Little steps can help make a big difference to our wellbeing - The Jewish Chronicle

Did you start 2022 with good intentions? Perhaps you resolved to begin an exercise programme, to embrace the latest healthy eating trend, or just to be more patient and pleasant with your nearest and dearest?

Research shows that around 80 per cent of New Year’s resolutions fail. The gym industry assumes that new members’ enthusiasm will wane before over-crowding becomes a serious issue. By February, long-standing members will once again be guaranteed a place at their favourite exercise class and a queue-free choice of treadmills.

The realists among us might decide to accept that the flawed creature we encounter in the mirror on January 1 won’t be much different come June or December and that the same forces that prevent us from making improvements in our health and relationships will also prevail in our spiritual lives.

However, Jewish teachings about teshuvah (“repentance”) and personal growth would suggest room for optimism. According to rabbinic lore, Rabbi Akiva began his education at the age of 40; the illiterate shepherd became a leading sage not only of his generation, but for all time.

Resh Lakish underwent what today would be known as a career “pivot”, abandoning brigandry to embrace a life of learning. The tradition is rich in such inspiring stories and teaches that “in the place that a ba’al teshuvah stands even a tzaddik cannot stand” (Talmud Berachot 34b).

But perhaps these are the exceptions that prove the rule, the rabbinic analogue of the 20 per cent of new members who are still going to the gym on a rainy March morning. What about the other 80 per cent?

There is a vast array of Jewish texts that could be marshalled to address this question. What particularly interests me is the mussar tradition of ethical and spiritual teaching as it was re-imagined by Rabbi Sacks.

He suggested that a “new mussar” could be created by drawing Jewish teachings into dialogue with contemporary psychology, particularly CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) and Positive Psychology.

Inspired by the ground-breaking work of Professor Mordechai Rotenberg, Rabbi Sacks argued that these approaches were far more aligned with Judaism than was Freudian psychoanalysis. With its deterministic outlook, Freud’s approach has more in common with the writers of Greek tragedy than with the Torah’s emphasis on human freedom and responsib-ility.

Rabbi Sacks’s version of “Jewish psychology” is apparent in the passages in his writings where he refers to the findings of contemporary psychologists, particularly the late Aaron Beck (founder of CBT), Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, and the work on “growth mindset” done by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck.

Underlying their approaches is the insight that although we cannot always control what happens to us, we can control how we interpret events.

Whereas Beck developed CBT to help patients overcome depression and other mental health challenges, Seligman used his presidency of the American Psychological Association to shine the spotlight of psychological research on human flourishing. The movement he spearheaded has focused on identifying the factors that lead to emotionally rich and satisfying lives, and on developing simple exercises that can help more people learn to lead such lives.

Gratitude, for example, has a pervasive positive effect on physical and mental health, so cultivating gratitude is the object of many of the exercises designed by Seligman and his colleagues. This combination of an optimistic framework with a practical focus is exactly what caught Rabbi Sacks’s attention.

There is, however, a problem that Positive Psychology itself has not solved: how to help people move from merely knowing what they need to do for their wellbeing to doing it. Research shows, for example, that keeping a gratitude journal pays great dividends — but it only works if people are sufficiently consistent with that practice.

The work of Stanford behaviour expert B J Fogg helps to bridge this gap. His book Tiny Habits outlines a novel approach to behaviour change, one that has proven effective with the tens of thousands of people Fogg and his team of trained coaches have guided in creating new habits.

Instead of focusing on increasing motivation, Fogg recommends that we ensure that we have a clear prompt for any behaviour we want to do and that we start with a tiny version of that behaviour. An example of a Tiny Habits “recipe” is one that Fogg himself used to improve his oral hygiene: “After I brush my teeth, I will floss one tooth. Celebrate by saying ‘victory’.”

Many writers, of course, have emphasised baby steps, but Fogg takes this to a new level: he recommends aiming for behaviours that can be completed in 30 seconds or less. He also focuses on “celebration”, arguing that a jolt of positive emotion is crucial to “wiring in” new habits. “Emotions create habits,” he writes. “Not repetition. Not fairy dust. Emotions.”

So give yourself a pat on the back when you floss that one tooth or do a single squat, and don’t despair if you have already abandoned your resolutions. Call it part of a new mussar, or call it Flossing like Fogg — but know that there is an easier, more effective way of moving towards your goals.

Dr Wright is a Tiny Habits coach. Her four-week course on ‘Spirituality, Positive Psychology and the Pursuit of Happiness’, which includes Tiny Habits coaching, begins on January 25. For more details, go to 2020Torah.com