitute. This is a watershed moment. You have finally engaged in the behavior that you want to use. Your change now starts to feel real. Others may not yet realize it, but you have undergone a tremendous change and can see it taking place.

When you achieve your first recovery it is a terrific moment and one that you should be thrilled with and celebrate. Unfortunately, it can also be a time when many change efforts derail. Often these first attempts at new behaviors are awkward and ineffective and all too easy to give up. A friend of mine went through this early in her career. She was very well spoken but timid in groups. Her timidity was a behavior that she wanted to change because she thought it was holding her back from being recognized by senior management, exposed to broader opportunities, and promoted into a management role.

Then she found herself in a meeting at work and realized that she had just passed up an opportunity to speak on an issue she felt strongly about. She was frustrated and chose to step out of her comfort zone. She jumped into the conversation and voiced her opinion on the next topic. Unfortunately, her idea was rejected. No 124 one recognized or reinforced her effort to engage in new actions. Instead of celebrating the accomplishment of voicing her opinion, she felt dejected and lost her commitment to develop her new behavior. Her self-addiction to avoiding the fray and staying out of the way reasserted itself and came back stronger than ever.

At these times, it is critical to recognize the success of the situation. Focus on the progress that has been made and the opportunity and the benefits that still lie ahead. Others may not yet realize that you have changed, but you can still cheer yourself on and take pride in your accomplishments. Most importantly, you can recommit yourself to continuing your change effort.

Replacement

During replacement you stop yourself from even beginning to exhibit the undesirable behavior. You recognize the situation as one where you might do the wrong thing, and you do the right thing instead. There isn’t even a glimmer of the old behavior. What a fantastic change. This feels great! It is also a time to slow down and hold onto the things that brought you your success.

I have a friend named Alison who loves to play pool. When we play together she always says the same thing when one of us gets on a hot streak. She says, “speed kills.” What she means is that going too fast can break your streak. Her saying goes for when you take your shot too quickly, not taking the time to set up properly. It also goes for hitting the cue ball too hard, creating unexpected ricochets. She says this during the hot streaks because when we get on a roll, we get excited. Our success goes to our heads. We start to take shortcuts. In effect, we go to all of our bad habits because we are too excited to contain ourselves.

The same lesson applies when you replace your old behavior. It is a wonderful time to celebrate your success and feel great about your accomplishment. It is also a very important time to remind yourself of what you did to create that success and recommit to those actions. 125

Strategies to Shape Your Behavior

The progression from Recognition to Recovery to Replacement is caused by a combination of awareness and preparation. The observation lists discussed in Step 7 help to bring your awareness up to the moment of action. Once that happens you need skills and strategies that you can use to recover from your self-addictive behavior and eventually replace it.

Replacing an old behavior with a new one is not simply a matter of will. If that were the case, then Joan, the dieter I mentioned earlier in this chapter, would be successful if she committed to trying harder. She was at the stage of Recognition. She knew she shouldn’t grab the donuts in the moment, but she did it anyway. The key to changing your behavior in the moment is to create a situation that facilitates your desirable behavior.

That’s what we did with Joan. We created a favorable situation for her by changing her actions and her physical environment. We gave her more control by making the desirable behavior easier and the undesirable behavior more difficult to perform. Whenever she was at a training event in the past, she would socialize with the participants. The problem was that the place where they tended to congregate was next to all of the food. When she was right next to the food it became too easy for her to simply reach over and grab a brownie.

When we discussed the situation though, we recognized that not everyone went to the food during breaks. There were almost always people who stayed at their tables or who went out to the hallway to stretch their legs. So she created a new plan of action. Every time there was a break she would target someone who was far away from the food table and engage them in a conversation. She essentially created a new objective for herself. Instead of trying to keep to her diet, her goal was to speak with someone who was a certain distance from the food table. By creating physical distance between herself and the food she gained control over her behavior.

I did something similar to curb my own Internet use that I described at the beginning of this chapter. I simply erased all of the 126 shortcuts that I had on my computer to access the Internet. I used to have shortcuts on my desktop and on the toolbar at the bottom of my screen. No matter what I was doing, I could always see that Internet icon staring at me. As soon as I got frustrated with anything in my work, that icon would draw me in. Erasing these shortcuts did two things. First, it took away the visual temptation. Second, it made it so that I couldn’t simply click onto the Internet without thinking. I had to actually go through my start menu and find the program out of a long list of options.

When you try to gain control in the moment, you need to find ways to make the self-addictive behavior difficult to perform and the replacement behavior easy to perform. You can do this by altering your environment to take away the cues that support the self-addiction and by altering your actions to make your replacement behaviors easier to perform.

Let’s look at how John, Susan, and Darrell each did this.

In each of these cases some action was taken to either make the addictive behavior more difficult to perform or the replacement behavior easier to carry out. John’s tallying other people’s comments gave him something to concentrate on besides talking and therefore made it easier for him to remain silent for longer periods of time. Susan made it difficult to check her Blackberry by keeping it far away from herself while she was at home. Darrell’s action of writing down, “What’s working?” made it easier for him to start his conversations on a positive note and keep his positive frame of mind throughout the discussions.

Water will follow the easiest path downhill. For the most part, our behaviors are the same. We will do that which is easiest, or most natural, or most comfortable. That is usually going to be a repetition 129 of the behavior that we have performed most frequently in the past. That is why our self-addictions persist. They are the easiest paths for us. In the next exercise you will attempt to do what John, Susan and Darrell did. You will look for ways to make your desired actions easier and your self-addictions more difficult to perform.

There are four different cues to be aware of when attempting to shape your behavior:

• Instigators—These are the cues that set off your self-addictive behavior. You may have identified some of these when you tracked your behavior in Step 7. The Internet icon on my computer was an instigator for me.
• Blockers—These are any factors that stop you from performing the desired new behavior. They could be things in your environment, circumstances in your interactions with others, or people who pull you away from your desired behavior. The participants who congregated at the food table were blockers for Joan, the Dieter.
• Starters—These are the specific cues or processes that get you to start the desired activity. For Darrell it was his practice of writing down, “What’s working?” These can be alarms or rituals or any kind of cue that reminds you and gets you focused to perform your desired behavior.
• Green Lights—These are positive reinforcements or rewards that you get for your desired behaviors. They could be a friend saying, “Great job.” They could come from your supporters or from your environment, or they could be things that you do for yourself to reward your good behavior.

The next exercise is your opportunity to create barriers to your undesirable behaviors and cues to support your new behaviors. Now is the time to create specific strategies to change your behavior in the moment. 130

Impulses vs. Intentions

Whenever we try to change a behavior, we provoke a fight. We create a struggle between our impulses and our intentions. Our self-addictions represent our impulses trying to maintain the status quo and continue what is most comfortable, regardless of the impact on us. Our desire to change represents our intentions, the clear underdog in this fight, despite the positive benefits we might gain. The question is, “Who will win this fight?”

Whether our impulses or our intentions win will in large part be determined by who and what helps each side. Our impulses have history, the path of least resistance, and environmental cues on their side. Our intentions need a lot of help to tip the scales in their favor. In this chapter you are creating very specific, actionable strategies and changes to your environment to support your intentions. If your impulses occasionally win a victory, don’t despair. When you attempt to break a self-addiction you will rarely follow a direct path. You will have both victories and setbacks along the way. You’ve put in a great effort to this point. Keep going with it and the victories will come more and more often.

In the very beginning of this book we said that self-addictions are incredibly strong. You need to surround yourself with as many 131 different sources of strength as possible in order to break your addictions. In the Circle of Action you have surrounded yourself with rituals and routines and changes to your environment, all to build strength around your new behaviors. There is one more routine, one more action that will give you the final strength you need. We have talked at length about making a change to your behavior. In the next chapter we will talk about actions you can take to recover from any setbacks you experience and sustain the changes you make over time.