Original link: https://mercurychong.blogspot.com/2022/07/blog-post_19.html
During a certain festive season, you decided to exercise hard because of seeing an advertisement, and you were attracted by the discounts such as “free membership fee for the month of membership”, so you joined the gym and became a member. But in the blink of an eye, half a year has passed, and I have never been to the gym. Of course, my muscle mass and body fat rate have not changed. The only thing that lasts is the fixed monthly fee. You may hypnotize yourself and start exercising seriously when you have time; occasionally want to give up, but feel that it is too troublesome to apply for a refund, it seems that it does not matter if you keep your membership like this…
Have you ever had this thought or a similar situation?
Generally speaking, the monthly fee for a gym ranges from one to two hundred. Occasionally, it seems like a waste not to go to the gym after paying the money, but since I don’t directly take out the cash from my wallet to the gym, I have almost no impression of paying. Although the money was indeed spent, I couldn’t help but feel that it was very troublesome to go to go through the cancellation procedures.
In psychology, this state is called “status quo bias”
Status quo bias means that when people are forced to face choices, their fear of unknown losses will be stronger than their expectations of unknown rewards, so people tend to choose to maintain the status quo. This is the innate biological instinct of human beings, and various behaviors in daily life are mostly affected by these psychological states.
For example, a company offers better conditions and invites you to join their company, and the job content of the new position is not much different from your current tasks and responsibilities. Judging purely from these objective conditions, changing jobs should be a better option.
But as long as you don’t make a decision right now, as you think about it for a while, your brain will automatically find out all the reasons for maintaining the status quo, including “I’m very familiar with the current workplace environment, and is it really good to suddenly switch to an unfamiliar place? ?”, “The current interpersonal relationship is very harmonious, after the job change, I wonder if it will be as smooth as it is?” These thoughts that hold you back are all caused by deviations from the status quo.
Back to the case with money. Although we know that it takes time to review and adjust monthly fixed expenses, such as gym membership fees, mobile phone package monthly fees, and term insurance premiums, etc., in order to reduce the amount you have to pay each month. But it’s easy for us to have “but… forget it…” thoughts that stall action.
These odds and ends add up to a source of stress that overwhelms most people’s monthly financials.
If you can objectively and rationally realize that these are the effects of the status quo bias, so that you cannot act decisively to improve your life, then force yourself to set a specific time limit and make a plan that allows you to act immediately.
Taking the gym as an example, we can tell ourselves: “From next month, if I don’t go to the gym more than four times, I will go through the contract cancellation procedure on the 31st of the month at 7:00 pm.”, and put this condition Indeed recorded on the calendar. In order to improve the possibility of practice, you can tell the content to family members, significant other or close friends, etc., or even simply post it on your own social platform.
In short, devise a plan that you can actually execute, and don’t give yourself any choice.
mutual encouragement.
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