Small wins

A paragraph I read this morning inspired me how should I make changes and improve my communication skill…. “A man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore.“ …When people join a group of people where changes seems possible, the potential for the changes to occur becomes more real or in simpler words, the surrounding make the changes easier to happen. Now for me it seems a wise choice to attend the culture and language exchange every two weeks, meeting new people give me a chance to do something that I do not normally do in office or at home. In fact, I feel good doing something which is not all about me as I think that starts me on a different path. With that, I could step out of the comfort zone and practice being gregarious through talking, mingling with people or as a listener listening intently to their conversations. Also, I could apply the tips that I have learned from the self-help books through trial-n-error in order to find out what is ill-suited and also the stuff that is workable in communicating and socializing with people of different backgrounds.

By doing the same things again and again, with much hope, sooner or later, I could be someone who I always strive hard to be. In fact, I am really excited every time I have a really enjoyable conversation with a stranger. I called the good experience a small win. Once a small win has been achieved, forces seem to be set in motion that favors another small win. After repeating it for a few times, the small wins actually fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach. Just like once people learned how to believe in something, the skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change. Therefore, the change of “key” habit may bring spilling effect and causes unexpected changes that are not anticipated at the beginning. However, since we don’t know which one is the key habit that can trigger the changes, I think that we have no choice but try one by one (it might sound stupid to change everything at once, but my point is changing one habit after another) We are lucky enough if we can tackle the “key” habit in just a few tries or else, we don’t lose  anything by making changes for better.   

I hope I can continue to work on my communication skill until end of this year instead of practicing it only for a short period of time and after the initial burst of enthusiasm wear off, slip back into my old habits - compromise with the status quo and with less willingness to interact with others.

**With ideas and lots of quotes from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

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