In Writer’s Digest the author tells me I have to “make time to write every day” if I truly want to be a better writer.  At the gym, the poster tells me I have to “make time for regular physical activity” if I want to be healthy, and when I get home I remember my promise to myself that I would “make more time” for my marriage.  Then when I help my daughter with her homework, I remember I was planning on “making time” to talk with my other daughter about her college applications, and then I also remember promising my mother I would “make time” to help her with writing some important checks.  Experts, including our own inner critic, are all so quick to tell us that if we value something, we can “find the time” to do it.

So what magic potion am I missing?  What sorcerers spell or witch’s brew do others seem to have that I don’t that can put more hours in the day?  When I look at the clock, I just can’t do the math to add up enough time for all that I want to do.  Not to mention how to do this along with the other things I have to do, like my job, grocery shop, cook, clean up, and drive my daughter to practice.  How do I possibly make time for all of these important things?  And truly, just because I can’t figure out how, does not mean these things are not important to me.

I hear this same complaint from a lot of other people.  There is simply not enough time to do all things we have to do, so fitting in all the things we want to do feels impossible.  Telling myself I have to “make time” simply “makes me” feel guilty.  It also makes me feel sad, overwhelmed, and incredibly stressed.  It takes the joy out of life as I rush to fit things in or if I skip something and feel badly about it.  Particularly when we’re trying to make changes in our lives, such as taking better care of our health, learning a new skill, or taking on a new responsibility, this edict that you can “make time if it is important to you,” can really be demoralizing.

The fact is, it’s not healthy or productive for you to miss sleep to wake up at 5 am to exercise if you’re already exhausted, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to be committed to an exercise plan.  And you simply can’t justify ignoring your family when they need you in the evening to make sure you write every day, but that doesn’t mean you don’t really want to improve.  Even though I know it’s true that we have to prioritize and make space for new or important activities, I also think we have to be realistic about the truths of our lives.  The fact is, on any given day, we are a complex patchwork of needs and values.  Most people simply can’t have it all, at least not all at one time.  Sometimes we have to let go of or alter some of our goals or intentions in order to make room for others.  Instead of trying to vertically squish more into a calendar day, we may serve ourselves best by spreading it out horizontally over time.

In making changes that will last, we have to be mindful of our true capacity.  We have to think in the long term, balancing what desires and demands we face right now.  Sometimes we have to ask someone we love to be patient with us, as we take on another priority for a while.  Or, we may have to put off one priority until we can get a handle on a more pressing one.  Maybe last year you trained for a a 10K, but this year you have to walk instead of run for exercise because you don’t have the time to change, run, and shower and get to the class you need to take to further your career?

Stress management and healthy living is less about packing our days full of priorities, and more about mindfully balancing them throughout our lives.  Having the flexibility to accommodate shifting priorities is a life skill that takes time to learn and a dose of wisdom from experience to implement.  But letting go of the judgmental voices that tell us that we should be doing more when we know we can’t is a lifestyle change worth “making time” for.

When bad things happen to us or the people we love, it’s normal to feel down and frustrated.  But when really bad things happen, or when a number of bad things occur that seem to add up, we can become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness.  Losing our sense of control over what matters to us most can be emotionally devastating.   Research shows it can actually put our mental and physical health at risk.  Fortunately, in working with some inspiring people and getting through my own periods of helplessness, I have been encouraged by noticing some shifts we can make that seem to help transform feelings of helplessness and increase our resilience.

Back in school, I was fortunate enough to study with Martin Seligman, a brilliant research psychologist who discovered a phenomenon he called “learned helplessness.”  While he was working on an experiment, he observed an unusual finding.  Dogs that were given a shock quickly learned that they could avoid the shock by jumping over a barrier to escape it.  But dogs who previously had been given shocks that they could not escape, didn’t learn how to escape, because they didn’t even try.  These dogs simply lied down and trembled, assuming there was nothing they could do to alleviate the pain.  The dogs exhibited symptoms of doggy-depression, resigned to endure their suffering.  Even when encouraged with rewards, the dogs did not move.  They had learned to be helpless.  Seligman actually had to physically drag the dogs across the barrier many times for the dogs to discover that there was something they could do to help themselves.

Fortunately, I started working on research with Marty when he began to apply his research to people.  He found that just like the dogs, people are at risk of depression when they’re exposed to stressors they cannot escape.  Seligman’s Learned Helplessness Theory of Depression has received a lot of support as one of the risks for and mechanisms of depression.   Having little control over events in our lives not only causes us to feel sad and hopeless, but we lose the ability to take the steps we can to help ourselves.  This in turn, fuels the depression and causes us to stay trapped in a negative cycle.

So how do we overcome helplessness?  Just like the dogs, we have to drag ourselves over the barrier.  We have to make ourselves take action, even if it’s in our attitude.  One way to do this is by choosing acceptance.  This may seem paradoxical, but it’s actually quite powerful.  Rather than resigning ourselves to be a victim, we can work toward the goal of acceptance, which puts our minds and hearts into action.  In choosing to work toward acceptance, we move forward to engage in coping.  We recognize that there are things in life that happen to us that we cannot control, but that we can do things to cope.  This shift helps engage us in the healing process of grieving, first by acknowledging what happened, and then feeling the sadness, anger, and disruption in the loss of what we once had.  In choosing a path of acceptance, we can reach out for support and talk about what happened, giving ourselves the permission and motivation to be active in identifying and taking care of our needs.

It is no accident that the first step for a member in Alcoholics Anonymous is admitting that you are powerless.  This acceptance helps you move into the activities of the next 11 steps.  But as I often say that change is a process, so is acceptance.  It takes time and effort.  But in working through our responses to the bad things that happen to us in life as a process of acceptance, rather than a passive life of endurance, we put ourselves in charge again.  I have been remarkably inspired in watching people who are confronted by the most challenging circumstances demonstrate the most amazing humility and resourcefulness through acceptance.  A man I knew whose wife had cancer put it best.  He said, “I’ve been sitting around asking why this happened.  But then last night I just told myself there was nothing I could do about it, so why not take her out dancing.”

A great tool used in working with change is called a Readiness Ruler.  It is a quick scale to help you evaluate where you are in your process regarding a particular change.  On the scale of 0 to 10, you honestly estimate your readiness.  There is no right or wrong answer.  It is meant to be a check-in on your readiness at this moment in time.   0 means “no way I can’t even think about it right now,” and 10 means, “I am ready to get started.”   Once you circle your number on theruler, there are a set of questions you ask yourself that will help support potential movement toward your goal, starting right where you are. Questions To Consider:

What made you pick the number you did?   What are the reasons to stay the same?  (There are usually good reasons why we do what we do)  What are the reasons to change?  Then, depending on your number, ask yourself the following:

0 – 3:  What would need to happen for me to consider this change in the future?

In this range you recognize you have little desire or energy to make the change right now.  In this stage, it might be helpful to consider what circumstances might increase your readiness.  This might be reaching a certain point (such as a certain weight or level on a health measure), an event (such as having a child), or a time period (such as after finishing a semester or reaching a certain age).

4 – 6:  What might be my next step?

In this range you have some motivation and feel somewhat ready, so it’s time to put together a concrete plan.  You might do some research and gather information (nutrition, resources, options) or you might begin to reach out for support.  The key to this stage is to develop a specific plan, so that if you were ready to take some action, you would know what to do.  Making your plan is a beginning action that moves you toward your goal.

7 – 10:  What might be an action step?  What will help me be successful?

In this range, you are ready to take some direct action.  Looking at your plan, what next step can you make?  What can you do to best support yourself to give you the best chance to succeed?  This might be to journal your actions, give yourself a reward, tell someone about your actions, and even ask someone to do it with you.

No matter where you are on the ruler, research shows that just by using this tool, you will be more likely to move toward your goal. Knowing yourself and being honest about your readiness can help you plan the next step, or even decide when a good time might be to take a next step.  Readiness can shift up and down at points in the future. Using the ruler helps bring self-awareness to your current situation and clarify what might be helpful to move forward.  In contemplating the questions that go along with the phase you are in, you shine a light on the path ahead that leads toward your goal.

It’s surprising how people who seem so sweet and rational, when upset, can do the most outrageous things.  In describing what happened, they often pinpoint something that someone did that suddenly provoked their behavior.  “When he did that, I just lost it,” is a common phrase.  But for people with anger issues, despite the feeling that their eruptions are caused by something that someone else did, it’s usually not the full explanation.  More commonly, it’s not really what someone did, but the story they tell themselves about it, that is the real root of their reactivity.

A woman I recently worked with was furious when she read a text by her husband when she was driving home from work.  Her husband had written that he was worried about paying their mortgage that month and wanted to spend some time reviewing their finances when she got home.  As she drove, my client became increasingly upset.  By the time she walked in the door she was furious at her husband, yelling at him about him wanting to grill her about her spending.  She pulled her checkbook from her purse and threw it across the table at him and stormed out of the room.  What had happened?  At first she blamed her husband’s text for making her angry.  But after we explored it, what actually had made her mad was the story she had told herself about her husband’s text.  Just the week before she had spent some extra money on shoes and a present for her sister.  She felt somewhat guilty about the purchases, knowing they were a bit of an indulgence.  When she received his text, she jumped to the conclusion that he was upset about her spending and was planning on “grilling her” about her spending.  In fact, when they finally talked about their spending, he was more concerned about why their electric bill had been so high.

Our interpretation of what happens in our lives is just as important, if not more important, than what actually happens.  The good news is that we can work with our interpretations.  As the phrase goes, “we can’t control what happens, only our reactions to what happens.”   Often, when we consistently overreact to situations, it’s because we have developed certain patterns in how we interpret events based on painful experiences from the past.  You might jump to conclusions that others are out to take advantage of you.  Or you may tend to feel that you always have to defend yourself from being critisized.  In addition, we also develop certain pattern with certain people, like our siblings or partners triggering certain reactions in us.  These patterns, while usually having some basis for how they developed, can be inappropriately infused in situations where our interpretation is based on our history rather than the current situation.  We create stories to fit our interpretation patterns that can get in the way of understanding the truth of a current situation, or at least in considering another person’s perspective.

Stepping back to look at our story is an important way of controlling our reactions, whether it’s jealousy, anxiety, or having our feelings hurt.  Especially for people who tend to have anger issues, taking the time to see what may be the difference between what happened and what the story is we are telling ourselves about what happened, can be a great help.  Identifying what layers we may be adding, especially about people’s intentions, might just allow us to be more in control of our reactions, and ultimately happier!

I saw an article in the Business section of my local paper the other day regarding the stock value of the company Fitbit, which went public in June.  If you’re not already wearing one, a Fitbit device is an exercise tracking system worn on the wrist that counts steps, calories burned, heart rate, and even sleep.  The financial long term prediction for Fitbit, according to the financial expert, was not particularly positive, despite an initial run up in value.  The reason?  After loyally using them at first, most Fitbit consumers stopped wearing their wrist band by the 6 month mark.  After finding out how many steps or calories they burned in the first few weeks, Fitbit users no longer found the feedback useful or interesting anymore.

I thought about this article in light of what I know about change.  Research has tended to show the opposite effect.  “Self-monitoring,” as it is called, is usually one of the most helpful things to do when working towards a goal.  In fact, studies have shown that just by writing down everything you eat, people tend to lose weight.  Or by keeping a log of activity, people tend to exercise more.  Or keeping a spreadsheet of what tasks you have accomplished in completing a project helps to keep you on target.  Tracking what you do brings awareness to your behavior.  It helps you identify your progress in reaching a goal and helps you stay on course.  Feedback regarding our actual behavior is motivating and provides useful accountability in working toward our goal one day at a time.

So, in the face of all this, and despite the eager attitude of Fitbit customers who have spent a fair amount of money, why are so many wristbands piling up in our homes?  The answer I think is burn out.  After the initial learning, we get tired of seeing the same information over and over again.  We already know how many steps we take in an average day or what our heart rate range tends to be.  There is nothing new to learn and so the information feels tiresome.  It may even be discouraging when our initial hopes for improving our effort plateaus.

Human nature tends to operate in a paradoxical way.  We actually fairly quickly adapt to changes in routines, while at the very same time we’re extremely attentive to what is new.  In fact, it’s just because we habituate to what is constant that we have the energy and mental alertness to perceive what is new.  If we had to constantly monitor everything, we would never notice a potentially useful or dangerous change that may be critical to our survival.  So once information becomes repetitive, it tends to lose its value in our priorities.

So, how do we avoid this feedback burn out?  The answer seems to involve keeping the information novel in some way by making it more lively and interactive.  One way to do this is to keep changing your goals.  Challenge yourself to do things in a different way each week.  Using the Fitbit example, one week try to set a new goal for your step count.  The next, see if you can increase the time you are in your heart rate range for cardiovascular health.  Or alternate weeks of using the Fitbit.  Another way to keep yourself engaged in feedback is to review your information with other people.  Using the food journal, for example, it might helpful to discuss your food log with a partner each week, reducing the urge to simply write things down (or even skip writing something down) without reflecting on your habits.  Talk with someone about your progress, your food habits, and your pitfalls.  And don’t forget rewards.  A great way to keep something interesting is if you have something invested in it.  Make a list of potential rewards and give them to yourself whenever you reach a milestone that is important for you.  Make the rewards meaningful and fun.

Change is a lot of work.  And to stay constant in our change, we have to keep change changing!