You Don't Have a Goal Today

What you have is not a goal but a number of coexisting goals—some short-term, some long-term, some that reinforce another, and some that conflict with another.  Everyone has an implicit or explicit hierarchy of goals to which they aspire and that affects them.  On any given day you might want to arrive at work earlier, stay in bed a little later, go to the gym first thing in the morning, or paint the bedroom first thing in the morning.

So which goal or goals win out, especially when healthful lifestyle goals are in play?  Mark Connor and his colleagues (2016) found that a health goal of high priority usually does take precedence over competing goals.  That is, under ordinary circumstances, strong health intentions are fairly reliable predictors of our health-oriented behaviors.  On the other hand, what happens when a healthful goal is not particularly high on your hierarchy of needs and wants, such as when you would rather sit on your step listening to music rather than run down your street sweating?

Goals are not all or none, and they are not constant and consistent.  Goals fluctuate.  Equally important, you are not an automaton who always is at her/his best.  Even when you have a strong intention, you can be compromised in some way.  I have written previously about “depletion” – a state of diminished capacity that can result from any number of physical or mental factors.  If you slept poorly or had an argument recently, you might be much less able to enact even strong intentions, settling for ones usually lower on your hierarchy.

During those times of diminished energy, specific features of your habit and of your environment become critical (Neal, D. et al., 2012).  Since they tend to strengthen over time, habits with longevity are most likely to be enacted during depleted episodes, even when you consciously intend to reach a different goal at the moment.   Moreover, the environment can exert a decisive influence as well.  Let’s suppose that you are "too tired" to go to the gym on a given day, despite really wanting to do so.  If your spouse is more motivated to go, he/she might easily serve as the environmental stimulus that you need to overcome your fatigue, snap on your sneaks, and head for the exercise facility.  So, you had both an implicit or explicit goal to work out and to rest instead.  You resolved the conflict in favor of working out because you deliberately or inadvertently had created an environment supporting the healthful goal of physical fitness.  If you had been embedded within a non-exercise-supportive environment, you would not have worked-out on the day of your depletion.

To summarize, we all have simultaneous goals that support or interfere with each other.  And our energy levels fluctuate.  Therefore, especially when our resolve is challenged, we need to develop strong pro-health intentions and to cultivate health-facilitating environments. 

References

Conner, Mark; Abraham, Charles; Prestwich, Andrew; Hutter, Russell; Hallam, Jennifer; Sykes-Muskett, Bianca; Morris, Benjamin; Hurling, Robert.  Impact of Goal Priority and Goal Conflict on the Intention–Health-Behavior Relationship: Tests on Physical Activity and Other Health Behaviors.  Health Psychology, May 16, 2016, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0000340.

Neal, David T.; Wood, Wendy; Labrecque, Jennifer S.; Lally, Phillippa.  How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol 48(2), Mar 2012, 492-498.  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.011.

Why Did You React Like That?

According to Dean Keith Simonton (2016), whenever you have an opportunity to respond to anything, three factors come into play.  First, there is a particular statistical likelihood that you personally will respond at all.  Some situations will evoke a strong response tendency, some a moderate one, and some a low probability.  Second, some of your potential responses will be adaptive; some will not.  And, finally, even before you respond, most often you will have a general sense of whether your response will produce a successful or an unsuccessful outcome.  There are eight general classes of responses.  They are:

Routine or Habitual Responses
Lucky Guesses or Other Impulsive Actions.

Recurrent Irrational Maladaptive Responses

Problem Finding That Defies Conventional Expectations

Irrationally Failing To Do What You Know Is Good For You

Responding Creatively

Suppressing Your Usual Response

Exploring Various Behavioral Options 

Let’s apply Simonton’s notions to a healthful lifestyle practice: sleep.  And since a narrative explanation of his ideas would extend beyond the time limits appropriate to this blog, I will present a schematic example.  That way, all readers will derive a basic sense of the concepts, and the most interested ones can process and pursue the information further on their own.

In this scenario we will presume that you are sleeping poorly and are trying to decide what to do about that.  

How do the eight response tendencies apply to you regarding your current lifestyle and potential for sleep improvement?  Let's add that you are very stressed and in desperate need of more sleep.  To make the point, I will provide examples of extreme responses, both positive and negative as follows:

Routine or Habitual Responses - Positive = You listen to your doctor who prescribes a sleeping pill, because you always follow her advice.  Negative = You do not fill the prescription because you always ignore your doctor's advice.

Take Away = If it’s not broken don’t fix it, but if it is, do something different.

Lucky Guesses or Other Impulsive Actions - Positive = Although you do not need one, you buy a new bed and sleep much better.  Negative = You waste your money on an unneeded new bed.  It doesn't help and you make no other effort to address your sleep problem.

Take Away = It’s usually better to look before you leap.

Recurrent Irrational Maladaptive Responses - Positive = By definition, there are no positive outcomes.  Negative = You continue with your typical maladaptive reaction to problems which is to rationalize; in this case you recall that many famous people, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Winston Churchill, slept far worse than you do.

Take Away =  You are not Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, or Winston Churchill.

Problem Finding That Defies Conventional Expectations - Positive = You decide to follow the advice of the 19th Century Bavarian priest, Sebastian Kneipp who advised sleeping in wet socks to combat insomnia, and it works for you ! Negative = You decide to follow the advice of the priest and it does not work for you.

Take Away = Most people prefer not to “wet the bed.” 

Irrationally Failing To Do What You Know Is Good For You - Positive = Once again, by definition, there are no positive outcomes.  In this case, however, you know what works for you and merely choose not to make the effort to do it.  Negative = You continue sleep deprived and in so doing reinforce your irrationality.

Take Away =  Self-directed defiance is self-defeating and masochistic. 

Responding Creatively - Positive = You believe that your insomnia is due to reduced blood flow to your brain.  You decide, therefore, to sleep upside down with your feet resting upon three stacked pillow and it works!  Negative =You believe that your insomnia is due to reduced blood flow to your brain.  You decide, therefore, to sleep upside down with your feet resting upon three stacked pillow and awaken with a migraine headache.

Take Away = Creativity is wonderful, but only when it works.

Suppressing Your Usual Response - Positive = You usually ignore your doctor's advice, but this time you do fill the sleeping medication prescription that she wrote and it works.  Negative = You usually ignore your doctor's advice, but this time do fill the sleeping medication prescription that she wrote and you have an allergic reaction, reinforcing your belief that doctors are incompetent.

Take Away = Trying something new is good so long as you do so after some deliberation.

Exploring Various Behavioral Options - Positive = You research and try an series of somewhat trial and error options and one works for you.  Negative = You try a series of haphazard, unresearched trial and error options and none work for you.

Take Away = Exploring various behaviors also can be useful if you know how to proceed.

So, if Simonton is correct, in situations when a healthful lifestyle response is possible, if you are inclined to respond, you also are likely to have at least a general sense of whether your response will be successful or unsuccessful.  Moreover, you almost certainly tend toward one or more of the aforementioned eight responses that developed in accordance with your temperament, personality, and usual environments.  Most of your responses probably occur automatically - outside your consciousness. Therefore, whenever a response opportunity presents itself, it offers a chance for you either to respond in your characteristic manner if that is adaptive, or to respond uncharacteristically if that is more adaptive. 

To change your response tendencies then, first think about the eight options and then decide which should be consciously enacted in order to effect a meaningful healthful lifestyle change.   Pleasant dreams.

Reference:  Simonton, Dean Keith (2016).  Creativity, Automaticity, Irrationality, Fortuity, Fantasy, and Other Contingencies: An Eightfold Response Typology.  Review of General Psychology, May 5, No Pagination Specified.

Working for Good or Ill

If work were easy, it wouldn’t be called work.  Expect that at least some stress will be intrinsic to any job, whether formal employment or work around the house.  That said, while some hassles are inevitable, others are preventable.  Moreover, although everyone experiences work-related problems, some recover more quickly than others do.  What a person does during and after the hassles can make all the difference.

Job performance of any kind depends to some extent on what psychologists call “executive function.”   While its definition varies somewhat from expert to expert, let’s use the one suggested by Blair and Raver (2012).  In lay terms, executive function is the ability to self-regulate behavior.  It is comprised of working memory (the ability to keep information in our consciousness long enough to permit us to understand, learn, or reason with that information), flexibility in shifting our focus among relevant sets of intellectual processing rules, and inhibitory control that permits reflection over impulsivity. 

All work demands some degree of executive function.  For instance, when preparing dinner for a family of four—whether a professional cook or everyday person—one uses executive function to reflect first on what needs to be done rather than to rush mindlessly into the activity, adjust heating or cooling as needed, and coordinate the readiness of final food items so that all can be eaten after the family is seated.  Cooking sounds simple when it is described in decontextualized abstract terms such as I have used.  But we all know that any one of a thousand hassles can arise when trying to prepare a meal or to perform any task.  Let’s consider research regarding the demands placed upon nurses.

Luis Manuel Blanco-Donoso and colleagues (2016) studied job pressures that nurses experience, how they try to cope with the pressures, as well as the on-job and at-home consequences. They found, not surprisingly, that nurses who had more problems controlling their emotions at work experienced greater post-work emotional exhaustion.  The investigators explained that the most stressed nurses were those who did not pay attention to, understand, or adequately regulate their emotions.  That is, nurses with executive function deficits were nurses who complained most of exhaustion, physical aches and pains, and negative emotions.  Moreover, the problems tended to be present both at work and at home.

How did the more successful nurses cope?  Two ways: making good use of on-the-job resources and engaging in recovery experiences at home.  The resource of colleague support was a particularly helpful coping mechanism that diffused tension and assisted problem solving.  Notably, supervisor support conferred no such advantage, although that may have been due to factors specific to the study in question.  Second, both physical exercise and relaxation experiences also promoted successful coping.

As I repeatedly have emphasized in all my writings, context is critical.  Blanco-Donoso and his colleagues felt similarly when commenting on their results, specifying that “the efficacy of emotion regulation strategies can be variable and that a regulatory strategy that proves adaptive in one context can prove maladaptive (or does not have any effect) in a different context.”  For instance, it would be readily apparent to all that confiding in a coworker can be helpful in one setting and self-defeating in another. 

To conclude, we all need to use our best executive function skills to deal with our jobs, whether employment-related or home-related -- to work under circumstance of least harmful stress and to recover from the inevitable stress that often will occur.  Most important, we need to understand our unique contexts, interior and exterior, because context is critical.  That is why my Don’t Rest in Peace book had contextualizing as a major theme.

References:

Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2012).  Individual development and evolution: Experiential canalization of self-regulation. Developmental Psychology, 48, 647–657

Blanco-Donoso, Luis Manuel; Garrosa, Eva; Demerouti, Evangelia; Moreno-Jiménez, Bernardo (2016).  Job Resources and Recovery Experiences to Face Difficulties in Emotion Regulation at Work: A Diary Study Among Nurses.  International Journal of Stress Management, May 2 , No Pagination Specified.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/str0000023.

Two Major Reasons for Failures During Healthful Lifestyle Change Attempts

Let me say from the outset that reasons for healthful lifestyle change failure are many and varied.  That is why my book explains how to select goals and provides 16 change implementation strategies. Two obstacles are the focus of this post: automaticity and self-control as a limited resource.

First, automaticity which is our tendency to behave on autopilot.  In fact, most of our thoughts, emotions, and actions occur to a complete or to a significant extent with no deliberation on our part.  As Nike might say, we "just do it.” The triggers for those automatic thoughts, emotions, and actions can be virtually anything occurring inside or outside our skin.

Imagine that you have set a healthful lifestyle goal that involves eliminating clutter in order to reduce the stress that it instigates.  Imagine further, that you are “totally” committed to making that change because you repeatedly have experienced intense aggravation coincident with being unable to find something you desperately, urgently need.  For a brief initial period, you make a successful effort to be organized and you reap the benefits.  But slowly or rapidly, the effort wanes and soon you are back to your old, disorganized, stressed-out self.

What happened?  As indicated above, it could have been stimulated by something within or something without.  You might have become preoccupied with your website development (inside the skin), or you might have gone on vacation and upon returning home discovered a mountain of new jobs that you hadn’t anticipated (outside the skin).  You reverted to your previous automatic practices because you ceased being sufficiently preoccupied with your hoped-for change.

Next, self-control as a limited resource, meaning that whenever we exert ourselves in one endeavor we are less likely to persevere in another that occurs closely in time.  We can use the same two examples presented above and consider them from the limited resource perspective.  In this case, the reason for our failure to maintain the clutter elimination effort would not necessarily be due to a failure of preoccupation with the hoped-for change, but because your energy has been sapped by something else.  For instance, you incorrectly assumed that you knew how expeditiously to make the web site development work (inside the skin) or your computer started acting-up such that every operation required much more execution time than usual (outside the skin).  In both cases, trying to develop your website exhausted your self-control muscle such that you had insufficient energy left to devote to being better organized.

           

Automaticity is countered by “forcing” yourself to prioritize the new healthful lifestyle change and to be preoccupied with it.  Self-control as a limited resource is combated by pacing yourself as best you can, and by employing other energy conservation techniques.  Obviously, there is much more to initiating and maintaining a healthful change which is why I wrote my book.