Choose your "us"

What motivates us to change?

Because it will make me healthier.

Because I will feel happier.

Because it could save my life.

It turns out, these are not very effective motivators for humans.

We tend to overestimate our ability to change our habits based on the above reasons.

A better motivator (one of the most powerful) is affiliation. I do what I do because it helps me belong.

Marketing guru Seth Godin says, "For most of us, [...] changing our behavior is driven by our desire to fit in (people like us do things like this) [...] Even when we adopt the behavior of an outlier, when we do something the crowd doesn't often do, we're still aligning ourselves with the behavior of outliers."

We reference others in order to know what to do. It's an adaptive trait - it helps us find affiliation (and therefor safety) in a group.

In light of this information, it matters very much who we pay attention to.

If none of the people we hear from on a daily basis (in our community, in the media, on social media) are doing what our research tells us is healthy, it's unlikely that we will either. We will most likely do what they do (which is fall back on the status quo).

Instead, once we're fortunate enough to identify a healthy change, what if we intentionally establish new social references who will inspire it? In other words, what if we bring people into our daily experience who are fully living that change?

We can correspond with them, or visit with them, or view their art, or read their books or blogs, or listen to their podcasts, or follow them on social media.

What if we pay attention to them and ignore everyone else?

What if we make them the new "us" (people like us do things like this)?

Then it get's much easier.

Choose your social references, choose your life.