“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale (1898 – 1993)

A behavior change that lasts is everyone’s hope, whether it is to quit smoking, lose weight or change vocabulary around the children.  Too many diet books, stop smoking articles and other behavior changing materials run short on the most important portion of the process, in my opinion.

They say “becoming aware of the problem” is the crucial step in behavior change, but I’d argue that the nearly forgotten aspect of planning is the key to making changes last.  While I don’t advocate remaining in the planning stage for a long time, it is a step that marshals resources and builds the flexible skills needed when the action begins.

One example of planning for behavior change is simply finding something else to do instead.  One patient came in to a session bubbling with the happy news that she had lost six pounds by stopping smoking.  “I had always feared that quitting cigarettes would bring a weight gain, but I actually lost!”  It turns out that her plan to quit smoking included a morning walk with her neighbor during the time when she’d normally be smoking her first cigarette of the day.  Their three-mile walk got her home just in time to shower and be out the door to work, leaving no time to pause for a cigarette break.  She knew she’d miss breakfast and be hungry after walking, so she began preparing a morning snack that could be taken with her to the office, and she did this in the evening when her usual pattern would be to have a cigarette after dinner.  Over the course of a single month, she saw progress in two areas instead of just one.  Her planning paid off in ways that happily surprised her. (more…)

“Men willingly believe what they wish.” – Julius Caesar (100 BC – 44 BC), De Bello Gallico

“They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness.” – Louise Erdrich

During the political season it’s easy to observe that people see only what they are looking for.  Of course, we all do this—there’s even a specialized name for the phenomenon: confirmation bias.  Maybe you recall the study done with teachers a number of decades ago where ordinary, normal students were randomly divided among the three third grade teachers in an elementary school.  These students were not tested for abilities, they were simply assigned randomly to one teacher or another, however the teachers were told that the students had been selected by intellectual ability, and that Teacher A was getting “the really bright ones—the high achievers” and Teacher B was getting the bottom of the barrel, intellectually speaking.  Teacher C was getting the middle of the pack.  By the end of the first grading period, Teacher A DID have all the really bright ones, but not because they were in some way different than the students in the other two classes.  It was because their teacher was seeing what she believed.  Likewise, the other teachers saw poor performance, or mediocre performance, just as they were expecting.  At the beginning of the school year, these classrooms full of children were about equal, but they performed in accordance with their teachers’ expectations.  The teachers had been “taught” a bias about the children in their classes, and they found it in their students’ performances!  They saw what they were looking for! (more…)

All that really belongs to us is time; even he who has nothing else has that. – Baltasar Gracian

Who hasn’t been approached by a friend, a colleague or family member with the question, “Hey, do you have a minute?”  If your experience is anything like mine, you know that this interruption is unlikely to last just sixty seconds, but you also want to be helpful so you say, “Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

So often we agree to give our attention, but loan it only for an instant.  I know that when I’m interrupted, or simply sidetracked, from something I’m pursuing at the moment, whether it is my class preparations or a ball game on television, I will agree to that “minute” of distraction, but I continue to think about the task or activity I’ve left behind.  We all do this to some degree, of course, but as I’ve thought more about gratitude, mindfulness, and the values of positive psychology, I’ve come to realize that what we have to give one another is the gift of our time.  Sometimes I don’t want to be interrupted, which is a little like saying,  “I am the center of my universe and I’m not giving up my hold on that!”  Seriously, it seems that actually paying attention to another person is, in some way, recognition that I am NOT the center of the universe, and that someone else may have something of importance to share, or do, or contribute.  Novel idea, eh? (more…)

“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.” – Carl Sagan

I ask this question of students in my classes, and they often laugh, “Of course we care what’s true!”  But inevitably, I find that as I talk about the best information we have in psychology today, several students will want to assert a belief that has long-since been left behind by researchers.  This is not so damaging in a classroom where debate and questioning are part of the learning process, but in real life, such reliance on old information can be dangerous.  A good example would be that of so-called “eyewitness testimony,” the foundation of the evidentiary process for years and years, and yet it was shown to be wildly inaccurate in research done more than two decades ago.  Reliance on eyewitness testimony has been reduced because of the research showing it is unreliable, but most people still believe that their brains are working much like a movie camera, recording accurately all that is seen.  Collectively, we had a hunch that we remember exactly what we see, but methodical investigation of that idea shows otherwise.  Every year as I teach this information, a student will be unable to accept that we are all susceptible to inaccurate recall, or reconstructed memory for an event.  They have fallen in love with a belief and are unwilling to give it up in the face of scientific fact.  In other words, they no longer care what is true, but want to continue believing the thing that feels most comfortable, or that confirms what they’ve “always thought.”

I care deeply about what is true, and that often means I must revise my ideas about something I have relied upon, even something I have thought to be true for a long while.  Rather than thinking of this as a betrayal of my former ideas, I regard these moments as exciting and interesting.  In fact, doesn’t it seem arrogant to imagine that my hunches and beliefs would all be correct, all of the time? (more…)

Greetings! I’m glad you found the website for Mechanics of Change.  Here you will discover information about human behavior and experience that will make you think—and think differently.

As your host, let me introduce myself: I am Mark A. Hurst, Ph.D. a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Olympia, Washington.  I’m also privileged to be faculty in Psychology at The Evergreen State College, and the combination of these two experiences provide a great opportunity for me to stay up-to-the-minute on the field of human interaction. (more…)