Are you wanting to change something but it seems heavy, daunting, arduous, or maybe even downright scary? Or perhaps it invokes all the scarcity and ‘what ifs’ the world has to offer??
You’re not alone. Notice what you are telling yourself about the change.
Normalize it: change can be really hard. If it’s something that is core to your identity, even harder. Our brains are well-oiled machines telling us that something different might be terrible. It’s part of what keeps people stuck in dead-end jobs or relationships, over-drinking, smoking, or mired in habits they wish they could break. For the primitive brain, it’s hard to imagine life on the other side, so no matter how shitty this side is, it just seems safer. This is where ‘doing an experiment’ can really offload some of the mental anguish. It lets your brain know it can come back to its ‘safe’ steady state any time. And you can also ditch the weight of getting it right on the first try.
So, call your thing an experiment.
Never done it before?
Great!
No problem.
It’s an experiment.
My nerdy little brain loves this. It transports me back to the scientific method where I can form a hypothesis and test it out.
It reminds me of an experiment I did in 6th grade over Spring Break; one can’t truly call this a science experiment, but I decided to try a “Dessert-Only Diet” when my family was visiting South Florida from Indiana. I loved Key Lime Pie and figured there were roughly the same number of calories in a meal as a good piece of Key Lime Pie.
So, I was simply going to eat it for every meal that vacation.
The idea was glorious, and I loved that first day when I proudly ordered pie for breakfast. I can still taste the sweetness, the tartness, and the crumbly graham cracker crust. Mmmmmm……
What happened? I lasted about 2.5 days before I really wanted some real food… that was a fail! But I still look back fondly at that glorious pie experiment.
Whether it’s something big or something small: try it out. This approach is so much easier, because like a lot of science, you can expect things to fail… And not take it so personally.
It’s simply part of the process.
If the perfectionist in you has been really wanting to try something new: do it!
It’s just an experiment. When you repeat that to yourself, it feels less risky to the brain because it’s not viewed as permanent. And let’s face it: Nothing is permanent.
So if you need to tweak experiment, do so freely.
Readjust and see what’s the next best thing.
