In my last blog, I discussed the systems involved in making or breaking habits as written in James Clear’s Atomic Habits. I hope that made you see how you aren’t rotten or a hopeless case and reassure you that there is something neurological going on beyond just not wanting it enough.
In this follow-up blog, I want to discuss 3 more key insights from Atomic Habits that I believe are incredibly useful for recovery.
Without further ado…
1. Small Changes Everyday Compound To Make Big Changes Overtime
In the first few chapters of Atomic Habits, there’s an analogy used for how habits give direction to your life. As a big analogy fan, I’m going to outline it here:
o A pilot plans to fly from Los Angeles to New York.
o When the plane takes off, he adjusts the plane course but a mere few degrees to the south.
o He continues in a straight line.
o The plane ends up in Washington D.C. instead of NYC.
What Clear intends to demonstrate here is that small changes can create huge impacts when compounded over time. Though an initial change may seem minimal, it results in a very different final destination.
I think this logic is relevant to recovery for 3 main reasons:
1) Though they may seem insignificant, small actions taken each day compound over time. The micro-restrictions that you hang onto and think don’t matter that much – like skipping a salad dressing or skimping on spread on your toast – will hold you hostage. They will keep you functioning with an eating disorder, rather than free from it. Your brain is watching all of the small things you are doing and further constructing its disordered trenches. You will never, for example, fully and wholly rewire your fear of a fats if you are consciously and consistently under-buttering your toast.Every action has a ripple effect.
2) Conversely, all of the micro-positive things that you do are incredibly important. When you are choosing that larger banana day in-day out, or opting for the sandwich which you know has a marginally higher energy content than other, it may seem to be a small and relatively unnoticeable choice, but your brain is learning and consolidating.
A full recovery is not reached by grand performative ‘events’ like going out for pizza or having a slice of birthday cake once in a blue moon. Especially if these have been had on the basis that the rest of the day was fiddled with. Your brain will rewire by the nitty-gritty of every day being full of abundance, permission and rule-breaking happening as your standard or baseline. The milk choice in your coffee. The butter on your toast being generous. The cheese serving on the pasta. The lack of use of the scales. The unedited family meal. The salad dressing. The non-diet yoghurt. The bread roll with more seeds on.
Don’t get me wrong, big and fundamental changes will need to be made in order to fully recover. But, any steps taken need to be authentic and uncompromised. My recovery process was very much a case of hopping, skipping and then jumping (as my friend and fellow recovery coach Emily Spence has coined it). The hops I took, though not observably fantastic, were valuable when they were consistent and then upgraded.
3) Your life won't change overnight. You must be consistent with your actions, doing them over and over and over again. This requires some fairly tedious patience.
2. You Become Who You Surround Yourself With
When I first heard the phrase, "Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future", when I was young, it was wholly lost on me. I just didn’t get it. But by now, I can see how true it is that people in our close circle most strongly impact who we become down the road. We are highly observant of, and subsequently programmed and shaped by, the people we spend most time with. This is both true in our formative years, when we are unconsciously absorbing the values and teachings from those senior to us, but also as we develop around people who are our equals.
The reason why I mention this is due to how influential somebody else’s relationship with food, their body and movement can be on you and your recovery. In recovery, it is so incredibly important not to remain in a sphere that is going to contend with the value system that you are wishing to curate.
Whilst I could talk about family here, I really want to focus on friends and social media communities, as these are more often within your reasonable control to ‘choose’ yourself. If the sect of the community you are in online is hindering you – such as one in which leanness is valued, calories are tracked or orthorexic eating is advised – you must get yourself out of it. I cannot stress how important it was to get myself out of the toxic online environments I was in.
This doesn’t mean you have to shut yourself off from the world entirely. But it does mean that you will need to be selective and perhaps do some temporary shelving. Social media can be a really wonderful way of connecting with like-minded people who are treading the same path as you. You just need to find your safe place.
3. The Goldilocks Rule
The final insight from Clear’s book involves locating a ‘sweet spot’ for the goals you set. But, I need to be careful here because your ED rarely going to allow you to believe that any change is 'sweet'. Irrespective of this, the truth remains, if you set the bar astronomically high to the point the goal is consistently being sidestepped, it may actually be detrimental to your self-esteem and actually end up slowing your progress. The quote: Rome wasn't built in a day, but every day they were laying bricks seems apt here
So, let’s say I fancy learning to cartwheel. Bearing in mind I am about as acrobatic as a lamp post, the only outcome of me setting myself a goal like ‘single-handed cartwheel by 5.30pm’, is that I’ll get aggressively cheesed off and demotivated. To be eventually graced with the gymnastic gift I currently lack, I might need to practice one hundred handstands first, and then bring in some rotation for 2 days, and swiftly work my up to a single-handed manoeuvre by day 4.
These are all specific attainable and actionable goals that won’t lead to the immediate frustration or self-deprecation that might prevent me from reaching my desired destination, whilst not being ‘too easy’ that they won’t actually lead to progress at all.
Whilst you must push to the outer boundaries of your comfort zone in recovery, taking steppingstones does not mean you are failing.
You must push yourself to what feels like 10/10 anxiety level, repeat until this drops down to a 9, and then upgrade the challenge. Find that happy medium.
And that’s all from me on my pistachio nut shell of Atomic Habits. There's plenty more wisdom to find within it, but I do hope these snippets of what I find most relevant to be helpful. Thanks for reading!
Comments