Self Improvement for Rebels

/

I’ve always been a bit of a rebel. Even when I was still “good,” like in high school before I discovered sex / drugs / rockin out, I was always questioning the validity of rules and kind of being a pain in the ass.

So when I took happiness heavy-hitter Gretchen Rubin’s online quiz about how I react to internal and external expectations, it wasn’t too surprising to see my results. Want to guess?

  • Upholders respond readily to outer and inner expectations
  • Questioners question all expectations; they’ll meet an expectation if they think it makes sense
  • Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner alike
  • Obligers meet outer expectations, but struggle to meet expectations they impose on themselves

The quiz pegged me as a Rebel (though I think there’s a good bit of Questioner in there, too), and like the Ask/Guess distinction I read and wrote about a little while ago, many mysteries revealed themselves to me when I considered these ideas … Like

  • Why I can’t seem to develop and stick to any kind of rigid schedule, no matter who imposes it
  • Why rah-rah-type self-improvement stuff doesn’t seem to work for me
  • Why I have always gotten so angry about gender-based assumptions and expectations
  • Why rules have always read more like “guidelines” to me
  • Why my Upholder/Questioner husband is much better at setting routines and deadlines for himself than I am, and why we sometimes differ on which rules we deem OK to break

Examining a person's default response to expectations is an interesting way to understand their motivations and level of pain-in-the-assness, one I hadn’t really considered before I read Gretchen’s work on this.

To me, it also begs the question of where people are oriented in time. Do rebels rebel simply because they have a hard time connecting to the future? It's well-documented that the ability to control yourself today for a benefit in the future is strongly correlated with success in life. What many people don't know is that it's also strongly shaped by your childhood surroundings.

In the classic marshmallow study where kids who were told they could have one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in 15 minutes, the 15 minutes kids are the ones who learned to trust that the world would indeed follow through on its promises. But the now kids learned that anything concrete now is better than an amorphous promise for the future. We develop a bias toward the present moment, and we become rebels, or at least rebellious.

I'm definitely one of these present-moment people, and I've known many others in an up-close and personal way. It can be either a beautiful way to live or a very effective method of throwing your life away, depending on how you play it.

So, even as I appreciate the lovely side of my in-the-now-ness, I do also see the value in future-oriented habits, and I have developed some and I want to develop more. It's just that "yeah willpower woo!" doesn't seem to work for me as a strategy. Here are some that do work.

1) Improve the structure of your life to support the choices you want to make.

Here's what I do: I don't keep large amounts of ice cream in the house. I unsubscribed from my Sephora emails. I leave my yoga mat out and available all the time. The idea here is that I am trying to make it physically easier to make the choices I want to make, and more difficult to stray from the path. Build barriers to things you don't want to do, and remove impediments from things you do want to do.

2) Link healthy habits to present-moment feelings that are pleasurable.

Rubin talks about this in her video about rebels, and she suggests that we connect the habits we want to develop with freedom and present-moment pleasure.

This absolutely works for me. I get myself to do yoga by focusing on how good it feels to stretch and hug my muscles around my bones and watch myself getting stronger. I take walks because I want to see the surface of the reservoir sparkling in the sun, or because I want to listen to a podcast and get a cup of coffee. The pleasure of it is what gets me.

3) Link healthy habits to your freedom to do what you want even when The Man doesn't want you to.

OK, we all know that there's no particular man named The Man who conspires to keep us down. How we got to this point in history is a far, far more complicated story. But there's no denying that defying The Man is a compelling reason for a rebel to do basically anything. And it is hilarious and fun and allows me to channel my natural Fuck Off disposition in useful ways.

For instance … when my brain starts in on the self-hating body loop, sometimes I identify it as the Voice of Patriarchy, smirking like Dick Cheney while it tries to bring me down the fat shame spiral.

And then the Wonder Woman part of me bursts in like, Duuuude, fuck offffff. You run enough of the world out there, I'll be damned if you'll run my fucking head, too. Die in a fire! This instant!

And then he bursts into flames and I laugh and the shame spiral thoughts are definitely shut down.

Now, it's not like I'm, like, picturing slitting Patriarchy’s throat and playing around in the blood (usually). It doesn’t have to get that real (usually). It’s more like a way to remember The Cause of Women’s Freedom To Love and Respect Their Own Damn Bodies, and to rally the love I have for that cause into a private moment where I find myself in need strength and perspective.

And it works for all kinds of habits I want to improve.

Want to stop buying so much makeup? Fuck off, Sephora! Your shiny consumerist trap ensnares me not!

Got to shut my brain up so I can get my eight hours? Suck it, continuous stream of thoughts about work when I go to bed! The Man doesn’t get to intrude on my fucking sleep!

Need to let go of some unnecessary internet drama? Blow me, dude who doesn’t believe sexism and racism are real! You don’t even exist!

Is it stupid? Oh god yes. But when I have a cognitive dissonance between who I want to be and who I’m actually being, this kind of silly mental shit helps me stick to the right side of the street. Maybe it will help you, too.

In conclusion, if you are a rebel, or if you have rebel tendencies that you are able to keep in check enough to at least stay out of prison and keep a job, then

(1) I empathize, and

(2) I hope this is helpful, and

(3) Let’s party.