Flex_ Do Something Different - Ben [42]
Doing the right thing is more than making a decision or deploying a behaviour that works in a given situation. To do the right thing means doing the thing that is right for you. In the book so far we have described the personal ingredients that make it possible for a person to be successful (the dimensions and constancies in FIT Science and the need to flex and DSD).
But just doing lots of different things is not in itself enough.
Being excessively flexible and elastic may take you away from what you want, not closer to it, because you are veering around all over the place! Behaviour has to be shaped and directed towards the right thing. But how do you know what the right thing is for you?
First, there is no universal ‘right thing’. And doing what is right for you may be different from doing what is right for me. That stems from our very individuality. And it goes to the core of who we are.
Consider the intriguing question of why so many people seem to do the wrong thing so predictably and so often. Why is it that people who say they want a good relationship behave negatively towards their partner and friends? Why do so many join a gym yet never go? Why do people have that extra drink they swore they wouldn’t have, or say they want to be slim yet always eat too much of the wrong food?
Perhaps it is because doing the right thing is not easy. This is a common answer, but it is usually not true. Consistently doing the wrong thing – doing things that you don’t want to, or that cause you grief and a negative outcome so often – now that seems much harder to me!
So why do so many people seem to take the hard road in life? Sometimes we do the wrong thing simply because we don’t know what the right thing is – perhaps we don’t have the knowledge or the skill, or have never been in that situation before. Sometimes we do the wrong thing because we don’t think and just react automatically out of habit. Sometimes we do the wrong thing for emotional reasons. There are – it seems – many reasons why we fail to do the right thing and limit how successful we can be. In my view all these reasons can be boiled down to one simple core factor that acts as a guide to how we need to flex: coherence.
47. Towards greater personal coherence
Earlier in the book we drew attention to the fact that many of life’s struggles come from people having too many habits. And a very narrow range of strategies with which to cope with their world, meaning they’re faced with situations with which they cannot cope and that leave them stressed, dissatisfied or unhappy. We talked of the need to flex in order to expand our personal behavioural repertoire. To have a toolbox stuffed with fully functioning coping strategies. We showed how stress afflicts people with under-filled toolboxes, or narrow repertoires. And how Do Something Different is a technique to help us to flex.
In this section we’d like to tell you a little more about why Do Something Different works. You can no doubt see how doing lots of new and different things breaks down the habits that run the experiencing self. And that doing something different increases a person’s flexibility by creating new behaviours and thoughts that impact on the reflecting self.
But ultimately Do Something Different brings about greater coherence in the individual and aligns the two selves. Many people, as we’ve already mentioned, go through life saying one thing and doing another. Living one life but wishing for something else. Personal coherence is the mark of someone who has all parts of their life aligned. What they do and what they say are connected. They are not held back by habits or personal limitations, and are totally at ease with themselves and their world. Their experiencing and reflecting selves are living in harmony together. In the end the hallmarks of the incoherent person, doing one thing and saying another, disappear.
Nonetheless, incoherence seems to be part of the human condition. It affects us all in large and small ways. Here are a few everyday examples:
Craig chooses a foreign