Do I have to fight?
The third question in a conversation last Tuesday at Donovan was "Which is more true for you: that fighting serves you or that it doesn’t serve you?"
Andy answered, “I want to say that it doesn’t serve me. But I can see how it still does.”
This response makes complete sense. Think about all the times you’ve berated yourself for doing a behavior you can’t seem to be able to change: biting your nails, filling your calendar with boundless activity, accommodating another person’s needs when it doesn’t suit you, having one too many drinks… The list is almost endless.
The answer to this dynamic is simple – and transformational when implemented.
I give you the punch line upfront: To successfully change a behavior, do not change the behavior.
Yup. To successfully change a behavior, change the thoughts, beliefs and emotions that underlie that behavior. And then, those undesired behaviors dissolve.
Let’s go back to Andy to understand.
First, know that, as a child, Andy saw her parents resolve misunderstandings with fights. Her parents told Andy to handle problems with classmates with fists. Fighting was the normalized response during Andy’s entire childhood.
First question: How does fighting serve you?
You see, if we act in a certain way, it means two things:
When we started this behavior, it was an intelligent response to the circumstances
Somehow this behavior still serves us in some way today
For Andy, fighting provided protection and gave her a semblance of control. These are intelligent reasons to fight. (Yes, I know, there are other ways to achieve these results but, remember, Little Andy was never exposed to those.) And, unsurprisingly, these are also the reasons Andy expressed continuing to fight today.
Why does the fighting response continue? First, with decades of practice, it’s automated and habitual.
Also, it still answers to a need. Andy fights to feel protected.
Until Andy uncovers and develops other ways to feel protected, fighting will still be the default response.
And that was Andy’s “homework” over this past week (and, as you read this newsletter, I’m back inside Donovan learning how she’s moved through it): to explore and identify other ways she can feel protected.
Over the next few weeks – if she follows a similar path as many folks in our spaces – Andy will learn to feel protected in other ways, start using these new tools and, without even trying to not fight, she will no longer fight. Because fighting will no longer serve her. She will feel protected through those other means.
You have a choice: So often, we address the problem from the wrong end and tackle the behavior directly. To successfully change a behavior, do not change the behavior. Instead, use this series of questions and actions:
How does this behavior serve you?
How does this behavior not serve you?
Which is more true for you right now, that this behavior serves or doesn’t serve you? (Be careful to recognize the honest and truthful answer, not the “right” and “acceptable” answer.)
If it honestly and truthfully doesn’t serve, then stand in the reasons you identified in question 2 and allow those beliefs to change the behavior
If it honestly and truthfully serves, then accept this and the behavior with it
If you want it to no longer serve but still see all the ways it does, like Andy, recognize that this behavior is an intelligent response to a need. Find other ways to answer to that need and the behavior will dissolve