What can adults, looking to establish better healthy habits, learn from school kids?

This is the first, in a series of articles, in which I will attempt to draw comparisons between accepted wisdom of the science behind good habit formation and my 30 years of school experience.  It is also informed by my work with coachees who are looking to change.  I hope you sense the optimism in these reflections.

Article 1: Who we are and the 1%s

We are all familiar with the idea of the little and often, the saying of you are what you eat and the proverb manners maketh the man.  It’s accepted that little changes over time, repeated regularly, can change how we think, feel and act.  We are what we think, feel and what we do. We become a sum of our behaviours. The leap to understanding that our identity is made up of all those actions and therefore our habits is a key one. If we are a sum of our habits, we can change who we are by changing our habits.  Coachees often ask me if people can change.  It is clear from society that people often don’t make positive change and often lack the confidence to change.  It’s a huge issue for us.  But yes, we can all change like proverbial butterflies.

Fact: a healthy person rarely behaves in an unhealthy way.  Their entire identity is a healthy one.  It’s written into their DNA.  We all want that, right? Is it attainable to all? Do you need loads of willpower and discipline to get there?

What changes do people want? To be a healthy person, to be a fit person, to be a successful entrepreneur, to be happy, to be fulfilled. You can add and -er to each of those desires and then recognise all of us.  We know that confidence to change is affected by previous failures, negative mind-sets and pessimistic approaches to life in general.  We also see the butterflies emerge all around us.  What’s interesting to me is what the experience of school and kids says about this and other aspects of habits, change and identity.

A 10-year-old boy doesn’t arrive on day one of middle school with a road map to where he’s going to get to by the time he’s 18 or 25.  In fact, he’ll likely be totally unaware of who he is and what his identity is. He’ll rock up, adopt the routines (habits) that the school encourage/impose/insist upon, repeat these pretty consistently for years then wake up on GCSE day with a handful of grades and the dream to be an electrical engineer.  We see this all the time – real, profound, beautiful change.  One of the true privileges of working with children. 

“Can we change?” asks a coachee.  Toddler, child, tween, teen, young person, adult.  Wow! Yes we change.  Marriage, mortgage, mid-life crisis. Retirement.  Changes throughout our lives.  I’m imbued with a deep sense of possibility and enthusiasm which feeds my coaching conversations.  More change than you can shake a stick at!

My hope is to learn the lessons of the growth, development and change that we see in children.  Then apply this to us as adults.  Education is an overly prescriptive process that, at its worst, fails to personalise learning for individual children particularly carefully; however, for all its lack of nuance, it can give us hope that meaningful, positive change is within reach in our adult lives.

My thoughts percolate. Goal setting and plans? Changing our identities? The uncomfortable conflict surrounding internal motivation and the agency of others in our lives.  Let’s look at these two aspects.

Goals, aims, future hopes and the planning to get there.  You may want to get into a size-12 swimsuit for next summer’s holiday.  Your vanity might be motivating your aim to look good for the next school reunion photos. You may have a medical need to lose 8 stone since your BMI has soared over 30.  That marathon won’t run itself! How do we make these things happen? What’s the role that target-setting plays in our success or otherwise?

It depends. (By the way, teachers get a frisson of excitement when children answer question with “It depends…”) We have to take account of the complexities of our personalities and what will work.  I once decided to run a marathon (not sure why) then became a runner.  It took months of running to get there; however, I ate better, exercised more, read, thought, talked like a runner.  Did I do all that just because I wanted to? Perhaps. My dad had been ill and the fear of inherited morbidity and my own age at the time may have been strong influences. I don’t know.  I just made a kind of promise to myself.  One thing I do I know is that I’m not always that disciplined with fitness and diet and I have a bit of an addictive personality.  But I became a runner.  There’s a school of thought that significant change is often initiated by a life event.  Possibly in my case.  One thing is for certain. A date in April, 26 plus miles, 40,000 fellow runners, BBC TV coverage is a great focus for change in habits.  There’s your target.

I’m sure we can all list the goals we openly or secretly want.  But are the targets actually needed to be that better version of ourselves? Let’s look at school. That lad in Year6 doesn’t have one. Yet the 1%s add up, lesson-by-lesson, day-by-day.  He changes, grows, develops.  Almost no conscious plan.  Which of us could do that – change with no big plan?  Think like a child? For some adults it might work better to avoid all medium- or long-term targets.  Psychology suggests that sometimes making a vow to your family and friends that you will do this or that can motivate you incredibly.  Imagine the promise that morbidly obese people make to their partners. This is a million miles away from the potentially unconsciously incompetent child (isn’t aware of what they don’t yet know) with no grand plan to the adult making an impassioned vow to their loved ones.  This seems like a minefield of potential mistaken ways of setting goals or does it highlight the wide range of options?

Children are encouraged to adopt routines and habits from an early age.  These are the behaviours, actions, ways of thinking that grease the gears of school life.  Without them, there’s mess, inconsistencies and chaos.  Instead of long-term goals, staff in school (and families) establish, reinforce and reward the adoption of these good habits.  Not unlike the dog clicker, they are trained and trained until the habits are so well ingrained that children no longer need to be reminded. There a reassuring automaticity that staff cling onto with a white-knuckled grip.  The habits (check your homework bag before you leave the breakfast table, read before bed each night, underline the date in pencil with a ruler, etc.) are the focus.  The habits are the focus. The thing.  A mantra. Praised and rewarded. School becomes a series of finely tuned habits. Children become a cog that turns in time with the other cogs.  Without much awareness of it, staff, children and families are conducted by an invisible orchestra baton.  It works pretty well.

What we learn from this is to be careful when you select the way you set goals or not.  Does a focus on the habits and no other plan work for you? Do you need the vow?

Here’s the conflict that the collective experience of children in school and our own adult experience highlights: coaches (and coachees sometimes) dream of a powerful internal determination, an intrinsic motivation that steers them to a better them. It shouldn’t need to pivoted on the external accountability of someone else.  School success is predicated on just that: the rules, the routines, the praise, the sanctions, the habits are all controlled externally.  Success depends on the other person/people. Scary? It certainly asks a challenging question: how healthy is it for an adult to rely on another person for their changes and development?  Is it the solution to a million missed goals?

To plan or not to plan? Can celebrating good habits be enough?

Do we need someone to be accountable to?