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Ditch your Resolutions for Habits

Blog by McKell Anderson

As one year passes into the next, many people reflect on what the next year of life should hold. Goal setting and New Year’s Resolutions abound! Some make it through the end of the year, but many of them fall to the wayside not long after the goal was set. There is a common idea for setting goals using the SMART formula. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic, and Timely. In the book Atomic Habits, by James Clear, he makes an argument against this being the most effective way of reaching your goals. As a math-oriented person that loves specific and methodical approaches, the dismantling of this goal setting notion made me very uncomfortable. After reading the book, I tell you what my circus friends, I am a believer! Below are a few tidbits from the book that really resonated with me and my relationship with training aerial.

Levels of Change

When it comes to self-improvement there are three levels of change:

1. Outcome
2. Process
3. Identity

Most New Year’s Resolutions or SMART-formula goals are based on the Outcome level of change. This is an excellent start, but for lasting behavior change to occur and a habit to develop then addressing the next two levels is very important.

Outcome level

Outcome level addresses what you GET if you achieve your goal. For many aspiring aerialists, those goals will be things like straight leg inversions, flat splits, or a Kerri Kresinski level windmill.

Process Level

Process level changes address what you DO to achieve your goal. This is where you must create a plan of action that will lead you to the results you desire. This is the level where habits begin. This is where the conditioning, stretching, or creation must be defined to carry you through to the finish line.

Identity level

Identity level change addresses what you BELIEVE. This is important because if you believe you are not a flexible person, then having a goal of becoming more flexible will always clash against your identity. The hard part about identity is that it is not a simple thing to change. One of the benefits of creating consistent habits (process level) is that they can lead you to identity reformation. If you don’t believe that you are a dancer, but proceed to dance every day for at least five minutes then you will start to create a track record that undeniably defines you as a dancer.

One of the biggest things the book drives is that the outcomes you want will always be a lagging indicator of the habits you currently have. “Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits, your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits, your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits, your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits.” For circus artists, your strength is a lagging measure of your conditioning habits, your flexibility is a lagging measure of your stretching habits, your endurance is a lagging measure of your airtime training habits. Don’t underestimate the importance of making small improvements daily.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.”

Laws of Behavior Change

Any established habits that exist in your life have developed from repeated repetitions through what is known as a Behavior Loop. Understanding the loop is what can help us manipulate our behavior to do more of what will help us meet our goals. A behavior loop consists of the following four steps:

1. Cue (Sore muscles from excess training)
2. Crave (Relief from stiffness)
3. Response (Gets a sports massage)
4. Reward (Feels much better)

The first three steps will impact what happens THIS time, but the fourth step will determine what you do NEXT time. If the massage wasn’t helpful, it is less likely that you will try that method again. If the massage did help, then it will stay an option in your future to help with sore muscles. Using this pattern, we can use this loop to help modify our behavior to take on good habits or get rid of bad habits using the Four Laws of Behavior Change.

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

In order to add a habit into our routine, these four steps will make it easier and help establish the plan of action needed for process level change. To initiate a habit, using environment design can help us make it obvious. Place a book on your pillow to read a page before bed, put your coffee mug on your yoga mat so that you must go to the space you do yoga before you can get coffee, pre-pack your gym clothes and put them in your car the night before work so that they are ready without thought the next morning. Change your environment so that it automatically cues you to begin.

Making habits more attractive can be tricky. One of the things you can do is to pair a habit you NEED to do with a habit you WANT to do. In the book, the author refers to this trick as habit stacking. If there is something in your life that you already do all the time, use that frequent habit to insert another habit before/after it.

EXAMPLE: In my life, I wake up every morning between 0630-0700 to let my dogs out. While I am in the process of walking through the kitchen, I will stop and take my thyroid pill. This is a habit stack that I had unconsciously designed into my life already but can use that same pattern to insert more habits in a similar way.

The third rule is where I anticipated the book’s applications to fall apart. Circus is not easy and so clearly all my aspirations of being a contortionist were doomed. However, the habit doesn’t have to start out difficult. In fact, the author recommended that you scale down your goal to something you can do in two minutes or less. Once you have a two-minute habit established, you can grow it.

EXAMPLE: I decided that when I was working after I finished editing a video and it was exporting, I would do ONE handstand drill in my office. I’ve been doing handstand training every day for a week now. It’s not the same as setting aside an hour to train them each day, but I’m doing it consistently where I have never been able to set aside an hour to train handstands at home before. Most of all, the habit doesn’t feel hard.

A lot of time the habit done for two minutes can really set the stage for choices that follow. In the book, the author refers to this as a Gateway Habit. Maybe your habit is that when you get home from work, you put on running shoes. That takes less than two minutes, but can also decide how the next twenty minutes of your day goes even if in your mind you didn’t plan on running for twenty minutes. You just had to make the initiation easy enough to get started.

The last rule of behavior change is also one of the most difficult. Satisfaction with a habit is usually based the time immediately following a response. Many of the rewards we are looking for in circus are very LONG term in nature. If there is no reward present immediately following our action, we will ultimately fall off the wagon. Creating an immediate reward that is satisfying after doing the habit you want to build is important. This is especially important because there are more structures in the brain for WANTING than for LIKING. We will crave things much easier than we will like them when we get them. If the reward isn’t there, our brain will crave a new approach even if what we are doing is working.

Just make sure the reward fits your identity and personality. Don’t reward going to the gym with ice cream, that is an identity conflict. Don’t use a habit tracker if you are not into organization and documentation, that is a personality conflict. Sometimes the easiest way to reward yourself can be out loud, verbal praise like “I am the type of person who does the splits every day” will give the ego enough to feel rewarded with a habit. This part can be very personal and needs to be explored and thought out. “Incentives will start a habit, but identity will sustain it.” The habit needs to be rewarding enough to make it through enough repetitions to become part of your identity.

Battling Boredom

One of the issues with establishing a habit is that eventually, you will become bored with it. Sometimes even with the right rewards and the alignment with our identity that we have created, we STILL won’t want to do “the thing.” This ladies and gentlemen is the phase that defines the successful from the unsuccessful. Professionals stick to the schedule, while amateurs let life get in the way.

“If you only do the work when it is interesting or exciting, then you will never be consistent enough to get remarkable results.”

We will all hit this wall with our pursuit of habits and the fact is that those that succeed have learned that it is important to show up even when you don’t feel like it. In fact, the best thing you can do is learn to fall in love with boredom.

Life happens and missing a day is bound to happen. Just remember that it is never the first mistake that ruins your plans. Even if you scale your habit back to the original two-minute attempt that it grew from, doing a little will always be better than doing nothing. “Missing once is an accident, missing twice is the start of a new habit.”

Additional Wisdom from the Book….
• “When preparation becomes a form of procrastination you need to change something.”
• “The amount of time you’ve spent performing a habit is not as important as the number of times you perform it.”
• “A habit must be established before it can be improved. Standardize, then optimize.”
• “Sometimes success is less about making good habits easy and more about making bad habits hard.”
• “Habits + deliberate practice + mastery”

I really enjoyed this book and its approach. Plus, it was very relevant to the time of year and that isn’t even why I bought it. There was so much in the book that it is impossible to cover every part that I enjoyed. My recommendation is that if these ideas intrigue you, read or listen to the book. I wrote down pages of quotes, but don’t want to risk plagiarism by sharing them all. Just remember, it doesn’t take 30 days to make a habit, it takes forever. To get the benefits of the habits you need to frequently be doing them, regardless of the passage of time. While that seems overwhelming if these are identity level habits then you being who you are as a person shouldn’t be as difficult to be consistent with. Remember:

“Small habits don’t add up, they compound!”

If you enjoyed McKell’s recap of the book and want to read further, check out Atomic Habits, by James Clear on Amaon.

Stocking Stuffers for Circus Enthusiasts

Do you have someone in your life that does circus? Does their hobby brink on obsession? If you do, then this article will help you with your holiday shopping. The article is separated into types of circus folks to help guide the buying, but honestly many aerialists fall into multiple (or all) categories. Links have been included, but Born to Fly is receiving no proceeds for including them from the vendors of the items. Many were picked intentionally, but many are just quick looks via Amazon. We’re just trying to make your holiday shopping SIMPLE as PIE! Enjoy!

The Aerial Addict

Let us begin with a more general group and move into some more specific types of practitioners. The Aerial Addict can be new to the circus, or a long-time enthusiast, but they have a burning passion for aerial and all things circus. When regular muggle things are turned into circus things, their heart soar and squeals may occur. Below is a fun list of things that you can give to help this soul rep their circus love loud and proud:

AerialAddict

• Circus tanks
• Leggings/leg warmers
• Socks
• Stickers/Decals
• Water bottle/coffee mugs
• iTunes/music gift card
• Training notebook
• Circus coloring books

These gifts are a great way to infuse circus into the everyday aspects of life. I know when I see these little things around I have found my people. These items are available in the rabbit hole that is Etsy but also fun things to creatively customize on your own for a more personal gift.

The Aches and Pains Athlete

This is our hardcore aerial addict! They are always striving to accomplish difficult things and working hard, resulting in all the muscle soreness that can be achieved by an individual. Along with aches, other pains often manifest from apparatuses “kisses” in the form of bruises, burns, or partial calluses. This person is dedicated to their work, but less so in their rest. The best gifts for this type of aerialist provide ouch assistance by helping them recover from their constant training. Consider the following:

AchesPains

o Tiger Balm
o Salonpas patches
o Tegaderm
o Bath bombs/Epsom salts
o Elbow sleeves
o Ankle booties
o Wrist wraps

Tiger balm or any type of muscle cream is great for larger areas of tenderness if an individual can’t make it home to soak their weary body in a hot bath with the relief of a bath bomb or Epsom salts for recovery. I, personally, love Salonpas patches. These are a great help for those “trouble spots” that haunt many aerialists. These give a constant tingle to a small area for a longer period. I have a spot on my upper trapezius that gets angry some days, but if I throw a patch on there, it relaxes up and doesn’t inhibit my training. Tegaderm is useful for more aggressive abrasions and scrapes that occur. These are far more helpful than Band-Aids because they stay on during high-intensity fitness activities. Ankle booties, elbow sleeves, and wrist wraps are all gear to wear during training for those painful skills these intense athletes strive for: ankle hangs, elbow circles, reverse flag, etc.

The Tool Gathering Guru

This aerialist has all the training accessories a person could ever need! Their apparatus alone will not suffice and various things get purchased to assist in developing that hard to target muscle for strengthening or flexibility. For these individuals, consider the following:

ToolGuru

• Peanut/Lacrosse balls
• Resistance bands/loops
• Yoga blocks
• Superbands
• Back Warmer
• Finger extensor strengtheners (rubber bands, live strong bracelets, etc)
• Grip strengtheners
• Rosin spray/powder/grip aids

While many of these can be purchased at a general fitness store, some of these are more obscure, like the peanut. If the aerialist your love is primarily a flyer, they might need to balance out their grip with finger extensor condition. If they are a handstands fanatic or hand-to-hand acro enthusiast, consider the reverse and give grip strengtheners. Many aerialists can be picky about their grip aids. Chalk, powder rosin, rosin spray, dry hands, dew point, etc. Invest here with a little caution, but if you know their grip aid of choice, then it’s an easy investment to include in a stocking and will get used happily.

The Budding Performer

This individual has found their expressive stage through the circus life! Signing up for every studio showcase, auditioning for every aerial slot available, this soul is meant to run away and join the circus. Taking classes is a mere tip of the iceberg for their expressive heart. Performing comes with its own list of special things and here is a good start for gifting to your circus ham:

Budding Performer

• False eyelashes
• Face jewels
• Rhinestones
• E6000 Fabrifuse (non-toxic)
• Nude Fishnets
• Makeup remover
• Facial masks

Things that make them dazzle are key! I love using false lashes when I perform, but I’m terrible with putting them on and mess up the glue EVERY time, so I personally use magnetic falsies. Full DISCLOSURE: I am a brand ambassador for the ones linked, but am not being paid to recommend them. I will, however, share my discount code for anyone that wants to try them (MCKELL10). Rhinestones are also their own animal. Swarovski and Preciosa are the best, but glass DMC is a more budget-friendly option while maintaining decent quality. Also, since performers often have fabulous makeup on all the time, a great skin care regimen can be crucial, along with items that help maintain their beautiful faces.

The Equipment Accumulator

This individual might also be referred to as a Circus Investor. Attending classes is not enough, they want their own apparatus, they probably own a portable aerial rig, they scope out ceiling beams and carabiners with a lusty hunger in their eyes. For these folks, I recommend giving these wonderful gifts:

Equipment Accumulator

• Athletic tape
• Hollow blocks
• Carabiners/shackles
• Carabiner keepers
• Swivels
• Etching tool

If the circus love of your life is an equipment accumulator, beware, they are the most expensive circus artists to support. While many of these items might *fit* in a stocking, they can range significantly in price. When my husband gave me a stainless-steel Rock Exotica swivel, I swooned! Partially because it’s beautiful and spins forever, but also because it was a $200 investment, I hadn’t let myself make for ages. I do highly recommend giving the gift of an etching tool for any equipment hoarding circus dragons that love their shiny toys. Etching tools are inexpensive, but help promote long-term equipment marking and inventory management. (Is it obvious that this in my clan?)

In a very short period, this list has become very long. Personally, I belong to most of the groups listed above and have some experience with most of the things listed. Others (like rhinestones) I took the feedback from other glorious friends I have that use them. Hopefully, it includes a few things that will be helpful when picking up goodies for your passionate aerial friends. Do you have other favorites, not on this list? Do you have a specific brand you swear by that we missed? Comment and tell us what they are!

The Importance of Groping in the Dark: Part I

A 2-part blog by McKell Anderson.

When it comes to the aerial and circus industry, there is a giant push for safety, which is terrific! A big thing that has come up is training without an instructor is not a safe practice, specifically when attempting to learn things from the interweb. While I agree that having a qualified coach is essential to a safe aerial career, I think we place too little emphasis on the importance of practicing aerial WITHOUT your instructor.

Wait… What?!

Is she suggesting that we let beginning aerialists do ANYTHING unsupervised?! That is crazy! Unacceptable! This is nonsense! People are going to DIE!

Take a deep breath, stay calm, and read all the way to the end before you write this off as rubbish.

Have you ever had a student (or are you the student) that can execute 90% of what has been taught in class, but then has the memory of a goldfish when asked to perform a skill weeks later? Or have you ever sent an instructor a video saying, “Can we learn this in class pretty please?!” to get a reply from your kind, patient, wonderful instructor saying, “We have done this skill at least a dozen times in class before.” There is a vast difference between learning skills in class and remembering them later. I think this is a particularly common issue with complicated wraps used in more advanced skills.

This phenomenon is not unique to aerials. There is actual research to why stuff falls out of our brains and what we can do to prevent it. In Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Peter Brown, Henry Roediger III, and Mark McDaniel shed new light on how learning works from a variety of empirical studies done over the past decade.

SPOILER: People think they are learning and retaining well when they are not.

Going through this book has completely changed my approach to learning and teaching. If you do not have time to read it on your own, here are a few of the nuggets of wisdom that apply to aerial practice.

1. The true direction of learning
2. The importance of the struggle
3. The difference between content familiarity and subject mastery
4. The importance of practice variations

1 – Better Out than In!

“The single biggest idea is that we tend to focus on trying to get new learning into the brain and we do that through repetitive reading and practice. But what research tells us is that learning really happens when we try to get new knowledge and skills out of the brain.” – Make It Stick

Qualified coaches are the best source for putting good aerial knowledge into students’ heads through lesson plans, spotting, and supervised execution. The knowledge going into the brain, while an irrevocably important part of the process, is not where learning happens. Without a situation for an individual to recall the data input and turn it back into the output, long-term retention of learning does NOT occur. If you spend three hours on Instagram watching videos, but never get up and try any of them, did you learn anything from all your aerial research endeavors? In this information age in which we live, getting information into our heads is all too easy. The learning is in the retrieval of the information you took in. You would have to watch it AND DO it.

Doesn’t doing things in class count as learning?

The short answer: No. Why not? Our in-class time is a valuable opportunity for exposure to new information but without strategic lesson design, not the place for retrieval. You recall the information too close to when it was learned. Timing is essential, and there has not been enough time for it to be moved from short-term storage in the brain to long-term storage in the brain. There needs to be enough time for the information to be processed in your fantastic head. The consolidation of new information can result in varying levels of remembering, and the ability to recall skills from long-term storage is the place where learning happens. As an aerialist you need to attend class, take in the lesson and try the skills with your instructor, sleep on it, forget it a bit, then TRY IT AGAIN to maximize learning.

2 – All Aboard the Struggle Bus!

One of the side effects of waiting long enough to forget before practicing a skill again is that it makes it hard. The longer the time that elapses, the harder it gets usually. Wait too long, and you must start all over with the data input. Unfortunately, the struggle is the process that produces the benefit you want.

“It’s a funny thing, but we, especially those of us who are in the teaching profession, think that the more clear and simple we can make new knowledge, the better it’ll be learned and remembered. As learners, when it’s clear, we think, boy, that’s great. I get that.

“In fact it’s the opposite that is true, that when you have to struggle with the new knowledge a little bit, if you hear a lecture that’s very clear but it goes in a different sequence than the text you read, and you have to think about how to reconcile those — that way of engaging with the material enables you to get it to stick.” – Make It Stick

This is a difficult concept for me to swallow because of who I am as a person. I LOVE mapping things out in clear, concise ways. When a progression is organized linearly I get a satisfaction that I cannot describe! When teaching, I love having a lesson planned that sensibly guides students to their destination with as much ease as possible. I do not want them to get discouraged, be upset, or get confused. If I see a student struggling, I try to immediately step in to help. I want it to be simple, and the idea that I have been shortchanging students by making it TOO easy is giving me an identity crisis. I want students to succeed; however, short-term success can come at the expense of long-term learning.

Why is struggling important? This is where the book got very detailed into the functions of the brain, which I will botch if I try to break it down. The central concept describes how the brain retrieves memories and ideas. When we struggle and take the time to pull things out of deep forgotten places, it changes where and how the brain stores those ideas. When I thought about the aerial concepts that I understand like the back of my hand, I realized it was because I sat down and mapped out the theory on my own. I was given the pieces, but by assimilating them into the big picture is what embedded those concepts. This never resulted in my crying in class because it was hard, but the struggle of connecting things outside of class drove them into my mind forever.

Embrace the struggle. If you are in class learning a new skill, try to connect it to other things you know. Try to create relationships in the information that are not being PROVIDED for you. If you are a teacher, make a lesson plan that includes areas where students have to problem solve or remember. Since reading the book, I have made a habit of making students do what was taught the previous week without me saying or showing it again. This action alone has resulted in considerable improvements in student skill retention from week to week. The first week I tried it, it was ROUGH. It took almost ten minutes of precious class time for students to remember the full sequence. During the discussion, I wanted to jump up and show it to them quickly about a hundred times. The process of them figuring it out made it a sequence they haven’t forgotten since that recall exercise.

I made it through my identity crisis, but it wasn’t by abandoning all the lesson plans or careful progressions. I still use those when I teach and try to construct those as I learn. To facilitate more effortful learning, I now try to create opportunities for problem-solving. Sometimes I will show the final pose and give the class time to try and find different ways there, make them create a way to mimic it on the ground, or with a partner. Simple difficulty can be added by having them ask you questions about the skill WITHOUT actually speaking. Now I use my structure to show clear steps, but only after encouraging opportunities to make connections first. When the answers are provided after, the ‘AHA!’ seems a bit more resonant.

There is most definitely a balance between beneficial struggle and leaving class in tears. I challenge all aerialists to make sure that each practice involves a chunk of time where a battle is felt to a reasonable degree. Try a new way to get into something, even if it doesn’t work. Embrace frustration as your long-term learning companion.

Keep reading on our next blog post for points 3 & 4.