SGM Sept 2012 Question of the Month: “What’s Your Keystone Habit?”
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Welcome once again to the September 2012 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger, your SGM mentor and guide. It’s great to have you with us!
This month on SGM, we’re exploring the profound message in “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. Success in life is about getting the habits right. So far, we’ve discovered how to change any habit by identifying the three components of that habit loop and using “The Golden Rule of Habit Change.” If you can substitute a new behavior in between familiar cues and rewards, you’ll increase your success exponentially.
In this Week’s Message, we’ll learn why it’s so important to establish a Keystone Habit. Keystone habits are practices that tend to make everything else in your life better. Installing one keystone habit can initiate a cascade of successful behavior. If you can identify just one keystone habit and make it a top priority, it will have a positive ripple effect throughout your life.
To better understand what a keystone habit is and how well it can work, let’s begin with a story from Duhigg about how Paul O’Neill turned around one of the largest corporations in the world using this simple technique.
Alcoa, or Aluminum Company of America, has manufactured everything from the foil that surrounds Hershey’s Kisses, to Coca Cola cans, to bolts on satellites for over fifty years. (p.97, TPOH) Yet in 1987 the company was slipping. Its profits were declining as it made misstep after misstep trying to expand. Investors were unhappy and calling for new leadership. Yet they had no idea what they were getting into when the Alcoa board announced the hiring of former Washington bureaucrat Paul O’Neill.
They were none too happy as O’Neill took the stage and announced that “worker safety” would be his number one mission. Worker safety? What about increasing profits? What about new products and new markets? Was this guy totally out of touch? This isn’t what they wanted to hear.
But, O’Neill continued on. He described how Alcoa’s workers worked with 1500 degree metals and machines that could rip your arm off. In that kind of environment, worker safety was of paramount importance. In fact, said O’Neill, “I intend to go for zero injuries.” (p.98, TPOH) He made that the company’s top priority. It would be their keystone habit.
The investors at the meeting were befuddled. O’Neill hadn’t even mentioned profits. What was the Board of Directors thinking with this hire?
What the investors didn’t understand was just how shrewd O’Neill’s first move was. O’Neill knew that this was one of the largest and stodgiest companies in the world. Alcoa was very set in its ways. He also knew that wholesale changes needed to be made for it to be a lean operating machine.
As he says, “I knew I had to transform Alcoa. . .But you can’t order people to change. That’s not how the brain works. So I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company.” (p.100, TPOH)
Here’s the genius of his choice. “Worker safety” was an issue that pretty much everyone could agree on. I mean, who would stand up against worker safety? The unions could get behind it. Management had to agree it was important. Investors really couldn’t argue against it. If you spoke out against worker safety, you’d look really bad.
So, the first thing “worker safety” did was get everyone on the same page. They had a common goal. Even more ingeniously, the “zero injuries” goal would revolutionize how the company functioned.
To reach that goal required new systems of communication between workers at all levels, from the floor to the top executives who were now evaluated on whether their divisions met the “zero injury” standard or not. Workers had to be empowered to take charge when they saw something occurring that was unsafe. They had to be able to stop the production line immediately and notify the chain of command.
Those in command needed to know in detail what was happening on the production floor, because their jobs now depended on it. “Any time someone was injured, the unit president had to report it to O’Neill within twenty-four hours and present a plan for making sure the injury never happened again.” (p.106, TPOH) O’Neill made that point clear by firing an executive who had been with Alcoa for more than 20 years after he brushed off an incident.
Here are some of the profound changes that the focus on worker safety accomplished. The keystone habit of safety meant:
• modernizing equipment,
• paying attention to details,
• empowering workers,
• improving communications and feedback loops throughout the company, and
• making procedures more efficient.
The bottom line was this: making quality products the right way was safer. The focus on safety led to better products and less waste, as well as safer working conditions. Alcoa became a lean, modern, efficient operation.
By 1996, Alcoa’s stock had risen more than 200 percent from the time O’Neill had taken over and the company was consistently cited for its outstanding safety record. In 2000, O’Neill retired from Alcoa to become Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Since that time, companies like IBM and others around the world have used O’Neill’s keystone habit approach to change their corporate culture and the quality of the products they produce.
So, what can you take from the idea of keystone habits to change your life for the better?
First off, establishing a personal keystone habit is an investment in yourself that benefits not only you but everyone around you. When you make self-care a top-priority, in whatever way is important for you, you set yourself up to do everything else better. This is good for everyone in your life.
Secondly, “Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them into powerful levers . . . The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.” (p.101, TPOH)
So, what is one top-priority personal habit that you’d like to establish in your life? What is one thing that will make the biggest difference in how you feel? What is most important for you to grow in your life right now?
It could be a habit of saving a little money that you would normally spend on a daily basis. Or maybe it’s a habit of daily spiritual reading and prayer, of having dinner with your family, setting up a healthy eating plan, or limiting your emailing to two specific times of the day. What would be most helpful to you?
Something may have jumped to the forefront of your mind. If so, great. Write that down. Then ask yourself what is one action you know how to do right now, and can do today and every day, to move in that direction.
it will create a “small win” and produce positive momentum in your life.
If nothing specific came to your mind, or if you’re open to a suggestion to get you going, I recommend the habit of exercise and/or meditation to start your day. Here’s why these are among the most powerful keystone habits.
The quality of your day has a lot to do with how you feel when you wake up and the mindset you begin your day with. No matter how you feel when you wake up, exercise and/or meditation will boost that for the better—especially the combination of exercise followed by meditation.
If you read the Comments section from our first Weekly Message this month, you’ll see that one of our members, Julia from South Wales, U.K., has done this with rousing success. Since she began doing exercise followed by Core Energy Meditation on a daily basis, she can’t remember when she has felt better.
The combination of exercise and meditation is especially effective because exercise increases blood and oxygen flow to your body and brain and initiates a cascade of positive bio-chemistry that feels good and supports better brain function. After exercise, your body is relaxed, your emotions are positive from those endorphins, and your mind is clear. Whatever “brain fog” you might have had waking up has evaporated.
This is an ideal entry point to go really deep into meditation. Rather than spending the first part of your meditation relaxing and getting into it, you find yourself more present, clear, and focused right away. You can then put more energy and attention into the practice cues themselves and getting the most out of them.
The deeper your meditative state the more powerful will be your visualization and intention-setting at the end of your practice. Your brain is primed with positive chemistry and ready to make new neural connections more easily. From this state you can more easily visualize and feel what you truly desire and make it real in your mind’s eye. This primes you to have similar experiences in your real life.
Imagine what your day would be like when you start it like that. Better yet, don’t imagine it, try it out.
As an experiment, see what happens if you begin your day, with a little exercise followed by meditation. Neither of them has to take a long time—10-20 minutes of each could do the trick. I pretty much guarantee that the day ahead will look a whole lot brighter after you do this. You’ll be feeling good about yourself and ready to take care of business.
Another thing that is likely to happen is that other habits will start to line up to support your exercise and meditation practice. That’s the power of a keystone habit. You might turn off the TV and get to bed a bit earlier. You might find yourself eating healthier. And because you’ll have more energy, feel more positive, and have a clearer mind, you’ll get other tasks done more effectively and efficiently. You’ll likely procrastinate less and enjoy yourself more. Good keystone habits tend to overcome your excuses.
Though I recommend the combination of exercise and meditation in sequence, you can also get great benefit from doing them separately. For example, you might exercise first thing in the morning to get you going and meditate last thing at night to unwind. Experiment and find the routine that works best for you.
If you find yourself saying, I just don’t have the time for that, I think you’ll discover that taking this time ends up saving you time by making you much more clear, positive, effective, and efficient. When you understand the importance of a top-priority keystone habit, you create time for it.
Now, to insure your success with whatever keystone habit you choose as your top-priority, answer these four questions ahead of time:
1. What will you do specifically—what will be your routine?
For example, I will walk, lift weights using these specific exercises, do these specific stretches, meditate using this technique, meal plan for the day ahead, or answer emails for 30 minutes. Define at least one thing you will do every day. You can always adjust your routine as you learn what works, but make sure you define it before you start, so you have a specific routine to follow.
2. When will you do this?
Schedule your keystone habit for a specific time every day and define the length of time. For example, I will practice Core Energy Meditation, qigong, meal preparation, or email answering at 7am every morning for 20 minutes. Schedule this in your day-timer, on your phone, and/or post notes to yourself as reminders.
3. Where will you do this?
Define a specific place for your practice. Make sure your location is conducive to what you want to do, so it’s more effective and enjoyable. For example, walk in an enjoyable environment, meditate in a quiet, private spot, and have a distraction-free environment for your meal planning or email answering.
4. What resources will you need to be most successful in your practice?
Make sure you have everything you need ahead of time and in the location that you will do your practice. For example, do you need a chair, a desk, the right light, good airflow, some inspiring pictures, quiet, a CD player, paper, your laptop . . . Make sure you have your resources gathered in the right location ahead of time.
If you answer all four questions before-hand, your practice has the best opportunity to succeed. I’d love to hear your results with any keystone habit you’ve chosen in the Discussion under this Week’s Message.
In next week’s “Meditation of the Month,” we’ll practice a new version of The Core Energy Technique designed to be perfect for first thing in the morning practice.
Until next time,
Decide on a keystone habit that is most important to you and implement it today!
Kevin