Link Up & Level Up: Quick Start Behavior Change with Tethering

There's something you want to change. There's an area in your life you want to grow in.

For anything that you desire to change - a habit, an action, a behavior, or even a way of thinking or an emotional response to certain triggers - this one simple step can be incredibly high-yield.

But What About Intentions? What About Motivation?

Intentions are not plans. It's really common for us to hear an energizing and motivating talk and think, "OK, this is it. I'm going to change this thing." But what happens? It fizzles out or fades away. (and some of us... Eh hem, cough, cough... me) start to beat ourselves up about it.

We set this intention and while we're motivated, it seems reasonable.
While we're motivated, it seems doable.
While we're motivated, it seems like we're committed and we're going to actually stick this thing out.

But motivation waxes and wanes.

Intentions are vital. Motivation is vital.

In that moment of intention, in that moment of motivation, when you're actually experiencing a visceral “I'm going to do this,” … THAT is the time to set a plan. THAT is the time to set the next best action.

The Next Best Action

Think about something to tether your new desired behavior to.

A tugboat is tethered to a massive ship to then tug it through more dangerous or crowded waters. Right? It's tying something so that they move together, a tether.

It could be another habit.

It could be a repeated behavior.

It could be a recurring experience.

Why Tether?

When you tether two usually disparate things together:
It becomes easier to remember, especially if it's something you encounter or do again and again and again.
It reduces cognitive load. (Our brains seek out the least cognitive effort, the least amount of energy to process something.) If we have to manage our intentions, manage our motivation and manage our actions plus all the other things that come with a behavior, we're not going to do it. We're going to fall short. So instead, reduce the cognitive load, reduce all the other things that have to be done before you implement such a behavior.
It doesn't rely on motivation as much. (It kinda does early, but eventually, it's closer to automatic)
It creates an element of consistency earlier in the process. If we are consistent early, we're less likely to have that negative self-talk and less likely to demotivate ourselves.

What To Link Up

Some examples:

If you want to start to be a little more mindful... well what do you already do daily that takes a short amount of time, but is also uninterrupted?

Making your bed
Brushing your teeth
Drinking your coffee
Washing your hands

Fine. Choose one and practice being mindful while doing that thing.

You want to start a gratitude practice? You want to start consistently working out? You want to call your mother more frequently?

Experiment

I've tried multiple methods and multiple times to develop a gratitude practice.

I tried what the gurus said. I read and implemented some of the things I read on trusted social posts. I looked up the research and tried some of the validated methods. But gratitude wasn't as present throughout my day as I wanted it to be. I had to keep experimenting.

I'll tell you what it was for me. Ultimately, it was two things:

Tether it to something I do early, every day
Make it easy

I tried journaling and it wasn't working for me. It took a lot of activation energy. I had to find the journal, I had to pull it out. I had a turn to the page and then I felt like this is going to last, so I have to write all this stuff. In my head, I was self-editing. It was too much energy for me.

Well, I have a treadmill desk that I use while I work each morning. Tether. When I start walking, I type five things that I'm grateful for. Easy.

I type five things I'm grateful for and pause on each one for 10 seconds. A total of 50 seconds. Now gratitude has become a habit, even long after I've stepped away from the treadmill desk.

Similar example: I tied working out to learning with audiobooks. I LOVE learning. It's rewarding to me. Well, now, I've constructed it so that, I can only listen to audiobooks while I'm working out. If I don't work out, I do not permit myself to keep listening. If I do workout, I am rewarding myself.

Repeated Behaviors, Everyday Objects, & Everyday Experiences

Repeated behaviors aren't necessarily always habits. For example, we open doors, we log into the computer, and we log into meetings. These everyday repeated behaviors can also be things that we tether things to.

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If you've heard one of my keynotes or taken my 7 Simple Rules of Influence course, then you've heard how I use doorknobs. The act of walking through a door is a behavior we do all the time. But I've used the everyday object of a doorknob as a thing to tether a behavior to.

When I grab a door knob, I "manage my state" (Simple Rule #1).

There's someone on the other side of this door. I need to serve them - whether it's my family, when I'm coming home from work, whether it's a meeting that I'm walking into, whether it's a lecture hall or a conference that I'm about to speak in, or a one-on-one consult or coaching. When I grab that doorknob, I think I have to serve the person on the other side of that door. Over time, it has become completely automatic to get into the optimum state for whoever/whatever is on the other side of that door.

Take a repeated behavior and just tie it to a habit that I want. You could do this with driving. You can do this with putting on shoes. You can do this with logging into a computer. You can do this clicking "Join Meeting." You can do this with anything that any repeated behavior that you have to do after you finish in the bathroom or before you eat your food. You can tie it to those behaviors. Another thing you can tie things to is a real-world object, which I alluded to with doorknobs. You can pick any real-world object that can be picking up a pen, grabbing your phone. You can just tie a behavior to a real-world object.

You can also tie it to a real-world experience, for example. When I experience negative gossip, right? I just really can't stand being around people who are constantly negative gossip. Like, it really bugs me. I struggled with, How do I get out of that conversation? Do I just abruptly remind them? "Hey, let's not talk about them behind their back" Sometimes that's awkward. Sometimes it could be potentially harmful, say, in the workplace with somebody senior to you or you have to interact with them later. It can be awkward. I struggled with that for a while.

But here's what I did. Essentially, I started to make excuses for other people… the moment I hear something negative, I would practice the act of making excuses for someone basically assuming the best, thinking about something that they do well or something that is good about them.

Not All Habits Are Behaviors

Why do I make the distinction between habit change and behavior change? Because not all habits are behaviors. Some habits are emotional responses or triggers. My emotional response to hearing that a specific person's name, that is often called a triggered response. But that's essentially a habit. And you can break that habit and insert a new one. And one of the best ways is with tethering

Thoughts can be habits, too. Somebody brings up a topic or a certain person walks in a room and you have certain thoughts. Those thoughts are habits - those immediate early thoughts.

You can change those thought patterns. For me, it was negative self-talk. Even if I crushed it, if one person felt slighted or was not enamored by something I did... 99 people loved it, 1 dude was less-than-enthused... my pattern was to think (& subsequently viscerally feel) like I was not good enough. I should've done better.

If you want to change your behavior habits, if you want to change your thought habits, if you want to change your emotional habits, then tie them to other things, tie them to other habits, tie them to other actions, tie them to everyday objects.

Keep this in mind this is a small action that can yield massive change in your life. So just tie these things together. It's super high yield.

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Episode Transcript

015 Link & Level Up: Quick Start Behavior Change with Tethering

influence-015-behavior-change-with-tethering-01-audio.mp3

This is Dr. Tori. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show where we make every day better and we influence for good.

In this episode of the Influence Every Day podcast, I want to talk to you about a really simple strategy that should be added to any plan for behavior change, whether this is for an individual or a group. But specifically, I want to talk to you about how you can address your own personal change. Anything that you desire to change - a habit or an action or a behavior or even a way of thinking or an emotional response to certain triggers - this one simple step can really help you a lot.

The first thing I have to say is that intentions are not plans. It's really common for us to hear something that's like a like a motivating talk or listen to a podcast that you say, “Yeah, you know what? That's it. I need to take action on that thing!” And you start to feel really motivated about that. Or you talk to somebody and you're really motivated by their story or something like that.

We set this intention and while we're motivated, it seems reasonable.
While we're motivated, it seems doable.
While we're motivated, it seems like we're committed and we're going to actually stick this thing out.

But motivation waxes and wanes, and sure, we can sometimes set it up so that we maintain or nurture or encourage our motivations. But a lot of times we fall short. Don't rely on intentions alone. Intentions are vital. Motivation is vital. But in that moment of intention, in that moment of motivation, when you're actually experiencing like sort of a visceral like, “I'm going to do this,” … THAT is the time to set a plan.

The plan doesn't have to be this big drawn out mind map or brainstorm or set aside a half hour and work on some worksheets. No. You can simply think about something to tether it to. A tugboat is tethered to a massive ship to then tug it through more dangerous or crowded waters. Right? It's tying something so that they move together, a tether.

You can implement this with all kinds of things. It could be another habit. It could be a simply a repeated behavior. (By the way, all repeated behaviors aren't habits, but it could be a repeated behavior. It could be something you see in your day to day.)

And the reason to tether it to something else is that, first of all, it makes it easier to remember, especially if it's something you encounter or do again and again and again. It makes it easier to remember because you've tied the two together.

The other thing is it reduces the cognitive load. Now here's the thing our brains desire is they desire the least cognitive effort, the least amount of energy to process something. If we have to manage our intentions, manage our motivation and manage our actions and independently sort of conjure up all of those and the thoughts and all the other things that come with a behavior, we're not going to do it. We're going to fall short. So instead, reduce the cognitive load, reduce all the other things that that have to be done before you implement such a behavior.

The other thing about tethering is it doesn't rely on motivation as much. It does early, but eventually you start to implement it and the two things are tied together so that if you're motivated enough to do one or you're going to do one anyway, it's easy to just tie on the other one.

And what's really interesting is sometimes when you tie two things together, sometimes we slip on one, we think the thing we're going to actually have trouble maintaining is the new behavior. But sometimes the new behavior reinforces the other behavior we've already tied it to. It's got benefits all around.

The other thing is it makes us consistent earlier in the process. Sometimes we get demotivated. Sometimes we beat ourselves up with self-talk about, Oh, I've been trying to exercise, but I just keep not doing it. I keep not showing up or I'm not ready or I or I find some excuse. If we are consistent early, we're less likely to have that negative self-talk where less likely to demotivate ourselves.

So let's talk about what you can tether things to. And let me give you some like really practical examples. For example, you can tether something or tack it to or staple it to another habit. So if you, for example, want to start to be a little more mindful, okay, And you've read all the things about mindfulness, you've tried these mindfulness exercises that people mentioned, you've tried meditation, you've tried journaling, but it doesn't seem to work for you. Well, that doesn't mean mindfulness is something you should abandon it. Instead, try tethering it to something you already do. You wash your hands, right? Well, at least I hope you do after you use the bathroom or before you eat or after you eat. Like when you're washing your hands, be mindful about washing your hands. That's one place to tether something while you're washing your hands. Be mindful. What is the water feel like? What is it this you know and do mindful hand-washing It could be mindful bed making. When you make your bed, do it in a mindful kind of way.

These are ways to build in mindfulness, and you'll start to find yourself practicing it in other spaces. So that's if you want to implement mindfulness in your day to day, you could pick something else. It could be brushing your teeth. Okay, that's a habit you do all the time. You could do that with mindfulness.

Let's say you want to start a gratitude practice. Well, practicing gratitude, you know, I've tried multiple things. Like, first of all, I am actually a really grateful person. Like, I always look for things to be grateful for. But it wasn't until I finally found the way that I could implement gratitude in my own way. I've heard the so-called gurus, I've seen all the advice on all the social media posts and all the things that people are spreading out there. I work in a center for wellbeing, so I also help people with like implementing gratitude in their life. But I'll tell you what it was for me. For me, it was simply tying it to something that I do every single day. In the morning I happened to have a treadmill desk, so I walk when I start walking on my treadmill desk, which I do every morning. When I start that, I write down five things that I'm grateful for. I tried journaling and it wasn't working for me because that was a lot of activation energy. I had to find the journal, I had to pull it out. I had a turn to the page and then I felt like this is going to last, so I have to write all this stuff. It has to be. And also in my head, like I'm one of those like self-editing kind of things, like as I'm typing something, I'm like editing it, right? And then that actually sometimes loses your train of thought.

So what worked for me though, was I use mind maps like on a computer. And so it's very easy to type five things I'm grateful for and to pause on one for 10 seconds, think about why I'm grateful for it, and then write the next one and think about why I'm grateful for it and then write the next one and think about why I'm grateful for it. What's happened is now gratitude has become a habit, even so much so that before I walk into a meeting, I think about the people that are going to be there. What am I grateful for those people for? Right. What's happened is I've tethered it to something that I do every day. It's a habit already. I tied it to that and now it's become a habit on its own. And in fact, it's actually started to add itself to other elements in my life.

Other examples of tethering things to habits might be working out for me personally, working out I, I feel great afterwards, but to start, it takes a lot out of me, so I tie it to something I already like to do. I happen to love learning. I'm always like taking courses. In fact, that's probably my major dysfunction. I buy too many courses. I love learning and I love listening to audiobooks and things like that. If I tether audio books with working out, I get to learn something. If I work out, that's the way I did it for my own. I hacked my own psychology. I get to learn something if I work out. Otherwise I'm not going to listen to the audio book. I need to work out to listen to the audiobook. That's just something I did for myself, my own personal hack to get myself to work out more and consistently that's become a habit.

One thing I just said, you can tie it to habits. Another thing you can tie to is repeated behaviors. Now, repeated behaviors aren't necessarily always habits. For example, we open doors, we log into the computer, we log into meetings. Those aren't necessarily habits. Those are things that we do that are part of other activities that we have to do. So these everyday repeated behaviors can also be things that we tether things to.

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Imagine that it is now 3 weeks after your event and people are still raving about it. Not only that, they're describing how it changed their work and their lives.

Make it happen. Book Dr. Tori to speak: https://www.drtori.com/speaker
-----------

If you've ever heard me give the talk, the simple rules of influence kind of talk, I talk about how I use doorknobs, which are everyday objects. The act of walking through a door is a behavior we do all the time. But I've used the everyday object of a doorknob as a thing to tether a behavior to meaning to tie the act of. For me, it was managing my state at first. I would start off by when I would grab the doorknob. I would basically briefly think about, okay, there's people on the other side of this door. I need to serve them. Just get present with that. I'm like, I'm entering this door and I'm going to serve people on the other side, whether it's my family, when I'm coming home from work, whether it's a meeting that I'm walking into, whether it's a lecture hall or a conference that I'm about to speak in, or it's say, a one on one consult or consulting kind of thing, I when I grab that doorknob, I think I have to serve the person on the other side of that door. What's happened is over time, at first I started with this like, okay, grab the doorknob, be really conscious. Okay, so there's someone on the other side of this door.

Let me think about them. Let me do this and then walk in. But eventually it became so much so that now I just touch a doorknob or walk through a threshold or a door and it's automatic. It's become a habit, manage my state, get into the optimum state for whoever is on. On the other side of that door.

That's something I've implemented in my own way by taking something that we a repeated behavior and just tying it to a habit that I want. You could do this with driving. You can do this with putting on shoes. You can do this with logging into a computer. You can do this with a logging into a meeting, clicking, join, meeting. You can do this with anything that any repeated behavior that you have to do after you finish in the bathroom or before you eat your food. You can tie it to those behaviors. Another thing you can tie things to is a real-world object, which I alluded to with doorknobs. You can pick any real-world object that can be picking up a pen, grabbing your phone. You can just tie a behavior to a real-world object. You can also tie it to a real-world experience, for example. When I experience negative gossip, right? I just really can't stand being around people who are constantly negative gossip. Like, it really bugs me. I struggled with, How do I get out of that conversation? Do I just abruptly, like, remind them, like, Hey, let's not talk about them behind their back? Sometimes that's awkward, especially if it's like in the workplace and somebody senior to you or they don't really know you yet and you have to interact with them later.

It can be awkward. I struggled with that for a while. But here's what I did. Essentially, I started to make excuses for other people… the moment I hear something negative, I would practice the act of making excuses for someone basically assuming the best, thinking about something that they do well or something that is good about them. In fact, there's one person that I honestly like really struggled with any interaction with her. Even just hearing her name for a while was like a trigger for me. What happens? I really worked on that. Like, I, I just basically tried to tie it to any time I felt that negative emotion about that person. I would try to make an excuse or think something good about them. And the only thing I could come back to with that person was, okay, she's a mom, all right? So she loves her kids. And like, so I would get to this, okay? She loves her kids kind of thing. Like, I would just make excuses or think about good traits that the person has for me. I tried the act of thinking good about people with when somebody is having a negative conversation about that person or I would make excuses for them. Let's say they say, Oh, I saw him do such and such. Okay, well, maybe he was maybe he was doing something else. Maybe it was a different attention. Maybe it wasn't him. Maybe you were mistaken. Maybe it was a start to make excuses for the other person. That's something I did in my own personal life. The point here is tying something to an everyday experience or a regular experience that you have so that you can implement habit change and behavior change in your own life.

And by the way, why is habit change and behavior change? Why are they two separate things? Because not all habits are behaviors. Some habits are emotions. My emotional response to hearing that person's name, that is a habit that was like. I mean, sometimes we call them triggers, sometimes we call them other things. But that's essentially a habit. And you can break that habit and insert a new one. And one of the best ways is with tethering in addition to emotions, in addition to behaviors, thoughts can be habits. Somebody brings up a topic or a certain person walks in a room and you have certain thoughts. Those thoughts are habits- those immediate early thoughts. You can change some of those. And the biggest one of those and I am like guilty through and through is the negative self-talk about myself. If I have an interaction. Like, for example, the other day I was doing the keynote address and afterwards there were there were a Q&A session. The talk was, you know, I got phenomenal feedback. All the ratings were like amazing and all these things, right? But there was one person who asked a question and I went on a tangent and I didn't give her a complete answer. And I was beating myself up about that, beating myself up. And so I realized that that's something I need to work on. So now I'm looking for something to tie to that. The moment I start to beat myself up about something that just went really, really, really well, what am I going to tie to that? If you want to change your behavior habits, if you want to change your thought habits, if you want to change your emotional habits, then tie them to other things, tie them to other habits, tie them to other actions, tie them to real world objects.

Keep this in mind this is a small action that can yield massive change in your life. So just tie these things together. It's super high yield. I hope you found this helpful. I'll see you in the next episode

This is only the end of today's show if you let it be. Who needs to hear what you just heard? Go ahead and share it with them right now. The Influence Every Day podcast is free. We don't sell advertising space, so telling others is the best way to pay us back. But more importantly, it's the best way to pay it forward. If you enjoy today's podcast, take a moment to rate and review the show. Then check out the additional links and materials that go along with it. They offer more ways to take your influence, your impact, and your relationships to a whole new level. Now go forth and influence for good. Every day.

DR TORI .COM

015 Link Up & Level Up: Quick Start Behavior Change with Tethering