Give yourself a high five

Last night I did a little digging into the history of the high five.

There are competing stories about the origin, but the one I’m going with attributes the creation of the gesture to Glenn Burke, a charismatic rookie who played for the Los Angeles Dodgers. As the story goes, Burke held his hand up high when teammate Dusty Baker crossed home plate after hitting his 30th home run of the season.

Baker slapped his hand, and Burke went on to hit his first major league home run, so Baker returned the favor when Burke got into the dugout. And on October 2nd, 1977, the high five was born.

You’re welcome :-)

But what if I told you that the high five, or some small gesture of celebration, is the key to forming new habits?

If you take nothing else away from today (aside from the history of the high five), I want you to remember this:

Emotions create habits.

As humans, we are deeply wired for emotions. The most important part of habit formation is creating feelings to wire in the habits we want to have in our lives. I’m currently reading the book “Tiny Habits” which I’ve mentioned previously.

The author, B.J. Fogg is very insistent about celebrating the instant you do whatever habit you’re trying to do.

As I work to create meditation a habit for myself, this has been the hardest part. My routine is that I sit up in bed, grab my phone, set a timer for 10 minutes, and sit quietly in meditation. When the timer goes off, I’m supposed to do something small and celebratory.

I don’t usually want to celebrate. I did the thing and I’m glad I did the thing but this morning I only did the the thing for five minutes instead of 10 because I had to write this post so rather than celebrating what I did, I was mad at myself for snoozing so long that I could only do five minutes instead of 10.

If I don't find some small way to celebrate, then I'm not going to change the ancient behavioral pathways in my brain.

We don't think our way into new habits. We feel our way into new habits.

The celebration is different from a reward. You might reward yourself with a massage after hitting the gym three times a week for a few weeks. But that's an incentive.

A celebration is more immediate. The word I've landed on for myself...ask me in person and I'll tell you :-)

Regardless of if you high five your cat. Or yourself. Or your dog. Or whatever the phrase might be - find a small celebration that works for you.

Because emotions create habits.