Bridging The Gap Between Intention And Action: Part 1 of 2

When you exercise virtuous self-control consistently you become a much more effective human being. Circumstances that used to stop you in your tracks become minor inconveniences. Schedules that used to intimidate you become routine and no big deal. Today is Part One of a two-part lesson on becoming highly skilled at bridging the gap between intention and action.

Hey there. It’s me, Kore. And you're listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.

To consistently exercise virtuous self-control in the moment of choice, you need to fulfill three conditions.

* You need to recognize the moment of choice when it occurs.

* You need to know your standard of excellence for the moment of choice.

* You need to consistently choose to live up to that standard in that moment.

You fulfill the first two conditions by writing what I call an Intention Statement, which we'll be going over today. You fulfill the third condition by using The Discipline. That's Part Two, and we'll get into it tomorrow.

To plan effectively for the moment of choice, you'll be writing what are called When-Then or If-Then statements. This is based on research done by Peter Golowitzer. He called these implementation intentions.

Here's what you do. First, you determine the trigger event. This is how you'll recognize the moment of choice. That's condition one. This is the When or the If. For example, the alarm that you've set signalling the time to exercise has chimed. That's when you must enact a choice.

The second thing is that you set your preferred behaviour, or behaviours, for that moment. This is how you'll know how to be consistent with your standard of excellence. That's condition two. This is the Then. For example, standing on your exercise mat within three minutes of hearing the alarm.

You need to make your standard of excellence physical action, not thinking. You want this physical action to be something that someone else can observe, if they were observing, not that there will be. But that makes it clear that just thinking is not something anybody else could possibly see or that would show up on video. Set a maximum of three physical actions to clearly define your standard of excellence. The simpler the plan, the better. If there's too much to remember, the brain will go with an easier plan, one that's already a habit. And probably in this case, that would be procrastinating or ignoring the alarm.

The Intention Statement is written in present tense, as if you are doing it right now. "I will," if that's how you wrote it, is a potential. It's in the future. Chances are, when you imagine that sentence, "I will," the scenario you see yourself in will be as if you're watching somebody else do it, even if it's yourself. You're disassociated from the experience.

However, "I am" is identification. It's in the present. When you imagine this scenario, you are experiencing it as if you're actually doing it. You're associated with the experience. So always use the phrase "I am" in all your intention statements. You must identify yourself with your preferred behaviours. Because then you'll be thinking, "It's like me to exercise every day. This is what I do."

This identification, when it’s become non-conscious and habitual, your automatic behaviour, determines what you do as second nature. This becomes what I call your new Conditioned Self.

Now I need to take an aside here because I have a model of the mind that I call the Three Selves. This consists of The Choosing Self, which we've discussed in past episodes. The ancient Greek word for this is "prohairesis," the faculty of choice. Then in my model, there's The Conditioned Self. You can think of this as the non-conscious processes running in the background, like your habits and automatic behaviours, and these are triggered by circumstances in your life. This self has been conditioned by chance or by your deliberate choice. And the last self in my model is The Preferred Self. This is who you aspire to be if you are excellent in every way. I'm going to cover those in another episode.

Back to the Intention Statement. Our example Intention Statement might look like this: “When my time to exercise alarm chimes, then I'm standing on my exercise mat within three minutes of hearing the alarm.” If you wanted to clearly define this standard a little bit further, you could include up to three physical actions. For example, “When my time to exercise alarm chimes, then I'm grabbing my water bottle, putting on my workout clothes, and standing on my exercise mat within three mi