Turning “I should…” into “I will…”

In the last edition of Making Change Real, The Problem With Shoulds, we looked at how, if we’re not careful, we can end up should-ing all over ourselves

(I owe that phrase to Tony Robbins!)

The practice I described is simply to get all those shoulds out of your head and down on paper.

How did you do?

Did you get a small handful? A long list? Did you do the exercise at all?

Or did you simply tell yourself

“I should really do that…”

(that’s how shoulds creep up on you, btw)

But, let’s assume you’ve got a good line of sight on

“I should…”

How do we turn them into

“I will…”

Keep it simple

There’s a really simple truth at the core of Making Change Real, and it’s this:

We DO change more than THINK change

Hold tight to this statement and you will find that change happens, inevitable.

It’s the THINKING where we break down – relying on will power alone, gutsing it out, dreaming of all the things we could be, mulling over all the things we’ve failed to be – our brain is amazing and, left unchecked, it can persuade us that we’re really busy changing, when we’re not actually doing a single thing differently ^1,2,3.

Is there something to visualization? Sure. Is there something to sharing your planned change with others? Sure. Just don’t do it too much. And definitely not so much that you have no appetite to actually change.

I’m a fan of micro-change as an approach. Most of us have a long list of shoulds

(whether we’ve written them down or not 😉)

and the very length of that list can force us into denial/avoidance very quickly.

The spirit of micro-change is to chunk all of it down into very precise things that you can do, preferably without thinking at all.

For example, I’ve had a life-long battle with comfort eating, which I inherited from my Mum and, over the years, I’ve come to see that this behavior is linked to a strain of melancholy and depression we share. This comes to the fore when I’m sitting idle and, yes, when I’m thinking

(I think about behavior pattern inheritance a lot)

But, through a combination of fasting, largely ketogenic eating and reasonable exercise, I’ve had my weight under control for a number of years now. There’s a ton of DOING under that, which I’m not detailing here but, believe me, I have it completely chunked down behind the scenes!

A simple example is that I typically have a ready supply of hard cheese and/or nuts

(Walnuts and Macadamia are my preference)

on hand if I get to wanting a snack during an eating window.

Said differently:

“When I get peckish between scheduled meals, I will eat a small handful of nuts or cheese”

That’s what it sounds like to take an I should

(“should eat healthily” or, worse, “should not comfort eat”)

and turn it into an I will

(a specific, single, simple thing I can do repeatably without thinking)

Now, you could do a suite of these I will statements for every should – that’s essentially what I have built into my holistic approach to my own weight management – but, even if you do detail it all out, the spirit of micro-change is to select one and commit to doing it for long enough that it becomes habit

(in my experience, it only takes a few days)

then move on to the next. Grow the muscle by exercising the muscle.

Focus on what’s next

As always, change is simple to understand and hard to do.

A practice of micro-change is one of the best ways to move yourself forward, almost without realizing; a real life-hack you can do in each moment.

If you prefer a step-by-step approach, I built Your Next Thing just for you.

So, which of your I shoulds are you going to turn into a single I will that you can do for the couple of weeks before the next Making Change Real?

1. Kappes, H. B., and Oettingen, G. (2011). “Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 719–729.
2. Oettingen, G. (2014). Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.
3. Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., and Seifert, A. E. (2009). “When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap?” Psychological Science, 20(5), 612–618.