Progress Can Trigger Relapse in Behavior Change
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Sometimes progress and success messes things up. For example, demand for a start-ups product or service grows so fast they cannot meet it. Quality slips and promised delivery dates are missed. Or a successful company becomes complacent and arrogant because they dominate the market and starts making mistakes.
According to an interesting post by Dr. McGonigal on her Science of Willpower Blog, this can happen during the behavior change process. As we make progress our executive function exerting the self control becomes satisfied and our impulse for the old behavior can kick in. Focusing on the progress we have made actually sets us up for a relapse. Indeed, celebrating success, the way we traditionally do with a minor indulgence, may be the worse thing to do.
What to do? One way is to reframe what progress means so it maintains emphasis on the executive function of self-control:
“Progress can be motivating, and even inspire future self-control, but only if you view your actions as evidence that that you are committed to your goal. You need to look at what you have done and conclude that you must really care about your goal. So much so, that you want to do even more to reach to it. This perspective is easy to adopt; it’s just not our usual mindset. More typically, we look for the reason to stop.”
The goal is to reflect on the why or reason for your self-control, not just the accomplishment. Using your accomplishment to stay focused on the psychology of commitment avoids success-related relapse.
Clearly a good insight into how minds actually work and it is actionable enough for cognitive designers working on behavior change challenges. The post in the Willpower Blog is sneak preview of one of the chapters in Dr. McGonigal’s new book, The Willpower Instinct. I have it on pre-0rder and will do a review.
