“I’ve moved the goal farther down the field until my brain doesn’t trust me. How do I rebuild that trust?”
question from a minimax blog reader
Trust is hard to build and easy to destroy.
This quote above is a great insight from one of our readers who left a comment… it was so insightful that I want to dedicate a whole post to talking about it.
In a previous post I talked about the challenges we have motivating ourselves and suggested putting rewards our small successes into your minimax system. But what if we cheat ourselves? What if we promise ourselves a reward for getting something done, but then postpone the reward until we get even more done? We move the goal down the field… and we violate our own personal trust…
Tricking ourselves like this may work a time or two, but every promise we break erodes our self trust. It is the same as breaking a promise to a friend – they won’t trust us again unless, or until, we prove we can be trusted. Remember the old saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” You can’t run away from yourself, and you can’t fool yourself either.
So how do we rebuild our self trust?
internal narrative
Rebuilding self trust takes time. We need to start small with little promises we know we can (and will) keep. But more than that, we need to have a positive internal narrative to support the new trustworthy self we are becoming.
The positive internal narrative is an affirmation we tell ourselves to help achieve a goal. Developing a positive internal narrative is a good idea in general and in this case we can use it to remind us how to follow through and keep our promises to ourselves.
Let’s use a simple example… what if you have trouble getting up in the morning and hit the snooze button over and over again? That could be a behavior you want to change. Let’s say you decide to set a regular time to get up every morning to get more done and to start your day on the right foot. You could promise yourself to get up after the first buzz and to stop hitting the snooze button over and over again.
The positive narrative to go with this new behavior will remind you of the benefit of getting up early, getting things done, and starting your day right. You are an early riser now, you are consistent, you have a productive schedule, and you reinforce your self trust every morning when you rise. During the day you can feel good remembering you kept a promise to yourself.
Your internal narrative can also remind you that you’re in good company. A famous early American once wrote “early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” (do you know who said that?)
Along with the positive narrative you can also reinforce the new good behavior with a small reward. The reward might be a simple thing, like having a special coffee or biscuit first thing in the morning as you clear the fog from your brain. This will be a special treat for yourself to reinforce the new habit you have – keeping promises to yourself.
It may sound simple… maybe too simple… because it is really simple. And that’s why it works!
start small
The strategy for rebuilding your self trust is to make a small commitment, follow through on it, and reward yourself for achieving it. It doesn’t have to be a big reward either.
Studies show our human psychology doesn’t distinguish between huge rewards and tiny ones. A reward gives us a positive endorphin ‘kick’ that stimulates our brain. This is how we learn anything in life. It’s built into our nature, and we can tap into that nature with our simple system.
We get the same kick and positive endorphin feedback from any reward – no matter the value – because our brain doesn’t register the amount of the reward. Our subconscious just knows we got a reward and we feel better because of it. So a quiet cup of coffee can motivate as effectively as an expensive vacation… if we consider it a reward.
build the habit
Going back to our reader’s comment… rebuilding our self trust is a matter of building good habits. You don’t trust yourself if your habit is tricking yourself all the time. So… trusting yourself is easy if your habit is to follow through and keep your promises… to yourself and others.
Starting with a simple change is a great way to build a good habit. Your alarm clock represents a promise to yourself every morning – when you go to bed at night you were promising yourself to get up at a certain time the next morning. Every time you win the morning snooze button battle you are keeping your promise to yourself, you are on a positive track for your day, and you build trust that you keep promises to yourself.
The reward of enjoying your quiet morning cup of coffee is your simple reminder that you can trust yourself again. You are enjoying a simple reward for completing a simple goal.
As you get consistent you can do bigger and bigger promises. Each promise you keep with yourself is another brick in the tower of trust you are rebuilding with yourself.
Building good habits is a system. And the minimax philosophy is all about systems.
The minimaxer systems are all about helping us minimize stuff so we can maximize our creative and productive energy. It’s all about building an efficient and organized environment for our stuff where we can get things done.
Part of building your systems is building the habits that support them. If you build them right, you are building trust in your system and yourself.