A guiding influence for the decisions you make in your life should be your core values. What matters most to you actually carries a lot of weight. Consider your core values when making both short term and long term calculations; the pros and cons of your choices.
While some of our core values remain constant throughout our lives, others will change as our responsibilities do. We may value being a free spirit and moving often when we are young adults; but when we become parents our value might shift to putting down some roots.
In her book entitled What We Value, University of Penn psychology professor Emily Falk, helps us grasp the major benefits of adding strategic value calculations into our daily decision-making process. Think of it like the “before AND after math” we get to figure out – a new way to identify the pros and cons of our choices in the long term.
Dr. Falk readily recognizes that we often succumb to the path of least resistance, or the immediate demand, in the heat of the moment. It is this natural default that makes it incredibly hard for us to stick to new year’s resolutions or to change old habits that aren’t serving us well. We tend to solve for the present moment; for the discomfort we feel or the craving that is nearly impossible to resist.
Once again, we are introduced to the default settings of our brain’s computing systems. Our brain’s number one job is to keep all systems running smoothly. Slight disruptions in our nervous system can send a misattuned signal to our brain that solving for the immediate situation far outweighs any delayed gratification. We give in to temptation and our nervous system relaxes. Next thing we know, we are just doing the same thing over and over, never making any real progress toward that much desired longer term goal. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Emily Falk encourages us to work strategically with our brain’s computations. Not surprisingly, she partners this strategy with a very familiar tool for emotional regulation — the pause.
Yes, that space between stimulus and response is a “reset” button, a lever we can pull to help us make a far better value calculation without a lot of overthinking or extraordinary will power. Dr. Falk reminds us that where we focus our attention is where our brain will train its energy to problem solve — and its default is to solve for immediate discomfort.
When we are able to re-direct our focus to our longer term goal, we reduce the strain on our nervous system. Our brain will follow where we lead it – and will now give us a meaningful calculation more heavily weighted on that longer term goal. This is the value calculation we make when we are more practiced at delayed gratification.
This is not as hard as you might think. After all, you know how rewarding it feels to set aside a little money each paycheck to save for the car you’ll buy in the future, or the tuition bill when your baby is ready to go to college.
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, also uses a math calculation analogy to reveal to us how the compounding effect produces real returns over time. Small steps in the right direction, done on a consistent, daily basis — will in fact, get us where we truly want to go. A baby knows this intuitively. It’s child’s play. All we need is more practice with focusing our attention on our future self.
Remind yourself that you are making small deposits daily into your future. Use a mental image of doing some “higher math” to solve for the return on your investment – the longer term goals you’ve set.
Learn to use that pause between stimulus and response to calm your nervous system with a few deep breaths and then turn your full attention (and your brain’s computation skills) to the longer term goal. Delayed gratification will override that “slip and slide into old habits” default setting.
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