Nature Abhors a Vacuum
May 31, 2006 | Business & Commerce | Life | People & Society
Fast Company on changing your behavior:
If you want to change something in your life, it's common to try to stop the behaviors you don't like. While this certainly seems logical, it seldom works. The reason is simple - it unintentionally creates a vacuum where the old behaviors used to be. And since nature hates a vacuum it will fill it with anything it can find - usually the very behaviors you're trying to stop since they're so familiar. Instead of stopping certain behaviors, try focusing on what you want to create - and the new behaviors you need to get there. Eventually, with practice, new behaviors will develop enough muscle to naturally replace the old ones.
Good advice.
Comments
Kind of a hit-or-miss approach to changing behavior if there actually is something you don't like. Maybe the new behavior will replace it and maybe it will replace . . . something else.
I had a table tennis stroke I wanted to get rid of because I was moving into a class of opponents who would clobber it. But I'd find myself using the stroke automatically. I tried to figure out why I was doing it, but I'm so unconscious while playing that it took a while to realize that it was the only stroke I owned that would get a ball back on the table once I had let it fall too low. It used to work, but my opponents changed and it didn't work well any more. But it was still the best I had.
So the solutions were:
1) respond to balls sooner and return to ready position quicker so the ball doesn't get below the table so often
2) watch good players and see what stroke they use in that particular situation. It was then easy to pick up a sidespin chop which is harder to clobber.
Until I knew when I was doing it, I didn't know what new behavior to seek, and I didn't have the choice to minimize the conditions that made the behavior necessary. Except by getting out of the game.
Posted by: Doug at May 31, 2006 03:36 PM
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