What A 14-Month-Old Can Teach You About Personal Change

I hope everyone’s having a great holiday season! In the spirit of the holidays and the coming new year, here’s a bit about personal change.

According to the field of psychology that studies the way people learn thought and behavior, “any animal that can be motivated, can be manipulated, according to the principles of learning theory, so as to shape the animal’s behavior.¹“

Control Over Your Behavior

There is a lot of power in that statement; think about it…any animal that can be motivated – humans fall into that category – can change its behavior. Well, easier said than done, right? Well, no doubt complex human behavior can be difficult to change, but understanding the mechanisms by which human behavior (and thought) can be adjusted can give us incredible power over ourselves, power that a 14-month-old, who can’t even read the words that make up this article, may have in greater supply than many adults.

It Took You Over a Year to Learn to Walk – But You Did Learn

A baby, around the age of 14 months, is just beginning to discover what walking can do for her. But walking isn’t just a simple stimulus-response behavior…it’s more complicated than that. The interesting thing about complex behavior, however, is that “complex behaviors are built up out of multiple simple behaviors that get strung together into chains of associated behaviors. It is not possible to learn a complex behavior all at once. Instead, they must be built up over time out of smaller parts.²” And so, instead of learning to walk in just a day, the baby first learns how to recognize objects in front of her, how to flex her muscles, how to lift her body up with her legs and balance on top of them. She’ll learn countless other, more simple behaviors that, when combined in the correct sequence, allow her to walk.

If a Baby Can Do It, I’m Pretty Sure You Can Too

But that baby doesn’t expect to learn everything it takes to walk in a day. She doesn’t assume that just because she can’t walk today, she’ll never walk. To her advantage, she hasn’t even learned how to have limiting beliefs yet. So, every day she inches closer and closer to her first steps. It takes close to a year just to be able to pull off a few steps, something an adult can do without even consciously thinking about it³. Meanwhile, that same adult who has no trouble standing up and walking around the room, thinks losing weight is too difficult, or he’s not the type that can exercise regularly, or read everyday, or reach the top of his field, or run a successful business, or make a million dollars, or a billion dollars. No, all those things are too difficult and he’s just not the type of person that can do it. Meanwhile, his 14-month-old child has moved on, walking smoothly, she starts focuses on her next big conquest. But losing weight is too difficult for an adult. Exercising regularly is too difficult for an adult. Reading every day, quitting smoking, building a business…it’s all too difficult for an adult.

Think about this…how much of a role do self-imposed limits play in your daily life? Without thinking about it too much, what’s the one thing you wish you could do more than anything else? Are you doing it? If not, what the hell are you waiting for?

Sources:
1. Methods for Changing Behavior and Thoughts. Psychological Self-Tools – Online Self Help Book.
2. Techniques for Learning New Behaviors. Psychological Self-Tools – Online Self Help Book.
3. Developmental Milestone – Walking. BabyCenter.