Video: Why changing is so hard - and how to make it a little easier with the Alexander-Technique
Fresh baked Cookies or radishes? What would you rather have?
Most likely the cookies would be the 'easier' choice for you whereas choosing the radishes might involve more conscious effort. »Recent psychological studies suggest that our brain is a limited resource when it comes to making "right/new" choices as opposed to habitual ones.
So this might help to understand what we all know - and have experienced over and over again: Changing is hard.
I like to contend that there is a way of making those changes of lifestyle and habits less hard: the Alexander-Technique.
Basically, the Alexander-Technique is all about learning how to change habits. Postural habits, habits in movement, thinking habits, habits in communication, habits concerning emotions and your reactions to them, ... You name it....
The Alexander-Technique helps you become aware of what you're doing with yourself while you're doing what you're doing. You learn what "makes you tick", you get to know yourself better. You get to explore your full potential, your talents, your strengths. At the same time you gather information what your real limitations are and what you habitually do to makes things harder for you than they need to be. And with this knowledge you're becoming more sympathetic with yourself and you tend to put less unrealistic demands upon yourself. This alone helps you with making changes!
But there's more. You learn practically, empirically, by experience what does work for you and what does not. Instead of acting and reacting automatically you gradually make informed choices about what like to do. And, more importantly, how you do that and how you can avoid the "bad" choices. Your freedom of movement becomes greater. You expand your range of expression and co-ordination - on a physical, intellectual and emotional level.
You exercise choice and change on a daily basis. Therefore changing becomes more and more familiar; it becomes a new habit - and consequently: a lot easier! You change the way you go about change!
Now, coming back to the aforementioned Cookies vs. Radishes experiment and why changing is hard (if you don't know the Alexander-Technique)...
Overeating, leaving your stuff laying around, getting short with your spouse after work—they're not just weaknesses of character. Dan Heath at Fast Company suggests it has to do with exhausting your self-control reserves, which are more finite than you think.
Heath aims to shoot down the popular sentiment that people who can't change a bad behavior, whether health or work-related, are simply lazy or just resistant to change. He illustrates his point with a study involving cookies, radishes, and impossible geometry problems, explained in the clip above. The gist? After managing to resist the cookies and eat radishes, one group had almost no patience for the impossible problem, while the satiated cookie eaters were happy to work more than twice as long at it.
Watch the video...
[ via »lifehacker.com ]
