New Year’s Resolution: To Trick My Brain into Greater Effectiveness by Pat Miller

You did it too. You viewed this fresh New Year as a field of freshly fallen snow, and you made optimistic lists of all the ways you were going to make tracks across it. Hope blossomed, opportunities loomed, all was possible. By Day Twelve – (ahem) – those plans have turned to slush.

This year, I avoided the slush because I read a book in December that changed everything! It’s Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Stephen Guise. He explains a system he developed to help himself and has since taught to thousands. A core principle is to make your goals so small that they are stupid. So stupid that your brain, instead of resisting, says, “Hah! I can do that with my brain cells tied behind my brain stem.” That tiny, stupid goal leads to a tiny success—hurrah! And success breeds success.

Guise began with a goal of doing a single push-up. One a day. Stupid. Yet each day he accomplished that goal. And often many more. But if he only did one, he had met his goal. A mini habit was setting up and he felt capable. 

Often the main block to progress is inertia. Accomplishing a stupid goal is sometimes all we need to get going. But if it isn't, accomplishing the tiny goal is still enough to make us feel pleased that we took a step. We did it!

The seven parts of Guise’s book take you through the psychology of willpower, motivation, and habit building. One of the surprising things he shows is how poorly motivation is equipped for habit-making. No matter how rah-rah you begin, pep talks, lofty ambitions, and even guilt just don’t get the job done over the long haul.

Shortly after I began his book, I tried Guise’s technique on my two year-old grandson. Walt greeted the request to wash his hands for dinner with “No!” Rather than cajole or boss, I asked him if he would mind washing just his left pinky finger. That’s all. He agreed. Of course, in the process of trying to wash just one pinky, both hands got clean. Next meal time, he asked if he could wash just one thumb! It became not just a game, but a mini habit.

These words from Mini Habits by Stephen Guise resonated with me:

•  “The reason starting is the hardest part is because it carries the brunt of the weight of the commitment.”
•  “You will find as I have, and as Newton’s law suggests (for physics anyway), that once you get started it is almost as hard to stop as it is to keep going. Add to this that nothing is more motivating and inspiring than seeing yourself take action.”
• “Mini habits are the perfect way to start over…The victories may be small, but one small victory to a defeated mind is a big victory.”

This year is different for me because my resolutions (Guise suggests three at a time) are stupid ones: read four pages of a new children’s book, write 50 words towards my deadline. You get the idea. And I can smugly say that I am on track with all three of my goals!

Guise is an entertaining writer who makes the psychology interesting, the process easy to replicate, and the success almost instantaneous.(Listen to an audio sample here)

Before you give up on your New Year’s resolutions, get a copy of Guise’s Mini Habits. It will help you reach the point where your brain is tricked into greater effectiveness.