Corinna Freitag
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Achieving Your Goals

How to Thrive With the Power of Habits

by Corinna Freitag 19. July 2022

Habits are powerful. And they are great, when they help us to save time and energy, and to be more efficient. But there is also a flip side and habits can prevent us from doing the right things and being effective. Why are habits so powerful?

How our brain works

From a neuroscientific standpoint, when we learn something new, neurons in our brain assemble to form thousands of synaptic connections and those connections then assemble into complex, three-dimensional neurological networks. Our brain circuitry regarding the new learning enhances with practicing the new learning over and over again. Through frequent repetition the neurons that fire together become more and more wired together. You can call a habit a well-established brain circuitry or a highway of neurons.

The advantage of habits

Habits run unconsciously just like an automatic software program or a macro without thinking. We are on autopilot. This is great to save time and energy. For example, when we get up in the morning we do not need to search for the bathroom or think if we brush first our teeth or take a shower. We just follow our day-to-day routine.

Habits can be changed

In a lecture by the neurobiologist Gerald Hüther I learned that human behaviors are genetically not programmed. It develops by the experiences, which we make during our life. Thus, we are able to change and to change our habits. We have no excuses for our bad habits. We have sole responsibility.

The different phases of learnings

And here starts the trouble – when we want to get rid of bad habits or want to learn something new. When we want to get rid of bad habits we fall into old patterns. And when we want to learn something new, at the beginning it feels odd and uncomfortable. For example, fold your hands. Automatically, one of your thumbs will be in front of the others. For me the left thumb is in front. Now, do it the other way around. If I fold my hands with the right thumb in front, this feels so awkward. And this is only about folding our hands!

Albert Bandura developed a model about different phases of learnings. The first phase is called unconscious incompetence. We do not have the knowledge or skills to do something. But we are also not aware of this. So, it does not bother us. When we start to learn something new, we get into the next phase, called conscious incompetence. We might have already more knowledge and skills about this something compared to the phase of unconscious incompetence as we started already to learn and practice. But now we are aware of our incompetence. And it troubles us. Even though, that this is a great step and the most important to get aware of something and we should be proud of us. The third phase is the conscious competence. This is most fun as we acquired the new knowledge and skills. They are not fully developed and therefore, we need to concentrate, when we are doing it. And with the last phase we are back to our habits. It is called automated competence. The new knowledge and skills became a routine.

The level of competence can be correlated with motivation. At the beginning, when we have only minor knowledge and skills our enthusiasm is very high. Interestingly, when our competence increases our motivation decreases. In the last phase, when we attained mastery regarding our new knowledge and skills, we become again enthusiastic. Literally our motivation comes back overnight. Unfortunately, if we want to be highly engaged masters in a certain area, we have to go through these phases. And during those phases it is completely normal that we go through plateaus, in which it feels that we make no progress or even that we have setbacks.

Start acting and practicing while enjoying the process

When we want to change something or learn or do something new, we cannot have the expectation that everything works and feels good right away. Most of the time at the beginning it feels strange. And our system wants to keep us in our comfort zone as this saves energy. It starts to feel good and comfortable through action and repetition. And with the knowledge, that it is hard to change something and learn something new, we can stop to blame ourselves in case it does not work immediately. Instead we should be proud that we got aware of what we want to change and start acting and practicing with having fun and enjoying the process. Eventually we will get rid of the bad habit and we will enrich our portfolio with new great habits and skills.

Which new habit do you want to learn?

Photo by Ray Bilcliff

19. July 2022 2 Comments 555 Views

How to Achieve Your Goals Continuously Step by Step

by Corinna Freitag 28. June 2022

Do you know Momo from Michael Ende? I read her story as a child and I loved it. Recently, I read it again and I still love it. Already as a child I liked how Beppo the street cleaner sweeps the road. He does not look at the end of the road and wishes to be done as soon as possible. He does it sweep by sweep. And he enjoys every sweep. And suddenly he had cleaned the whole road without any effort. He used a simple and playful approach to achieve his goal continuously step by step.

The math behind going constantly baby steps

Doing consistently small steps is so powerful. You can show it even mathematically:

(1.00)365 = 1.00

(1.01)365 = 37.7

Isn’t this fantastic?

How it helped me to cut my steps down

As an example, for years I followed my self-imposed restriction, that I have to play piano for 90 minutes. Very often I did not play at all as I did not have these 90 minutes. I changed this to, that whenever I have at least 20 minutes and I like to play, I just play. Even if I only play 20 minutes per week – this is still better than plan to play 90 minutes and, in the end, do not play at all. This change in mindset helps me to play more often and also to enjoy it more.

Another example, recently I did the tax return for my husband and me. It was the first time, that I did it. First, whenever I sat down to work on it, I planned to achieve too much. As I wanted to finish it as soon as possible I wanted to do it in large steps. This totally overwhelmed me. It felt like standing in front of a huge mountain and to have to climb it all at once. So, I started to cut my steps down. For example, I planned only to find out what I have to fill into a certain field. Or I planned only to fill in a small section. Just with this, suddenly it felt so simple. My frustration was gone and it started even to make fun as I had a sense of achievement. And I finished it even sooner than I had first expected.

It is important to start and keep doing it

If it is difficult to start doing something as it overwhelms you and it feels too big to be able to achieve it – start with baby steps and set only small targets. The important thing is to start, even if it does not feel so good at the beginning. It starts to feel good with working on it and as soon as you got the first feeling of success. John Stepper calls this touch the treadmill. He even says, that for example if you want to start running but somehow cannot bring yourself to start with it, start at least with the first little baby step, which is only to touch the treadmill once per day. Maybe after a few weeks you start to run the first minutes on the treadmill. And after a year you run regularly 30 minutes. If you would not have started to touch it, you would never have run only a few meters. Enhancing continuously step by step reduces the feeling of stress, anxiety and overwhelm.

And the ultimate discipline is not only doing consistently small steps but also enjoying the process as Beppo, the street cleaner from Momo, and just like the motto the journey is the destination. Whereas, my experience is, that this comes naturally as soon as you start to break your steps down into small chunks.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova

28. June 2022 2 Comments 661 Views

How You Make Yourself More Visible Even as an Introvert with Fun and Ease

by Corinna Freitag 7. December 2021

Working Out Loud is a great tool to make yourself more visible. And it even works if you are more on the introvert side and like to stay in the background. I am introvert and I like to stay in the background. I struggle with making myself visible and to show my work, ideas, thoughts, learnings and discoveries to others.

About a year ago a colleague of mine asked me, if I like to start with her a Working Out Loud (WOL) circle. At that time, I had no clue what WOL is. I bought John Stepper’s WOL book who is the creator of WOL and started my discovery. WOL consists out of the following five elements:

Five Elements of Working Out Loud

  • Relationships: Relationships are the heart of WOL as WOL is something you do together with other and for people.
  • Generosity: This is a change in perspective. You give something to other people and you do not expect to get anything back – even not a “Thank You”. You contribute with generosity.
  • Visible Work: You make your work visible by sharing it with other persons.
  • Purposeful Discovery: You do all the above activities by having a learning goal in your mind. This orients your activities.
  • Growth Mindset: A growth mindset helps you to develop an open, curious approach to life and work. And it helps you to improve your skills.

What is a WOL circle and what happens in a WOL circle?

A WOL circle consists out of about 4 to 5 people. You meet once per week for about an hour for 12 weeks. In week 1 you start by picking your own individual goal. During the following 11 weeks each week you work on specific tasks. All tasks bring you closer and closer to achieve your goal.

As I started to read John Stepper’s book first I thought kind of “Yeah – great advice if you are extrovert. But this is nothing for an introvert person like me.” By further reading the book I realized more and more that the concept works also for introverts, not to say that it is a great approach for introverts. There are so many digital possibilities out there as Social Media and digital platforms in your private and in your work life that you can use. I feel much more comfortable to use these digital possibilities to make myself visible than being in a room full of people and have to make small talk. As soon as I realized this I started to apply the concepts of WOL in my work life. I started to share my learnings on different digital platforms that are available at my company. As I work for a big company, suddenly, I interact with colleagues from other divisions who I never would have gotten in contact with otherwise. This is fun. In addition, I created a WOL circle with my colleague who originally had asked me if I want to start a circle with her. We were 5 people and went together on the WOL journey. The great thing doing this together with other people is that there are persons who support and help you when you are stuck. Or you realize that you are not the only person who struggles with something. And for sure your accountability increases, as you meet regularly and exchange how everyone masters the weekly tasks.

Thanks to WOL I started to make myself more visible. About a year after I started my WOL journey, I even have my own blog and post on different Social Media channels. In addition, WOL helps you to change your habits and achieve your goals step by step. If you want to learn more visit www.workingoutloud.com, read John Stepper’s book or join a WOL circle and just Work Out Loud.

Photo by Fauxels

7. December 2021 0 Comment 471 Views
Can Thoughts Become our Destiny?

Can Thoughts Become Our Destiny?

by Corinna Freitag 26. October 2021

I love the quote

“Watch your thoughts, they become words;

Watch your words, they become actions;

Watch your actions, they become habits;

Watch your habits, they become character;

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

Several years ago, if I would have read this, I would have thought what an esoteric nonsense. Since quite some time I think how true and wonderful it is.

Think of the example as soon as you decide to buy a red car, you see red cars everywhere – based loosely on the motto “Energy flows, where attention goes. There are other examples you can think of. If you go into a meeting with the expectation that it will be terribly boring, the chances are very high, that it will be terribly boring. If you visit your mother-in-law and you await that she will totally annoy you, the odds are very high, that it will be totally annoying. If you go to the supermarket and you suppose, that you will select the checkout with the longest waiting time, the probability, that this will also happen, is very high, as well. Since I changed my thoughts to the meeting will be interesting, I like to visit my father-in-law, and I do not select all the time the checkout with the longest waiting time the ease in my life increased greatly. Maybe not every meeting is super interesting and fun – but they are at least not terribly boring, anymore. I guess in this case I still have room for improvement. Nowadays, I really like to visit my father-in-law. And regarding the supermarket I just do not care anymore at which checkout I end up. If I use statistics I know that my chances are well distributed with respect to short and long waiting times. And when I am in a supermarket with 5 checkouts my chances are 80 %, that I will select a checkout with a longer waiting time compared to the 1 with the shortest waiting time out of the 5.

Unfortunately, for a lot of thoughts the media are not very helpful. They like to report about exciting incidents. And humans are subject to bias according to Kahneman. If something is reported very often in the media, or if people experienced or did something themselves, persons overestimate the occurrence of those situations. This is the reason why we worry about shark attacks and getting on airplanes, when the real threats to longevity are fast food, candies and long hours lounging on the couch.

Interestingly, our body cannot distinguish between thoughts and experiences. It does not matter if we imagine or experience a fearful situation. In both cases our body releases hormones. This is the same for a joyful event. The only difference between a fear- and joyful situation is the kind of hormones, which are released. Just by thinking we create matter – the chemicals in our body.

The following examples show how our thoughts can create even more matter. A team of Harvard researchers carried out a study in which they had two different groups of people: one group that did a simple five-finger piano exercise and another group that only imagined this exercise. Both groups created new neural circuits in the respective region of their brains. Other American research teams carried out studies in which they had two different groups of people, as well: one group that imagined doing a certain muscle training exercise and another group that did nothing. The group, which imagined to do the exercise regularly for several weeks, increased their muscle strength by about 10 %.

This knowledge that with our thoughts we can create our destiny is so wonderful, as we can create our future according to our dreams.

Photo by Vie Studio

26. October 2021 1 Comment 462 Views

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  • We Can Change Who We Become Tomorrow
  • How to Thrive With the Power of Habits
  • Why Less is Sometimes More
  • How to Achieve Your Goals Continuously Step by Step
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