Dr. Heidi Grant

The Simple Reason Why Some of Your Plans Work, and Others Backfire

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Regular readers of my blog, and of my new book SUCCEED, know that I am a big fan of planning.  If-then planning, in particular, is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal.  Well over 100 studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will take specific steps to reach your goal (e.g., “If I am hungry and want a snack, then I will choose a healthy option like fruit or veggies,”) can double or triple your chances for success.  Making an if-then plan to stick to your New Year’s resolutions, or reach your 2011 goals, is probably the most effective single thing you can do to ensure your success.

But once you’ve decided to make an if-then plan, the next thing you need to do is figure out what goes in it.   According to new research, you need to be very careful about what goes in your plan, because one particular type of if-then plan can backfire – leaving you doing more of whatever you were trying to avoid doing in the first place.

Researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands looked at three types of if-then plans.  Replacement plans do just what the name suggests – replace a bad habit with a good one.  If you are trying to do a better job controlling your temper and stop yourself from flying off the handle, you might create an if-then replacement plan like “If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down.”   By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit gets worn away over time until it disappears completely.

Ignore if-then plans are focused on blocking out unwanted feelings – like cravings, performance anxiety, or self-doubts.  (“If I have the urge to smoke, then I will ignore it.”)  In this case, you are simply planning to tune out unwanted impulses and thoughts, in order to diminish their effect on you.

Finally, negation if-then plans involve spelling out the actions you won’t be taking in the future. With these plans, if you have a habit you want to break, you simply plan not to engage in that habit.  (“If I am at the mall, then I won’t buy anything.”)  This is, in a sense, the most straightforward and head-on way of addressing a bad habit, and probably the one we most often end up using.

All three types of if-then plans were put to the test, with surprising and consistent results.  The researchers found that negation if-then plans were not only far less effective compared to other plans, but that they sometimes resulted in a rebound effect, leading people to do more of the forbidden behavior than before.

Just as research on thought suppression (e.g., “Don’t think about white bears!”) has shown that constantly monitoring for a thought makes it more active in your mind, negation if-then plans keep the focus on the suppressed behavior.  Ironically, by simply planning not to engage in a bad habit, the habit gets strengthened rather than broken.

Remember that when it comes to reaching your 2011 goals, you need to plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Ask yourself, What will I do instead?   The answer to this simple question could mean the difference between another year of broken New Year’s resolutions and the real, lasting change you been looking for.

3 Tips for Avoiding Weight Gain Over the Holidays

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The holidays are a difficult time for those of us who both enjoy eating and worry about our waistlines.  Chances are good that if you overindulged a bit at Thanksgiving, you are now looking ahead to the month of December with a wary eye – only too aware of the minefield of cookie platters, holiday parties, family dinners, and gift baskets that you will have to somehow navigate.

You know from experience that you cannot get through these trying times on willpower alone.  So here are three very simple and proven-effective motivational strategies for ending up in your current pant size on January 1st.

Tip 1:  Acknowledge That You Probably Can’t Have Just One. According to the laws of physics, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something acts to stop them.  Well, the same thing can be said about human behavior, too – including eating.

Your actions have a kind of inertia – once you start doing something, it often takes more self-control to stop than it does to just avoid doing it in the first place.  And it gets harder to stop the longer the behavior goes on.  So it’s easier to be abstinent if you stop at the first kiss, rather than letting things get hot and heavy.  And it’s a lot easier to pass on the potato chips entirely, rather than just eat one or two.

Stopping before you start is an excellent strategy to keep your need for willpower to a minimum.  Consider cutting out all between-meal snacking over the holidays.  The fewer times you start eating each day, the less you’ll have to worry about stopping.

Tip 2:  Set VERY Specific Limits. Before you get anywhere near the cookie platter, the fruit cake, or the cheese plate, think about how much you can afford to eat without over-indulging.  Decide, in advance, exactly how much of any particular holiday treat you will allow yourself for dessert, or at the Christmas party.

The problem with most plans, including diet plans, is that they are not nearly specific enough.  We plan to “be good,” or “not eat too much,” but what does that mean, exactly?  When will I know if I’ve had too much?  When you are staring at a table overflowing with delicious snacks, you are not going to be a good judge of what “too much” is.

An effective plan is one that is made before you stare temptation in the face, and that allows no wiggle room.   Studies show that when people plan out exactly what they will do when temptation arises (e.g., I will have no more than 3 cookies and nothing else), are 2-3 times more likely to achieve their dietary goals.

Tip 3:  Savor.   Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, the pungency of a full-flavored cheese, the buttery goodness of a Christmas cookie – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Avoid eating anything in one bite – you get all the calories, but only a fraction of the taste. Also, try not to eat while you are socializing.  When you are focused on conversation, odds are good that you will barely even register what you are putting in your mouth.

Eating slowly and mindfully, taking small bites instead of swallowing that bacon-wrapped scallop or stuffed mushroom whole, not only satisfies your hunger, but actually leaves you feeling happier.

And that, ideally, is what holiday feasting is all about.

How You Are Sabotaging Your Self-Control

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Why thought suppression is a bad way to deal with temptation.

Have you ever tried to lose weight by just not thinking about food?  How about trying to play it cool and stop yourself from calling (or emailing, or texting) your love interest by blocking out all thoughts about that person?  Ever try to quit smoking by trying not to think about smoking?  Did it work?  I’ll bet it didn’t.  And it’s really not your fault that it didn’t.

Thought suppression is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it is a very commonly used strategy – people often try to block out or put the lid on unwanted thoughts and feelings, in order to control their influence.  Dieters try to suppress thoughts of tempting snacks, alcoholics suppress their desire to drink, stressed-out workers suppress their feelings of anxiety, and smokers suppress the thought of cigarettes when trying to quit.

On the other hand, thought suppression is not only very, very difficult, but it works only very briefly, and has some very nasty unintended consequences.  Suppression has often been shown to increase the frequency of the unwanted thoughts you were trying to rid yourself of, once the period of active suppression is over.  Suppress thoughts of smoking, and the thoughts come rushing back with even greater force once you let your guard down.  But does this unintended consequence actually lead to more smoking?  Are you actually worse off in terms of quitting than when you started?

Yes, you are.  In a new study, undergrads who smoked at least a half-pack a day on average were asked to keep track of their smoking for several weeks.  For all of Week 2, some of the students were asked to try to suppress any and all thoughts about smoking.  Not surprisingly, they smoked significantly fewer cigarettes during Week 2 than non-suppressers.  But during Week 3, when these students were no longer required to suppress thoughts of smoking, they smoked significantly more cigarettes than non-suppressors!

While they were at it, the researchers who conducted this study looked at students’ stress levels across all three weeks.  Not surprisingly, suppressors reported a dramatic rise in stress during the week they were suppressing (while non-suppressors stress levels remained unchanged).  So not only does the thought-suppression strategy backfire, it feels terrible while you are doing it.

So how can we deal with unwanted thoughts more successfully, in ways that don’t end up actually diminishing our willpower?  I’ve written about this in previous posts, but here are two suggestions:

  1. Don’t suppress, replace.   Decide in advance what you will think about when a thought about smoking, snacking, or hitting “redial” pops into your mind.  When you find yourself thinking about how yummy a candy bar would be right now, try replacing that thought with one that focuses on your health and weight-loss goals (e.g., “It feels better to fit into my skinny jeans than it does to wolf down chocolate-covered nougat.”)

  2. Don’t suppress, plan.   Creating an if-then plan is an easy and effective way to deal with temptations.  You don’t need to block out the thoughts – what you really need is to learn how not to act on them.  By planning on exactly what you will do, in advance, when the tempting thought occurs, it becomes far easier to stick to your goals.  For instance, when thoughts about smoking occur, plan to chew gum, or step outside for several long deep breaths of fresh air.  Whatever you plan to do, it will disrupt the connection between the thought and giving in to the temptation, and over time, the thoughts will fade all on their own.

It’s almost never a good idea to put a lid on your thoughts and feelings.  It may feel like it’s working in the short term, but soon you’ll find yourself right back where you started – surrounded by candy wrappers, and wondering why he hasn’t returned your three dozen phone calls.

When More Isn’t Better…It’s Worse

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Why more money probably won’t make you happy – and what will.

Study after study has shown that wealth has surprisingly little effect on how happy you are.  Most of us tend to think that if we just made a bit more money, we’d get more satisfaction out of life, or have a greater sense of well-being.  But on the whole, this turns out not to be true.   So why doesn’t money make us happy?  Recent research suggests that the answer lies, at least in part, in how wealthier people lose touch with their ability to savor life’s pleasures.

Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  When we focus on what we are doing in the moment, when we eagerly anticipate something or relish our memories of it, when we relive it by describing it to others, we are savoring – and in the process we are enhancing our own happiness.

Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, imaging the fun you’ll have on an upcoming vacation (and leafing through your trip photos afterward), telling all your friends on Facebook about the hilarious movie you saw over the weekend – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Why, then, don’t wealthier people savor, if it feels so good?  It’s obviously not for a lack of things to savor.  The basic idea is that when you have the money to eat at fancy restaurants every night and buy designer clothes from chic boutiques, those experiences diminish the enjoyment you get out of the simpler, more every-day pleasures, like the smell of a steak sizzling on your backyard grill, or the bargain you got on the sweet little sundress from Target.

These new studies show that people who have higher incomes spend significantly less time savoring their experiences than their relatively poorer peers do.  Interestingly, just being exposed to images of wealth can dampen your savoring skills!  In one study, college students who had recently seen a photo of a stack of money spent far less time eating a bar of chocolate, gulping it down rather than relishing each bite, and displayed far fewer signs of enjoyment, than those students who hadn’t seen the money.    Just thinking about wealth can make us lose sight of the good things happening to us right now.

Part of the reason I found these studies so interesting is that they fit so well with some of my own experiences.  A few weeks ago, my mother was visiting me in NYC, and we decided to treat ourselves to a special dinner at a particularly good restaurant in Little Italy.  We got ourselves all dolled-up for the occasion in dresses, jewelry, and high heels. (As the mother of two small, messy children, you’ll typically find me in t-shirts, yoga pants, and running shoes.) I was even carrying my one designer handbag (which I bought at an outlet, and treat like its made of gold).  I remember thinking in the taxi on the way down to the restaurant how much fun it was to dress up for a change.  And then it occurred to me that if I did this sort of thing all the time, I probably wouldn’t enjoy it at all.  I thought about what a shame that would be, and wondered if being rich could turn out to be, in some sense, surprisingly boring.

The good news is that you don’t have to take a vow of poverty to be really happy and appreciate your experiences to their fullest – even rich people can set themselves the goal of savoring more, once they realize that they aren’t doing enough of it.  Really, no matter how much money we have (or how little), we could all do with a bit more savoring of life’s simple pleasures.  The trick is actually remembering to do it – and that’s where if-then planning comes in.  I’ve written before about this strategy – if you want to remember to do something, decide when and where you are going to do it in advance.  (People are, on average, 200-300% more likely to succeed if they use this form of planning).  So, if you want to remember to savor, you could make plans like the following:

If I am eating, then I will remember to do it slowly and think about how my food tastes.

If I have a success at work, then I will tell my friends and family about what happened.

If I see something beautiful, then I will stop and soak it in, and feel fortunate to have seen it.

Make savoring life’s little pleasures your goal, and create plans for how to inject more savoring into each day, and you will significantly increase your happiness and well-being much more than (or even despite) your growing riches.  And if you’re riches aren’t actually growing, then savoring is still a great way to truly appreciate what you do have.

Yes, You Can Stop Thinking About It

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Every one of us knows what it’s like to be plagued by an unpleasant or unwanted thought.  It could be a nagging self-doubt, a disturbing story from the evening news, the humiliation of being recently rejected by a potential love interest. Try as you might to block it out, the image or feeling pops up over and over again.  It makes you miserable, and leaves you feeling very much a virtual prisoner of your own cruel mind.

Most people believe that there really isn’t much you can do about it – that on some level, these thoughts must need to happen, and that trying to block them out is pointless.  The good news is, most people are wrong.  You absolutely can block out painful, unwanted, or counterproductive thoughts, if you are armed with the right strategies.  And I got a chance to put them to the test once again just last week, when I shut the bathroom door on the index finger of my four-year old daughter, Annika.

It was very, very bad.   Her finger had been near the hinge where the force was greatest, so the tip was fractured and, the surgeon told me later, nearly severed.  Immediately after it happened, I scooped up my shoeless daughter and her 1-year old brother, still in his pajamas, and ran out into the New York City streets frantically in search of a cab.  We spent the next four hours in the ER.

By the time we got back to our apartment, Annika was once again all smiles and sunshine.  Her surgeon had assured us that she would heal quickly and that there would be no lasting damage.  Remarkably, she wasn’t even in any pain.  Once she was settled in on the sofa with her dad and brother and a big bowl of ice cream, I took the dog for a long walk in the park, and bawled my eyes out.  (Thank goodness New Yorkers avoid eye contact. Maybe nobody noticed.)

As terrible as it is as a parent to cope with any injury to your child, there’s a very special kind of anguish in knowing that you were the one who caused it.

Now, I knew perfectly well that it was an accident, and that accidents happen to everyone (even neurotically safety-obsessed moms like me).  I knew that there was really nothing to be gained from dwelling on what happened.  But the next day, even though Annika was playful and pain-free, I still felt awful.  From moment to moment, I cycled through the hit parade of negative emotions: guilt, anxiety, depression, self-loathing.  I couldn’t enjoy playing with my children, I couldn’t concentrate on anything.  I couldn’t even feel the joy and relief that you’d have thought I would feel knowing that my daughter was happy and on the mend.

The problem was that memories of what happened kept popping up in my mind.  I would see the terror in her eyes, remember my own panic and struggle to stay calm, relive the moment where I had started to close the door and wish I had just looked down to see her standing there.  I knew that I was going to continue to feel terrible unless I could rid myself of these unwanted, painful thoughts.  Fortunately, I knew just what to do.

Blocking out (or “suppressing”) a thought is challenging, because a blocked thought tends to rebound – in other words, it can come back later with a vengeance once you’ve let your guard down. The most well-known account of why rebounding happens comes from ironic monitoring theory.  The idea is that, while you are blocking out a thought (for instance, trying to rid yourself of thoughts of “white bears”), part of your brain is actively searching for any thoughts of white bears so it can immediately shut them down.

That active search creates an ironic effect – it makes white bear thoughts more accessible, so that once you let your guard down and stop blocking, the thoughts come rushing back.  Now all you can think about is white bears.

For a long time, psychologists believed that allowing yourself to go ahead and think about white bears was the only solution – eventually, since your brain wasn’t on the lookout for these thoughts and actively trying to block them anymore, they would fade.  But thoughts can be blocked, without rebounding.  To do this, there are two things you need to know.

1)   First, remember that blocking a thought is always a bit difficult, no matter what the thought is.  But just because it’s hard, that does not mean that, on some level, you need to think that particular thought.   Your brain doesn’t necessarily have a hidden agenda.  The real irony is that believing that it does is actually what creates rebound!  In other words, you will continue to be haunted by a thought if you give the difficulty you have blocking it out more meaning and importance than it deserves.

In fact, in a series of studies, psychologists Jens Foerster and Nira Liberman found that if they explained to people in advance, before they blocked out a thought, that it is always difficult to block any thought, there was no rebounding whatsoever.  Blocked thoughts actually stayed blocked.  The white bears never returned.

So the first step to blocking an unwanted thought is really embracing the idea that you don’t really need to think it.

2)   Second, you need a strategy for handling the thought when it does come.  A good if-then plan is just what the doctor ordered for coping with unwanted thoughts and disruptive feelings (see my previous post, Be Careful What You Plan For, for more on planning).

The key is to plan out, in advance what you will do when the thought pops up in your mind.   It can be as simple as saying to yourself, “If the thought comes, then I will ignore it.”   Some may prefer to replace the unwanted thought or feeling with a more positive one.  In one study, tennis players who were plagued by pre-match anxiety and self-doubt conquered these thoughts with the plan “If I doubt myself, then I will remember all the times I’ve won in the past.”

For me, the plan “If I think about the accident, then I will picture Annika’s smiling face when it was all over,” was amazingly effective.  As I practiced it over and over again throughout the day, whenever those terrible visions paid a visit, I felt their power over me melting away. Their visitations grew less and less frequent.  I was able to feel happy again, and to see that my little girl had long since forgiven me for what had happened.  It finally felt okay to start forgiving myself, too.

Now, I am not saying that we should go around blocking out all the unpleasant thoughts that come our way.  There are times when we do truly need to reflect on the bad things that happen to us, to understand their significance, to come to terms with our feelings, and to learn and grow from our experiences.  But when there really isn’t anything to be gained from reflection – when a thought simply prolongs pain – it’s good to know that there really is a way to rid yourself of it and move on.

J. Foerster & N. Liberman (2001) The role of attribution in producing postsuppressional rebound.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 377-390.

S. Koole & A. van Knippenberg (2007) Controlling your mind without ironic consequences: Self-affirmation eliminates rebound effects after thought suppression.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 671-677.

How Did Tiger Woods Ignore That Plane?

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Tiger Woods returned to the world of professional golf yesterday at the Masters Tournament, after a months-long and scandal-plagued absence.  Many sports analysts doubted that he would perform well – some predicted that he wouldn’t even get past the first cut.   How could he possibly focus?  Wouldn’t he be distracted by all the turmoil?  Surely he couldn’t perform under that kind of pressure, under such hostile scrutiny?

When Woods approached the first tee, he was greeted with applause and cheers – though there were enough boos and hisses to be clearly heard.  Then, a small and rather noisy airplane flew overhead, lingering above the course, with a message trailing behind that read “Tiger Did You Mean Bootyism?”  (referring to both his religion and his recent sexual transgressions).  A couple of hours later, a second banner appeared, reading “Sex addict? Yeah. Right. Sure. Me Too!”  Whatever taunts and animosity Woods may have expected to encounter yesterday, he probably never considered the possibility of sky-heckling.

Despite the pressure, the mocking, and whatever internal conflict and self-doubt he may be enduring, Tiger Wood shot a four-under-par 68, his best performance ever on the first day of a Masters.   Whatever your personal opinion of him may be, you really can’t help but wonder, how in the world did he do that?

One clue can be found in the answer he gave to a reporter, when he was asked what his remarkable comeback performance “meant to him.”   Woods replied, “It meant I’m two shots off the lead, that’s what it means.  I’m here to play a golf tournament.” This is an athlete who knows how to shut out distractions – to focus on the game and nothing else.  Not surprising, really, given that he has won 14 major titles (his last, the U.S. Open, when he was suffering a very painful knee injury).

Distraction is one of the most dangerous saboteurs we can encounter in pursuit of our goals, and it comes in many forms.  Some distractions, like jeering fans, loud noises, or taunting airplanes, come from outside of ourselves.  Others, like anxiety, self-doubt, cravings and intrusive thoughts, come from within.  Whatever the source, distractions take our attention and energy away from what we are trying to do, and lead to inefficiency and mistakes.

Not knowing him personally, I really can’t say which strategies Tiger Woods uses to shield his performance from distractions, but I can say something about the ones that the rest of us can use to keep ourselves from being distracted, from the inside and out.

First, you’ll want to practice.  Practice may not actually make perfect, but one thing it does for sure is make automatic.  The more you practice, the more the actions you need to take become routinized – your brain learns what to do without you having to consciously think about each step.  Automatically-executed actions are harder to derail.  For instance, because I have spent so many hours typing on my computer, the act of typing is relatively automatic for me – my toddlers can scream and bang on pots in the background and my fingers still hit all the right keys (now, whether what I end up writing in all that racket is actually worth reading is something else altogether.)

Second, try simulating the factors that might disrupt you as part of your practice.  Getting used to distractions makes them less attention-grabbing, and weakens their impact on your performance.  (When he was young, Tiger Wood’s father would often drop clubs or make loud noises when his son was in mid-swing, in order to prepare him for the distractions he might face in competition.)

Lastly, try making an if-then plan for how you will deal with the distractions you think are most likely to occur. By planning out in advance how you will respond, you can act swiftly to return your attention to your performance.  The plan can be as simple as saying “If I hear a distracting noise, then I will ignore it,” or “If people are calling out, then I will focus on the game.”  Studies show that if-then plans made by dieters to control their cravings (e.g., by having a healthy snack) and by competitive tennis players for dealing with feelings of anxiety or frustration (e.g., by thinking about how they’ve won in the past) are enormously useful for improving and maintaining performance.

These strategies will keep your focused on your goal, so you can stay “in the zone” and do your best, no matter what kind of distraction comes your way.