Within the world that is my own mind, I have, historically, been notorious for making a lot of “decisions.” I decide I am going to start making a change. I am going to… (fill int the blank)
I am going to cut out sugar.
I am going to stop eating popcorn every night.
I am going to start running every morning.
I’m sure you see where this story is going… Often, when I would make what I thought were wise and confident decisions, I would fail to follow through.
When I would fail to follow through on my decisions on a regular basis, I began probing into the problem. I began consistently asking myself how I can follow through on what I had decided – that is, how I could act upon what my conscious thoughts had thought was absolutely going to happen.
As I kept failing, I kept wondering: What is it that gets a person to follow through on their decision?
Then, one day after another failed attempt, I had a realization: My thoughts – the flicker of action happening in my conscious mind – these are not a decision. In all reality, those earlier thoughts that I had expressed so confidently – these thoughts were nothing. The truth is, my thoughts, my conscious mind making “decisions” – these don’t even exist as any real, tangible form in our real world.
Thoughts are just that – thoughts. They mean nothing… until, that is, they manifest as action.
Once I had this realization I stopped asking myself the question, What is it that gets a person to follow through on their decision? Instead, I changed the question to, What is a decision?
While I had thought that I had made a decision once I had confidently expressed the idea in my own head, I realized that a decision has a second component: a decision is my thought-component of the decision, followed by the action itself.
This may seem obvious while we sit back here taking a macroscopic view of the problem. However, when we’re in the moment – when we’re in the arena, putting forth our strongest efforts, trying to put into practice the very thing we set out to do, what we tell ourselves matters.
Now, I may be confusing you here – first I said our thoughts are nothing, but now I’m emphasizing how much what we tell ourselves matters. I know that may sound contradictory, but trust me there’s an important difference here. Let me finish up the story, and then we’ll circle back around and make sure this point has been clarified.
Once I realized that my thoughts are nothing until the full decision has come to fruition (thought + action), everything changed surrounding my decision-making patterns. This change occurred for any number of reasons, the most plausible of which I will explain:
One reason why it is so important to frame a decision as thought + action is that it helps keep me from prematurely celebrating the decision (i.e celebrating before I complete the action).
When we prematurely celebrate our decisions, we end up rewarding the thought and not the act itself. As we all know, it is rewards following action that build habits. This is how we train our dogs, raise our kids, and get our significant others to unload the dishwasher. When you see positive behavior, reward it.
When we act in any fashion and then receive a reward (physiologically, this is a dopamine hit in the brain), the brain understands that it should repeat this behavior to get a reward in the future.
When I have thoughts surrounding the idea of making a change, and then celebrate having those thoughts, my brain completes the habit-building loop:
action + reward => habit building
thought + reward => optimistic thoughts habit
This means that my brain isn’t being programmed for that actual action (e.g. waking up to run in the morning). Instead, it is being programmed for optimistic thoughts. And, as I had realized, this means absolutely nothing! Promising thoughts mean nothing. Rewarding promising thoughts means nothing.
The only thing that matters in the real world is the actual action that comes of the thought. Then, when we reward that action, we build the entire, useful habit loop.
thought + action + reward = habit
Having this realization prevents me from celebrating the thought-component of my decision until the action actually comes to fruition. This means that I hold off on the “oh you, you’re so great” sort of thoughts until I actually wake up, put on my shoes, and head out the door the following morning. Then, by all means, these positive, reinforcing thoughts are rushing through my mind to reinforce the action itself.
Now understand, I still make these thought-component “decisions.” I still tell myself that things are going to change – after all, it’s a process of improvement, one I have yet to ace the test on. But I also make sure I follow up with a second thought: “this “decision” means nothing” – heck, it isn’t even a decision until it takes the form of action. I then put my energy into making sure that I follow through with the action itself (which is a topic for another day).
Before signing off, let me clarify the idea I expressed about thoughts meaning nothing. Now, I don’t really mean that thoughts mean nothing; rather, they are actually incredibly powerful. Thoughts are an important half of the decision process, which means that if you mess up your thoughts, there’s a good chance that you’ll mess up the entire picture. It’s just that, alone, they are only flickers of electricity within the confines of our skulls, and that doesn’t mean much for the real world. I encourage you to take your thoughts seriously as they do have power.
This is especially important when it comes to self-talk. Notice that I never allow for discouraging talk within my thoughts – that I don’t tell myself there’s no way that my plans to change my behavior would ever come to fruition. These sort of thoughts tear us down when we need to be building ourselves up.
Thoughts are powerful. Just understand that, by themselves, they are not going to get you your health back. To accomplish this, you need action. Reminding myself that a decision is not a decision until I follow through on the thought keeps me from living in a world where I’m overjoyed about optimistic thoughts. When I think about making a change, I focus my energy on the action itself. Once I see that action take place, then I make sure I take the time to celebrate.