Find the Bright Spots

“Even in failure there is success.”

Chip and Dan Heath,
Switch

 

 

It’s that time of the year: a change of calendars (if you’re like me, you’re still using physical ones), getting the last digit of the year wrong when you’re writing the date on paper. And of course, all the talk about New Year’s resolutions — most of which we don’t end up following through with anyway. 

It’s okay. There’s no shame in that.

But this year, perhaps it’s time that you stop feeling bad about yourself whenever you do fail. Just because you don’t follow through with your resolutions, it doesn’t make you a failure. It only means that whatever you’re doing isn’t working — or not working well enough. 

In Chip and Dan Heath’s amazing book Switch (which I highly recommend you read in its entirety), the authors talk about “finding the bright spots”.

Whenever we fail, we’re quick at identifying what went wrong and beating ourselves up for it. But what we don’t tend to do is find the bright spots: the things that did go right, or the times when we were able to follow through with our resolutions even if briefly. 

Some background info for this concept: it is borrowed from solutions-focused therapy. This form of therapy focuses less on how your parents fucked you up, and more on what you can immediately do now to change your behavior. 

Let’s pretend that I’m your therapist for a moment. I’d first ask you what we call a Miracle Question. I want you to imagine that while you sleep tonight, a miracle happens, which magically turns your life around for the better. And when you wake up in the morning, you get to effortlessly live out your desired behaviors, like they’re totally natural to you. How would that look like? Be specific about how you would act if you were in this situation. 

For example, perhaps you want to give up smoking. So, you’d imagine identifying yourself as a non-smoker. You’d imagine yourself actually being repulsed by the sight and smell of cigarettes. You’d imagine yourself taking up healthy alternative habits to unwind, like meditating and exercising. 

Once you’re done getting into the specifics, I’d ask you another question, which is the Exception Question — when was the last time you experienced a little of that miracle, even if briefly?

The point of this practice is for you to realize that you’re more than able to change your behavior. You just have to notice what has worked before and do more of it. 

Understand that change is rarely linear. You will fumble and have ups and downs. It’s rarely the case with change that you suddenly have a life-changing realization and you turn into a new person overnight. 

Change is often gradual. I’d argue that it’s like falling into a hole in your path. You may still fall after a few times of walking down the same path. But every time you do, you notice it more and more, until it becomes second-nature for you to avoid that hole. 

Take it from someone who spent two years trying to give up smoking. At most, I’d quit for a few months at a time until I fell off the wagon again. But I eventually got to a point where I noticed what worked best, and was able to give up the habit for good. The biggest thing for me was identifying as someone who doesn’t smoke — as opposed to someone who’s trying to quit smoking. I told myself that whenever I had the urge to smoke again. Now it’s been about 3 years since I last had a cigarette. 

To recap, don’t be discouraged whenever you encounter setbacks in keeping up with your New Year’s resolutions. They’re just part of the process, and they will very likely happen. And when they do, just pause for a moment and find the bright spots. 

New Year’s resolutions don’t have to be pass-or-fail tests. They can simply be a series of fun experiments. 

Happy New Year folks.