3 reasons you aren’t doing what you say you will do | Amanda Crowell | TEDxHarrisburg

[Applause] when I was growing up I never ever exercised I didn't have any active hobbies I didn't play any sports nothing I was very well known for saying I will run when a bear is chasing me and never before then this went on for about 34 years until I woke up one day with an infant a two and a half year old and to back that hurt all the time and I realized in that moment that if something didn't change if I didn't become stronger and more flexible I was not going to be the kind of mother I wanted to be the kind of mother who can chase around her kids at the park or pick her kids up and swing them around or sit on the floor for five minutes to play Legos now the only option to get stronger and more flexible is exercise but it just wasn't who I was and we all have something like this don't we something that we know if we're gonna become the person we want to be the innovator that we want to be this thing has to change but even though we think about it all the time we never make any progress this phenomenon is what I call defensive failure and it goes a little something like this it's Sunday you say to your husband or wife this week I'm gonna go to the gym three times then it's Friday and you haven't been to the gym at all it's so mysterious right like I'm meant to go to the gym I intended to go to the gym why am I not going to the gym now I am a cognitive psychologist so I did what we do best I spent the next three obsessively researching the answer to that question why am I not going to the gym and what I discovered is that so much of the reason you're not doing what you say you want to do is in your mind in fact I found that there are three powerful mindset blocks that are keeping you locked in a cycle of defensive failure and if any one of these is in play your brain defends you against real failure which is where you do it but you do it really bad by redirecting you and distracting you and you never make any progress let's talk about each one the first reason that you're locked in a cycle of defensive failure is that you think somewhere in your heart that you can't do it you think that some people have the talent or the genetics to do this thing and specifically you don't let's talk about exercise for this one because I have a lot of experience with that when I first started exercising I decided that I would become a runner now the very first time that I went out for a run I went out in really baggy yoga pants I don't know if any of you are runners there's a real reason why runners wear so much spandex because I was only about two minutes into my run before I was holding up my pants while I was running but I also didn't have any gear and I really needed my phone cuz i catched a 5k app on it I didn't have anywhere to put it so I'm running holding my pants with one hand my phone is in the other and my mic you know my pants are falling off in this direction no and I'm like I gotta grab it so I grab it and the phone falls off grabbing my phone's mess and the worst part of the whole thing this whole thing went down on a high school track this my friends is failure I tried to do something for the first time and I did it wrong right what happens in this moment is at the heart of this mind set block if you believe that at the core of success is talent and genetics then this rookie mistake matters a lot it's the proof you needed that you didn't have what it takes right but if you can instead develop what Carol Dweck would refer to as a growth mindset about it then these rookie mistakes lose their significance they are no longer proof that you never should have tried their opportunities to learn because you know that at the heart of success is not talent its effort its effort over time that produces accomplishment its effort that creates innovation and if you're able to shift your mindset from this belief that some people have it and you don't and into one where you recognize that your rookie mistakes are just signposts on the pathway to success then you will be able to walk away from this cycle of defensive failure that's the first reason you're locked in this cycle of defensive failure the second reason that you're locked in this cycle of defensive failure is that you think people like you don't do things like this and this one comes down to your identity and we care a lot about our identities don't we and part of the reason you care so much about your identity is because it was hard-won so let's talk about how you form an identity now looking around this room it looks like everybody has successfully made it out of less out of adolescence is that true this guy back here is like uh define successfully so here's what happens in adolescence you had an identity before adolescence but you basically absorbed it from the people around you right like mom says I'm creative all right dad says that I'm an athletic person yeah okay that sounds right but that's switches in adolescence you begin to start asking really hard questions about who you are and you do it socially so you ask yourself am I like this person am i like you am I like you am I like you and you take on a little piece of their identity and you see how it feels so you might take on like lying to your parents and skipping school or you might try on some really thick black eyeliner and dye your hair jet-black shut your door and play the emo music on repeat in your room you take on bits and pieces of the people around you and in so doing you do what Erik Erikson refers to you as identity fracturing it's really uncomfortable it creates a lot of friction in your mind because you don't know who you are but the good news is that eventually sometime around your junior or senior year in high school you begin to release the pieces of your identity that are not serving you maybe you stopped hanging out with the kids who are skipping school maybe you decide you know what I don't like football and I'm not gonna hang out with the football team anymore each piece of that identity that you let go of comes at a loss to you those friends that you were hanging out with and skipping school that may have mattered a lot to you you might feel like a real traitor the football team that you stopped hanging out with that might lose credibility for you at your high school and that process of what Erik Erikson the first year as identity cohesion it's very difficult but it does result in an identity a belief about who you really are and that matters to you a lot and you will do nothing that threatens that identity now I see some of you out there saying like this is all very interesting but what does it have to do with following through my goals well when I first became a coach I struggled a lot to get clients because I consider myself to be a heart-centered helper type and now being promoting myself and selling my services it felt really inauthentic and pushy am I gonna do something that feels inauthentic and pushy no never and that's how you get locked in a cycle of defensive failure so you say I'm gonna go to a networking event one each week this month then the day comes for the networking event and your brains like yeah no we're not gonna do that that threatens our identity and anyways Amanda you're so tired you've been so busy you should really take care of you and before you know it the networking event is happening somewhere but you're not there you're at home on the couch and your stretchy pants knee-deep into the 13th episode of the first season of friends again now no judgment we have all been there but it does explain why you're not making any progress so if this sounds like you if this might be a mindset block that you're struggling with what you have to do is find people like you doing things like this and you have to share your concerns with them for me I had to find a heart-centered helper type who was great at promoting her business and learn from her how I could bring these things in line and if you can find a way to bring the thing you want to do in line with your identity you'll find going to the networking event much much easier that's the second reason you're locked in a cycle of defensive failure the third reason that you're locked in a cycle of defensive failure is that secretly you don't want to do it you just think you should want to do it basically you value it for the wrong reasons now there are two ways that you can value things on the one hand you can value them for what we refer to as intrinsic reasons reasons that come from inside of you interest curiosity or you've drawn a straight bright line from the thing you want to do up to your long-term hopes and dreams but you can also value things for reasons that are outside of you extrinsic reasons like all the cool people do it or my mom would be proud or boy would I like to be admired now let's just say for a second for the sake of an example that you have said I really got to stick to a budget and you know the thing I do the most that's costing me the most money is I buy my lunch every single day at work so you decide I'm not doing that anymore I'm taking my lunch so one day you're halfway through your commute and you realize that your lunch is sitting on the kitchen counter right next to your cell phone now that is a hard day you got nothing to eat and no candy crush what are you gonna do so you're talking to your coworker you're in like I'm having a hard day and she says don't even worry about it we're gonna take it as a sign from the universe we're gonna go out and have a real lunch it's gonna be awesome so you have two options you can go with your friend and have a real lunch spend $25 on a sandwich or you can go to the vending machine and get a crappy two our power bar two dollar power bar what are you going to do well it depends on why you're trying to stick to a budget if you're trying to stick to a budget because you've just got engaged and you're trying to buy a house and you have these dreams of your children sitting next to a crackling fire on Christmas Eve then you will go to the vending machine but if you're trying to save money because wealthy people are admired and yeah it would be cool to be admired that's not enough it's not enough to counterbalance the urge the desire in the moment to go to a restaurant with your friends and this works for anything that you're struggling with if the work you want to do is hard there will be urging in the moment to quit and it is intrinsic interest that keeps you focused on the steps you need to take and not those urges of the moment to go with your friend to the restaurant so if this sounds like you if this sounds like something you might be struggling with you have to build out the intrinsic interest you have to find a way to be interested or curious about what it is you want to do you have to read the blobs if you look at the magazines and if you cannot if there is nothing of interest to you for example about taxes then you must draw the bright line between the thing you want to do and your long-term hopes and dreams and when the moment comes that you want to get out give up you have to take that piece of paper out of your pocket and read it to yourself so you've ground back into your intrinsic interest and that my friends is how you would break out of the third cycle of defensive failure now if you have even one of these in place you will struggle to make progress on your goal but if you've struggled with something your whole life it's likely that all three are at play like it was for me with exercise but as I was able to accept those rookie mistakes as part of the process of getting better and recognize that there are non-competitive people like me who also exercise and accept you know I got really really interested in the science of exercise it's very fascinating I was able amazingly to begin to make progress now I do not want you to think that I'm up here saying get your mind sets in order and you'll be a raging overnight success because that's not how it works but what you do get to do is trade that this cycle of defensive failure for action driven insight filled productive failure failure where you do it wrong but then you get a little better and then you do it better over I'm until suddenly you're doing what you never thought was possible for me what that looked like is over the course of about three years I taught myself how to run got the gear I taught myself how to bike I taught myself how to swim and one crazy August day I strung those three together and I did a triathlon I know I was surprised too and about two months later I did a half marathon most importantly my son who's now six and heavy and wiggly I can pick him up and I'm not telling you this because I want you to think I'm some kind of athlete because clearly that's not what's happening here I'm telling you this because that day that I did that triathlon was the most exciting day of my life because it should never have been my story it should not have been possible and what it helped me to realize that day was that I that you all of us we can be anything we want we get our head clear and we begin to take steps and if you're doing those two things nothing can stop you thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 478,003

Rating: 4.8668866 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Behavior, Change, Decision making, Emotions, Life Hack, Self improvement, Success

Id: sWp87GXDvEk

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 09 2019