The Power of Developing New Habits

Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?
By JANET RAE-DUPREE

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

“The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of “The Open Mind” and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”

Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

“I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit,” Ms. Ryan says. “Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that’s going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain.”

“Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain,” Ms. Ryan notes in her book. “If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”

“Try lacing your hands together,” Ms. Markova says. “You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.”

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.

But if, during creation of that new habit, the “Great Decider” steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, “you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again,” she says.

“You cannot have innovation,” she adds, “unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.”


All of the text and image is from the New York Times article, Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? Image by Christophe Vorlet

What is Happening Beneath the Surface?

Spring Parenting Group: Group 3

A lot of time with kids is spent trying to get them to do various things, to care about various things, to learn various things. “I want you to be this way, doing this.”

A powerful key to meaningful interactions with children is being able to meet the child where he or she is. Can we notice what’s happening with the child that is in front of us? Can we focus on them and discover what they are trying to communicate to us?

A Person is Like an Iceberg

“[Virginia Satir] compared the person to an iceberg, in that only a small part of him or her was observable or apparent, while the largest part was invisible, hidden under water. When we do not know a person, we are only aware of the visible part, while the most important aspects of knowing a person deal with understanding the hidden layers, where each of us spends most of our time. We need to understand yearnings, expectations, feelings, perceptions, and coping mechanisms of a person to have access to his or her self.”

~ Michele Baldwin in The Use of Self in Therapy

It can be easy to notice and respond (react) to a child's behaviors and words. And if that is all we pay attention to, we miss the opportunity to teach them that their inner world, their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, are real and able to be experienced by other human beings. We help children to better know and understand themselves by listening deeply to what is being communicated beneath the surface and reflecting that back to them. We help them understand their inner world by noticing their inner world and letting them know that we are willing and able to connect with them there. This helps to build strong and trusting relationships.

Development
Understanding development helps us look closer at what is happening beneath the surface.

Robert Kegan says, “If you want to understand another person in some fundamental way you must know where that person is in his or her evolution.” The Evolving Self p. 113

Development Resources
On CD:

• Kegan – Piaget Development
• Kegan Stages Illustrations

In the Packet:

• from the book Yardsticks
• from the book How Much is Enough?

The author of Yardsticks also writes regularly about development and other school related topics at his blog.

The Dalai Lama on Educating the Heart

In 2006 I attended the Vancouver Dialogues hosted by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. Below are some notes of comments made by the Dalai Lama on the topic of Educating the Heart. You can hear the full webcast here.

Dalai Lama speaking on Educating the Heart

We can learn from basic human beings, not sophisticated people. They sometimes create artificial abilities that give us confusion. I prefer more uneducated people in education. We can learn much from young children. They are still unspoiled… unspoiled is much easier to distinguish in the beginning of life – once it is dirty, it’s harder to clean up. Like water that gets dirty.

“Children are more capable of naturally expressing what is fundamental to human beings.”

The fundamentals – being playful, smiling, joking… not just knowledge.

“Sometimes we take more serious artificial constructs of the human mind at the expense of what is very natural to the human mind.”

“I’m just another contributor here and still searching. I’m not here to give answers. Now is time to establish a body or group that has experience and do more research and find out evidence. If we rely on religious belief, it further complicates – what religion to choose? So universal, humanity in general, needs the focus. Can’t promote universal values on religious basis. Must use secular basis. Nobody can dispute the point that compassion and love is good. Research is needed, educational institutes to carry on the work. Non-governmental programs are more useful. Teachers, communities, parents. I am like others. It is easier to see the faults. More difficult to find answers.

This is a moral crisis, the gaps between education and the poor. Younger people will face more problems in the future. We need to not take for granted the existing system. Reality is changing and we have to find new ways to deal with reality so education has to change. . . Focusing on honesty, self-confidence, determination…”

This stuff is natural and it is our duty to be courageous speaking about it. We need research and to prove to the world that social and emotional realm and the goodness in all of us is important. Teaching people to care about community and to give them the opportunity to excel in communities.

Childhood Memories from a Workaholic

A professionally successful woman in her late 40’s began to recognize that she was a workaholic. With this new awareness came a difficult practice of re-prioritizing where she expends her time and energy. During this process she wondered what situations in her early life might have helped shape her belief that to belong and be valued, she had to work hard and be successful. Below is a passage from her journal.

I offer this genuine account as a resource to help us better understand the ways in which children perceive how others respond to them, construct beliefs based upon those perceptions, and then make life decisions that stem from those beliefs. I wonder if any of the children in our lives could relate to parts of this story? I also invite us to continue to explore unconditional ways that we can help reinforce each child’s inherent value.

When did I first start showing signs of workaholism?

As a young child, pre-school age, I had lots of time to kill. My parents both worked and we were often left in the charge of my oldest sister. My brother often beat up on me if we played together, and our house was out in the suburbs, at a time when the suburbs were still mainly woods. If we weren’t out in the woods “exploring” or making forts, then I would be in the house, reading--always the safest choice with my brother around. I could read at a very early age, and I learned to write well before I went to school.

Going to school was very traumatic for me. I felt abandoned by my Mom, and terrified of all the other kids. I guess that makes sense because I pretty much grew up knowing only a handful of kids in our isolated neighborhood. Most of my play time was spent alone, or with my brother, doing unstructured kinds of things rather than playing games.

Because I had never socialized with other kids, I didn’t know what to do during recess. I often walked around by myself. I came to prefer class to recess, and if I could, stayed in at recess to keep working (aha!). I was much more comfortable with the teacher or teacher’s aide, than out on the playground, because it felt so dangerous (all those kids I didn’t know, playing games I didn’t know how to play). Reading was always an acceptable activity--both at home and at school.

I don’t remember being competitive, though, at least for the first two years. I liked the activities (reading groups, making things)….For my first two years of school, I tried hard to do well (but was not the outstanding achiever) and more than anything, I wanted to make friends and be accepted.

We moved when I was eight years old, two things happened:

1. I was no longer invisible. Because of my accent, the other kids made fun of me (“you talk slow”), and
2. because of the better schools where I was from, I was one or two years ahead of my classmates.
   

First, I got lots of attention from the teachers because I performed so well. Second, because I was so “smart” the other kids stopped teasing me, and I had some cache as a playmate in competitive learning games. On the playground, marbles was the big game, and I learned how to play, and became a master marble player. Marbles is an everyman-for-himself kind of game, not one that fosters a sense of team spirit or collaboration. Plus we played "for keeps" and I amassed an impressive collection of beautiful marbles that I my parents would never have bought for me. In fact, because of my prowess, playing marbles was banned by the school (after parents complained that their children were spending money on marbles and then losing them). I earned respect on the playground, and in the classroom. In my old town, I was not special. In the new city, I was.

In the fourth grade, I was often rewarded with special privileges for being done with work. I ran messages for the teachers, I got to set up activities, and when they started a gifted program, I got to participate (lots of fun learning activities that were self-paced, rather than the rote learning of most classroom activities). My friends were all the gifted students. Being smart and hardworking was what set us apart and gave us our privileges.

At home, the one thing that got praise from Mom was my working hard to help her. So, between school and working at home, the pattern was set. Hard work, and being the best at something, was what made me worthwhile, made me somebody.

Core Skills Necessary for Healthy Development

Jack/Zen on Meta-Skills:

These are core skills we have by age 8 on which all other skills are developed and engaged. The list:

Presence - Seeing things as they are
Intention - Being clear on what attracts us
Inquiry - Curiosity & research
Imagination - Creating new possibilities
Transparency - Telling our story honestly
Timing - Doing the right things at the right time
Learning - Discovering distinctions and patterns
Delight - Enjoying what we enjoy.

An education process would create the space for the development of these 8 core meta-skills.