Now the thing, the overwhelming
conclusion that I reached about habits is that if we wanna change our habits,
we first have to understand ourselves. Because when we understand ourselves,
we can figure out how to change our habits in the way that's gonna suit us.
Because if you try to form a habit in a way that doesn't suit you,
your interests, your nature, your values, it's not gonna stick,
but when we understand ourselves, we can
shape the habits to suit us and then we get a lot better success.
And as I was studying habits, it just seemed more and more clear to me
that people were really different. It seemed like all the research was treating
everybody as if they were exactly the same. That they had the same affinity for habits.
The same attitude for forming habits, the same desire to form habits.
Which seemed obvious to me that there was a huge range among people
in how they formed habits. I wanted to figure out
how can you measure people against each other, how can you understand these differences,
were there patterns that people were falling into. And I came up with this framework called
"The Four Tendencies Framework." And it divides people into four categories.
And this is a little dry at the beginning, but stay with me because it's
really, really helpful in understanding yourself generally,
other people generally and also how habits conform.
So, "The Four Tendencies Framework" has to do with how you respond
to an idea of an expectation. Now, there are two kinds of expectations.
There's outer expectations and that's things like a work deadline
or a request from a sweetheart. And then there's inner expectations,
your own desire to write a blog,
your own desire to get back into meditation.
And here are the four categories. The first category are upholders.
Upholders readily respond to outer expectations and inner expectations alike.
They readily meet a work deadline without a lot of supervision or deadlines
and they're gonna keep a new year's resolution without much fuss.
I am an upholder and it turns out that
upholder is a very tiny category and so many things were clear
to me when I realised that I thought I was pretty average,
but I'm kind of on the freaky fringe. Hermione Granger is a great example
of an upholder. Next are questioners.
Questioners question all expectations, but they'll do it if they think it makes sense.
It's very important for them to think that something is rational,
that there are sound justifications for it, that it's not arbitrary.
In a sense, they make everything an inner expectation
because they have to endorse it. So they readily meet inner expectations,
but they're gonna disregard outer expectations if they don't accept them.
Next, obligers. Obligers readily meet outer expectations,
but they have a lot of trouble meeting inner expectations.
So they do really well when there's supervision, when there's deadlines,
when there's late fees, when there's their own
duty as a role model to someone else. They hate to let other people down.
But they often struggle with letting themselves down.
Like one obliger said to me, "when I was in high school,
I was on the track team and I've never missed a practice
but I can't go running now." Because when she was on a team,
when she had a coach, when she had her,
her team members counting on her, she had no trouble going.
But she can't go running. Or someone who said,
"well, if I've got something on the calendar where I'm committed to somebody else,
I never miss it, but if I make a commitment
only to myself, I might skip it.” And so, for obligers, the key
is external accountability.
If there's a habit that they want to stick to, that they're struggling with,
they need to build in that form of external accountability.
Whether that's using a coach or a trainer or signing up for a class
where the teacher's gonna know that you're not there
or having some kind of accountability partner or thinking about your duty to be a good role
model for your children or for somebody else.
Like somebody I know who said that when she was training for a triathlon,
all of her neighbours were asking her about it and she felt like a real duty to stick to it
because she wanted to be a good role model for the people around her.
And finally, are rebels. Rebels resist all expectations,
outer and inner alike. They wanna do what they wanna do
when they wanna do it, they don't wanna take orders from anyone,
including from themselves, they're motivated by choice and by freedom.
And for them, they don't even wanna form habits, they dread habits for the most part.
But they can have habit-like behaviours by choosing to do something.
Whereas an upholder like me might have a habit of exercising every single day or
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I'm gonna go to this exercise class,
a rebel will choose to do it. Every day they'll be like
"I want to run, I love the feeling of energy, I like feeling the air blowing through my
hair, I like to run through the park,
I like listening to new music," they wanna choose to do it.
And so, I think it's pretty clear that when you're thinking
about somebody to form a habit, whether it's yourself or someone else,
if you want somebody to take blood pressure medication,
if you want somebody to go to bed on time,
if you want somebody to exercise regularly,
the way that you're gonna frame it is gonna be very different
depending on which tendency a person is in. Upholders don't need that much support,
they make up their mind and they can do it pretty easily.
Sometimes they stick to things even when they shouldn't
because it's very hard for them to let go of an expectation,
even if they don't want to. Like a friend of mine who wanted
to quit doing a certain kind of exercise, but somehow it locked into her mind,
it was very hard for her to take it out of her calendar,
even though it wasn't convenient for her anymore. Questioners need a lot of justification,
a lot of rationale, they really need to be convinced.
Obligers need external accountability. Rebels need choose.
That's gotta be what they want to do. And so by understanding yourself,
you make it so much easier to work on your habits. Once I understood that I was an upholder,
so many things about myself were clear to me.
And so, sometimes just these categories, you don't want them to limit your ability
to understand yourself or to grow and to change,
but sometimes by getting a real insight into yourself,
it makes it a lot easier to make significant change.