It was a good decision to move me along. Holding me back wouldn’t have helped.
Over the course of fourth, fifth, and sixth grades I averaged just over thirty-five absences a year. Plenty of tardiness as well.
7 weeks a year I stayed home and made cookies, played Wiffle Ball, or watched old movies.
A few times the cops even showed up and took me to school. No doubt they looked at each other and said ‘We’ll be seeing him again’ as they walked out of the building.
Most weeks I’d show up on Friday and collect all the work I’d missed. That afternoon, over the course of a few hours I’d slug RC Cola, write those spelling words five times each, finish the find-a-word and the crossword puzzles, hammer out the math worksheets, and have my mom turn it all in the following Monday.
It went on like that.
A week after Little League ended that summer after sixth grade, we packed up everything and moved. Seventh grade started up and for my first miserable, friendless, year of middle school, I missed just a single day. I made the honor roll. Got to take a limousine with the other honor roll nerds to Godfather’s Pizza Buffet. Ate my body weight in dessert pizza.
Didn’t have to answer a single question about how I’d turned things around. Nobody had a clue. Nobody cared. And sometimes it’s just easier that way.
“If you go away for a fresh start, people have no expectations— they don’t know you, so you’re not bound by your past. You can build on your best qualities without being pigeonholed by the expectations of people who may have known you your whole life.”
Mike Leach, Swing Your Sword
After moving, I still liked cookies and Wiffle Ball and old movies, but something had shifted.
New beginnings:
Blank slates, fresh starts, and new beginnings can be big scary wonderful things.
Move to a new town, change schools, or take a new job.
A big decision that shakes things up.
A big decision that can lead the way for the small ones that follow.
In the new town, it’s a lot easier to change your habits. Nobody pulling you into your old ways.
When you’re at the new school, it’s a lot easier to change your style. No more preconceived notions.
With a new job, it’s a lot easier to step up, be a leader, and contribute in new ways. No ancient HR files weighing you down.
Jocko Willink reflects on the blank slate you are gifted with when you head off to boot camp. He said “You join the military, and you get a blank slate. So, no one cares where you came from. No one cares what you did. You were the captain of the football team, captain of the soccer team. No one cares. No one cares what your grades were. No one cares what you got on the SATs. No one cares about anything.”
Indifference.
They don’t know the old you, so the focus is on the here and now. We escape the glaring eyes of old friends with old ideas about who we are. People see us with fresh eyes.
Jocko goes on to say “With that blank slate, it is hey, if you do this thing, if you perform this task and you perform it well, you will get recognition. You will hopefully get more control over your own destiny, which is the ultimate in compensation for human beings, to have more control over your own destiny.”
So, the new troops no longer need to change history, they can just focus on performing this task, the one thing in front of them. For those with some history holding them back, that is a welcome relief.
And the blank slate of boot camp is pretty dope if you’re eighteen and got caught shooting your dad’s .22 in the backyard.
I’m 42 and boot camp is not in my future.
But can I recreate it?
What is it about getting shipped off to BFE Kentucky to sweat in the heat that allows us to reshape ourselves?
Just the old man in boots? Or is it more?
A place that turns the dumbest kid in Greenbow, Alabama into a “goddamn genius.”
Well, I’ve got news.
Blank slates can be replicated, and it’s not that complex. A blank slate removes a critical part of your Habit Loop, something called a trigger or a cue. It’s the thing that sets off the thing. It’s the lead domino for good and bad behaviors.
The Habit Loop:
We all have them. And these triggers are getting pulled all the time. All around us. By everyone around us.
“The cue triggers a craving, which motivates a response, which provides a reward, which satisfies the craving and, ultimately, becomes associated with the cue. Together, these four steps form a neurological feedback loop—cue, craving, response, reward; cue, craving, response, reward—that ultimately allows you to create automatic habits. This cycle is known as the habit loop.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
You wake up, get the coffee, and you’re ready for that morning workout.
Trigger.
Your teacher starts handing out a pop quiz and you start sweating.
Trigger.
You’re headed home from dinner, not the slightest bit hungry, but feel tempted to pull through Jack in the Box for some shitty tacos.
Trigger.
Day to day, you can shift these triggers and their cascading habits in both positive and negative directions. But when you move towns, get a new job, when you make a big life change, you can carpet-bomb several triggers all at once. And guess what? You carpet-bomb the triggers for people around you as well. Everything has changed. You wipe the slate clean.
Triggers are related to time & place, event & emotion, and of course, people.
A recovering alcoholic will change jobs, houses, friends, and even their route to the grocery store. Why? It removes triggers to drink. Time, place, and people. Events and emotions too.
Good habits can die this way as well. A Gretchen Rubin reader wrote: “I’ve always been a regular exerciser, and the weirdest thing happened once my son started taking the bus to school. I stopped. Why? Because my routine was to drop him off at school, then go right to the gym every weekday. It was an ingrained habit. Once he started taking the bus, the trigger was gone.”
If you are looking for a change, you can absolutely get there by making small adjustments, and adding little, positive, habits. Adding new triggers, removing others.
But sometimes that lead domino can be a big one. You might need something bigger. A blank slate.
And even still, even if the next best move is sitting right there in front of you, you still might need some help. Someone to nudge you in the right direction.
‘I don’t know much, but I know that.’
