Humainologie creative dialogue team practice Wednesday December 9

“The meaning of this pandemic is that we are all vulnerable and connected. We are in this together, spanning the globe, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, pagans, Christians, atheists. This is so much bigger than the virus, because love and caring are bigger than anything – even, or especially, suffering.”

- Anne Lamott, National Geographic December 2020

Anne Lamott is also the author of a book, Bird by Bird, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12543.Bird_by_Bird

Bird by Bird "Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three mo... www.goodreads.com

a “step by step guide on how to write and how to manage the writer’s life.”

At team practice yesterday, Christina McInnis suggested that we write 15 minutes a day, five days a week. If you start that simple “atomic habit,” you will probably begin to experience the benefits before Christmas. (My synopsis of James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, originally circulated to the dialogue network more than a year ago, is appended here for ease of access.)

With our short story writing festival fast approaching, I will suggest that we take, as our topic for the next team practice session, the following: Innovative ways to come up with ideas for stories.

One example is an idea that we have in fact already put into practice, and that worked very well: The writing partner strategy, in which we would pair off with a partner, each of the partners would share a memory from their own past, and then the other partner would write a story about it. Odile Rollin and I had partnered and we each wrote a story; her memory was perfect material for a short story and based on it I wrote “The Night the Bed Shook.” With Gatwech as my partner, I wrote a story based on his traumatic experience of losing his mother when he was eight years old. So that’s one idea that we have already created that we know works well.

Yesterday I had suggested another, to take a scene from a good movie (or a few scenes) and use it as the starting point for writing a piece of flash fiction. (Remember: Shakespeare stole all his plots.)

Specifically, then, for our team practice next Wednesday December 9, your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to come up with one evocative strategy of your own for how to generate ideas for short stories (less than 7,000 words); and then, if you are really into this, you might also come up with another strategy that is specifically for how to generate ideas for flash fiction (less than 1,000 words, and could even be less than ten words).

For our short story writing festival at Christmas: Your story does NOT need to have anything to do with Christmas. If you particularly want to write a Christmas story, that’s fine too, but the terms of reference are just to write a short story, whether flash fiction or something longer.

Think like a bakery and make it fresh every day!

Arthur Clark

Book: (James Clear) Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (2018)

As a high school sophomore aspiring to athletic greatness, James Clear was struck in the face by a baseball bat. Multiple skull fractures, coma, and helicopter evacuation to emergency treatment in Cincinnati were followed by gradual recovery. Years later, in college, he was named to the Academic All-America baseball team. That comeback was achieved by forming countless tiny habits. The author began writing about it, keeping notes about his experiments with habits. By late 2016, he had eight million readers and his articles were appearing in major publications like Time and Forbes.

“The backbone of this book,” he writes, “is my four-step model of habits – cue, craving, response, and reward – and the four laws of behavior change that evolve out of these steps.”

He compares the advantages of good habits to compound interest, for example:

“Knowledge compounds. Learning one new idea won’t make you a genius, but a commitment to lifelong learning can be transformative. Furthermore, each book you read not only teaches you something new but also [reveals new] ways of thinking about old ideas. …. Relationships compound. People reflect your behavior back to you. The more you help others, the more others want to help you. Being a little bit nicer in each interaction can result in a network of broad and strong connections over time.”

All too often people try to attain a goal and either become discouraged when they see no progress; or having achieved the goal relapse into old patterns of behavior. Instead of a focus on the goal, it is the process (or “system”) of moving forward that should be the focus. “If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead.” He does not mean that goals are useless. Instead, they “are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.”

And yet the most important reason for the power of good habits is “not because they can get you better results (although they can do that) but because they can change your beliefs about yourself.” Your very identity can change! Every time you put a good habit into action it’s “a vote for the type of person you want to become.” If you’re breaking the habit of smoking and someone offers you a cigarette, you could respond with “No thanks, I’m trying to quit” but it’s better to respond: “No thanks, I’m not a smoker.” Identity is what it’s all about. Therefore, 1) Decide the type of person you want to be. 2) Prove it to yourself with small wins.

The “four simple steps” to establishing better habits are cue, craving, response, and reward. Each of those steps corresponds to one of the Four Laws of Behavior Change. Most of the book is about those Four Laws.

The First Law: Make It Obvious. Behavior change starts with awareness of your patterns of behavior. Ask yourself of any habit (one you already have or one you might establish) whether it helps you become the kind of person you want to be. To start a new habit that serves that purpose, create and recognize cues that trigger the habit. Time and location are the most common cues. Include them in a brief, explicit description of the habit you intend to establish. Write it down. “Habit stacking” associates a behavior that is already habitual with a new habit you want to establish. The author illustrates this with such examples as “When I buy a new item, I will give something away (‘One in, one out’) and “When I walk into a party, I will introduce myself to someone I don’t know yet.” One chapter emphasizes the value of structuring your environment so that it gives you cues to trigger your good habits. (You have one corner of one room that’s set up specifically for the meditation habit you have decided to establish, and every time you see that simple, elegant part of the room, you are reminded of your meditation.) Conversely, getting rid of a bad habit involves reducing your exposure to the cues that trigger the habit.

The Second Law: Make It Attractive. Ideally, make the new habit irresistible. One way to do this is to connect it to a reward once the habit is done. If you want to establish a habit of aerobic exercise every day, follow the successful completion of your aerobic exercise session with something you love to do (and make the aerobic exercise session a prerequisite for the irresistible reward that follows it). Another trick is to join a group in which the new habit you want to form is the behavioral norm for the group. If you want to start jogging, join a jogging group, if you want to start reading more, join a reading group. Conversely, to get rid of a bad habit, make it unattractive. One way to do this is to think of the bad habit in negative terms. Watching too much TV? Think of it in terms of what you are having to give up in order to spend all those hours in front of the screen.

The Third Law: Make It Easy. The chapter “Walk Slowly, but Never Backward” begins with the story of a photography class which the instructor divided into two groups. Group one would be graded on the quantity of photos they produced; group two would be graded on the quality of the photos they produced. Not only did each student in group one produce more photos, they also produced better photos. The second group spent too much time thinking about it. “If you want to master a habit, the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.” In making a new habit stick, it’s the frequency of the repetitions that matter. You could practice your new habit ten times in thirty days or two hundred times in thirty days. The higher frequency will make it automatic much faster. Making it easy also involves advance preparation so that when it’s time to do your habit, everything is ready. Conversely, to get rid of a bad habit, make it harder to do. Watching too much TV? Unplug the set every time you finish watching it. Always remember the Two-Minute Rule: “When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.” Do you want to start running marathons? Begin with a habit that takes less than two minutes, such as putting on your running shoes. Repeat, and gradually increase your training sessions.

The Fourth Law: Make It Satisfying. What is immediately rewarded is repeated; what is immediately punished is avoided. “Because of how we are wired, most people will spend all day chasing quick hits of satisfaction.” Somehow you need to create an immediate reminder of the delayed reward your good new habit will lead to. Habit tracking is a way of making your progress visible. It might be a check mark on the calendar for every day you do your habit. If you miss one intended session, don’t miss the next one. It’s okay to slip up occasionally but use the slip to spur your resolve. Also, do not mistake the measurement for the real purpose. Self-transformation is what it’s about, not the number of check marks on your habit-tracking calendar. An “accountability partner” is another point of emphasis. You can even write a contract with the details of your habit project, as well as the consequences of failure, and sign it and ask two other people to sign it as witnesses.

This book is a useful reference for self-transformation in the direction of your choice. Whatever difficulty you’re dealing with or vision you want to realize, this may be exactly the guide you need to design and implement your approach.