Habits part 2: Backseat habits and tumbleweeds of resolve.
Fortunately, the human brain is incredibly powerful, and has more areas of the brain at play than just the amygdala which manages emotional response and the basal ganglia, in charge of processing memories (including the emotional responses from the amygdala) recognizing patterns (flip switch light turns on) and organizing learned “stuff” to form habits.
“Humans are much better than any other animal at changing and orienting our behavior toward long-term goals, or long-term benefits,” says Dr. Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University.
The prefrontal cortex enables this “mind over matter” activity to occur. Baumeister’s studies on willpower and decision-making led him to conclude that “self-control is like a muscle. Once you’ve exerted some self-control, like a muscle it gets tired.”
But, in the same light, when a muscle gets tired, it then repairs and gets even stronger.
The same applies to creating resolve.
Resolve is a little bit like a tumble weed.
Growing up in Oklahoma, if ever you wanted to go anywhere “serious” like, say, a proper city with a mall or skating rink, you had to drive a good long ways- usually driving by endless fields filled with wheat, cattle, pump jacks for oil depending on which route you took, and tumbleweeds stuck in roadside fences.
** Trivia: Although the movie was not actually filmed in Oklahoma, but rather Arkansas because Oklahoma was too urbanized to represent the Oklahoma of the turn of the century portrayed in the original 1943 stage musical “Oklahoma!” written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, the tumbleweeds and vast open fields depicted in the screenplay are very true to my home state. **
It takes a little work to get a tumbleweed started. But once it’s rolling and on it’s way, it can travel vast distances quickly, gathering both momentum and size while accomplishing its mission.
Tumbleweeds start out the same as any plant, attached to the soil. Seedlings, which look like simple blades of grass, sprout at the end of the winter.
By summer, the tumbleweeds (also known as Russian thistle plants even though they are not thistles????) take on their round shape and grow white, yellow or pink flowers between thorny leaves. Inside each flower, a single seed develops inside a tiny fruit.
Unlike the growth and replicating patterns of most plants and trees, tumbleweeds developed a different evolutionary strategy…
Starting in late fall, they dry out and die. Gusts of wind break dead tumbleweeds with ease from their roots. A nearly-invisible layer of cells at the base of the plant called the abscission layer makes a clean break, and the plants simply roll away in the breezes, spreading their seeds from where they are nestled between the prickly dried-out foliage. Then, when the rains come, the embryos in the tiny seeds sprout in their new places.
In Habits part 1: Keeping habits as passengers, I wrote about how habits are formed, and about recognizing who and what is in the drivers seat in your life. I.e. are you controlling your habits such that they enhance your life by adding healthy, balanced routine and discipline, or are they controlling you?
But recognizing habits in your life and determining to remain the pilot by looking at them squarely and making a game plan for how to break some and create others isn’t the end of the story. (How often does good intention get the washing done? Or stop you from biting your nails?) As easy as it is to set out on a road trip (on a long straight road in Oklahoma) with everyone happy, excited, and getting along, come hour 2 if you have children under 18, or hour 3 if everyone is over 40 and used to sitting a lot, the road and the going gets a little bumpier and tougher.
This is where resolve kicks in.
Initially it has to be sheer grit and determination when setbacks create potholes in the road. But once you learn how to barrel over a few and drive around others, and you see that no, you did not combust, resolve grows a little bit stronger.
It gains a little more traction and continues to grow each time you fight through various obstacles and roll over fences in the way of creating and maintaining a new or replacement habit. And along the way, as confidence in self-control and capability grows, just like the tumbleweed, little seeds of resolve fall out and get planted in other areas of life that need attention and habit “cooperation”.
Eventually the tumbleweed reaches its destination. Vast distances have been covered. A lot has been seen along the way. It’s journey is complete. Your new, nice and tidy, healthy and balanced habit is formed. Congratulations.
Now- how about all those seeds of resolve that fell out along the travels and need nurturing to grow strong and gain tumbleweed-like momentum in the other areas of your life…???
