Are you assuring your own failure?

A friend of mine* has recently been waking around 4AM and struggling to fall back asleep.

I’m no sleep expert, but we chatted about how he responded to this nocturnal frustration and something struck me.

Every time he woke up unexpectedly, he grabbed his phone and scrolled social media in an attempt to settle his mind and return to sleep.

And he scrolled and scrolled, night after night, unable to find rest.

Regardless of how you rate the soothing properties of Instagram, the thing that immediately jumped out at me was that he did the exact same thing every night, hoping it would produce different results.

I offered a couple alternatives that I employed from time to time and each was summarily rejected because it “wouldn’t work” for him.

And yet he was happy to grab his phone each night, a method that was already proven to be ineffective.

Here’s a wild approach: when the thing you are trying isn’t working, try something else.

When the results you are hoping for aren’t realized through the actions you are taking, act differently.

It’s not rocket science.

I don’t know exactly what you’re wrestling with right now, but I do know that the only way to get new results is to incorporate new behaviors.

OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION: Identify something you’d like to change and try a new method for producing that change this week. Do something WILD that you’re sure won’t work and see what happens. I can’t guarantee your new method will work, but I can guarantee that you’ll never find yourself closer to a solution if you keep doing the same things.

* Yes, he said I could share this…

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