How to Change Yourself for the Better
With the subject line, “Worth Reading,” I dropped everything to read the email my wife sent me last week.
She had linked to an article that spoke to the challenges parents have in balancing work and raising kids.
My first thought after reading the article: “I’ve really grown in how I appreciate and collaborate with my wife.” But I wondered if she’d agree with that assessment. So I replied to her message, “I’m curious, how did it make you feel? Resentful? Thankful? Affirmed?”
I was gratified by the answer: “More thankful and affirmed now…”
I’m proud of that change in myself.
Is there a change you need to make in yourself?
Our Brain is Really the One in Charge
Changing our attitudes and behavior is possible. In fact, our brains are built for it. In neuroscience, it’s referred to as neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to change its chemistry to think different thoughts and take different actions.
The question is, how do you make the changes you desire?
One provocative perspective comes from the educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom. He and his team have developed a learning taxonomy that has become the standard in many educational systems. It distinguishes levels of really getting a concept and allowing it to change you. The levels are instructive to all of us trying to grow up, learn, change, and improve.
I’ve adapted Bloom’s taxonomy to explain how I’ve made my own changes and matured in balancing work and parenting.
Ways to REvolve
- Realize: “Collaborating with my wife in both work and parenting is important.” I first considered this seriously around 2009 when my wife asked me some penetrating questions like, “Whose job is more important — yours or mine?” and “Whose responsibility is it to make sacrifices at work to care for our kids?”
- Reconsider: “Maybe I’ve made faulty assumptions about roles.” I began to watch other parents more closely to see how they communicated and who made sacrifices when. I reflected on assumptions I’d made about how parenting was supposed to work.
- Relate: “I really believe it is important for parents to communicate and collaborate so that everyone feels valued and supported.” I apologized to my wife for not always carrying my weight in the partnership, and I felt badly, saying that I intended to improve. But I didn’t fundamentally change. For years.
- Reframe: “I am shifting my entire life around as I commit to co-parenting and valuing my wife’s work.” Around nine months ago, I reprioritized my time, energy, and schedule in order to integrate this new value. It was game-changing, and my wife noticed. She’d say things like, “I can tell you’re really supporting me.”
- Rearrange: “All of my choices and actions flow from this new value.” Moving from reframing to rearranging took me another six months, and I’m continuing to work on it. While I still fall short at times, appreciating and collaborating is the foundation for my entire work and home life. I’m leading out of this value rather than leading alongside this value. My whole being knows it now when I violate this value.
As you can see, the action gap is between levels three and four. Moving beyond relating to a concept to reframing your life around it is where consistent behavior change happens.
These stages are relevant if you’re improving your relationships, parenting, leadership, communication, influence, time management, emotional resilience, or anything else that you want to learn to the point that it changes you.
You can change. You can grow. Your brain is like plastic.
What do you need to learn?
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