Y’know the scene in the Office when Michael Scott walks out and yells, “I declare Bankruptcy!” Remember that?
So many of us attack our New Year’s resolutions, and our annual goals like that. We invest a *lot* of our expectations in our decisions and our will to make change. And then we hold ourselves accountable for the results as though we have full confidence in our will alone.
Especially because there is a very small percentage of the population who can do that. They can just say, “I’m never doing this again” and then they never do. They have a really intact skill chain when it comes to exerting their willpower over their decisions, and they become the people who say “just do it.” So, when we can’t “just” do it, then many of us feel like failures because we don’t execute our goals or we don’t change our behavior forever.
But we’re reading the situation wrong. We think we’re the person with that intact self-assured skill chain who can change their anchor quickly when we are actually Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. We do not have the power over that system with our words alone or our will alone.
I need you to read that sentence again. Systems are invisible, but powerful. When your individual system is making choices for you, you will NEVER see it. It’s invisible. Just like the financial system was to Michael Scott. His words meant nothing to that system because his words and will didn’t have power over it.
Only. His. Behavior. Did.
We think the river (system) in our head that’s making our choices for us is the frickin’ creek out back. We think we can just walk outside and blow on it and it’s going to change direction.
But the river in your head that’s making these choices you don’t like is more like the Mississippi. And I live by the Mississippi River. It’s like half a mile wide. It’s not going anywhere in a day or a week. Hell, it might not be going anywhere in a decade.
It is absolutely moveable, but we are treating it like the creek out back when we try doing something for two weeks, fail at it, and then quit trying.
Or we are making great progress and then the old pattern comes back suddenly.
Or we are fighting against the worst of the pattern and it’s trying to hit us with a vengeance.
But let me tell you something about that pattern.
It was forged in fire, my friend. It was created out of a fear response that was so big, it set that river to flowing and then years and years have made those patterns stronger and stronger.
I don’t just coach this. I’m also going through it. I have a set of patterns that I’ve been doing intense work on for the last ten months, and I keep feeling like “I’ve got this… I’m good…” and then the old river starts flowing north-south again when I thought we were already in east-west territory.
Yesterday, I had a pretty big victory, and all morning I was feeling like, “yeah, I’ve got this, I’m finally in this new pattern” and then, BAM, like clockwork, the old system crushed me.
I had to remind myself. Water’s gonna water. (I mean, who are we kidding, I had an awful day, and Old Becca would have given up under that despair, but New Becca is just not here for that shit anymore.) There’s a part of me that really wants to go back to the old pattern. It’s so comfortable and so safe (because it kept me safe for a long time internally), but it’s ten months in, and I’m still struggling with the old river.
If I had given up at the first sign of resistance…
If I had taken failure as the last word…
If I had assumed I was doing it wrong because I hadn’t fully changed (especially because a lot of growth mindset people talk about changing our brains like the creek out back instead of the Mississippi… which… I will talk about some other time)…
And the worst part is, some of my Strengths (Strategic being the biggest offender) are champion pain avoiders, and want to go back to the old pattern at the first sign of more pain. There’s a part of my brain that is convinced survival means going back to the old pattern. And thanks to another tool in my tool belt (that Sarah Baldwin somatic ep I mentioned in a different post), I can do the next step much better than I could before.
But there’s more work ahead.
I don’t want this river to be in control anymore, though, and I know that me treating it like the creek out back is only going to keep the old river running.
So as we are in resolution territory, and new goals territory, I’m just going to beg all of us to stay in touch with the adult in the room who knows this is a long journey, but knows the long journey is worth it.
Let water be water. You’re in control of that water, though. If you’ll keep picking up the shovel.
– Becca