If you have a bowl of fruit out on your kitchen counter, then you’re going to eat more fruit than you would if you had to go out to the market in order to buy the fruit first. If you have a bowl of potato chips out on your kitchen counter, then you’re going to eat more potato chips than you would if they were stored inside a locked safe at the bank. And, of course, if the bowl is full of fruit and not potato chips, then you’ll eat more fruit than potato chips. What you put in the bowl makes a difference. Most often, people will choose the path of least resistance—why wouldn’t we? If we need food and the closest and most convenient food is fruit, then we’ll eat fruit—if it’s potato chips, then we’ll eat potato chips.
The good news, of course, is that you can plan ahead and choose what to put inside that bowl. You can make good habits easy and bad habits hard. You can keep your toothbrush right by your bathroom sink or you can keep it up in the attic. Where you keep your toothbrush will affect how often you brush your teeth. Since you know that you are likely to follow the path of least resistance, you can put the things that you want in your life on that path. Put fruit in the bowl.
Another way to do more of what you want to do is to commit to something. For example, when I was training for a marathon that I had committed to running, I had to follow a strict schedule of which days to run and how far. I wasn’t allowed to get up and say, “I don’t feel like running today, so I’m not going to run today.” It didn’t matter how I felt. I had signed up, and because I signed up, I stayed on track. I got up and ran. Surprisingly, many of the days that I didn’t feel like running were the days that I enjoyed running the most, after I got out there.
One way to limit a bad habit is to limit its size. I like drinking a Coke every once in a while but I know it’s unhealthy, so when they started selling smaller cans of Coke, I started buying those instead of the regular size cans. I drink Coke just as often, but I drink less of it. When I had a regular size can, I would often finish the last few sips just because they were there and I was almost done and it would go flat if saved it for later. None of those is a good reason to drink Coke. With both sizes of cans of Coke, the path of least resistance for me was to finish the whole can, so it made sense for me to buy smaller cans. I’m never tempted to open a second can, so the smaller can makes my natural stopping point come a little earlier, which is what I wanted.
You can put anything at all on the path of least resistance and use it to your advantage. There’s no need to stop at fruit. If you want to go to the beach more, then buy a house near the beach. If you want to think of your family more, then keep photos of them on your fridge. If you want to get more accomplished, then write down the things that you want to do and keep that list next to you in plain view. We forget what we don’t see. The food in the back of the fridge is forgotten more often than the food in the front of the fridge because you can’t see it. Goals that aren’t written down are more likely to fall by the wayside. The old saying is true: Out of sight, out of mind. The converse of that old saying is also true: In sight, in mind. Use that to your advantage. See the change you want to be.
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