Reassurance from Others

After reading  my classmates sustainable behavior posts who were trying to adapt changes that were similar to mine, I felt a lot better about the struggles and the difficulties that I had been having while trying to adapt this new lifestyle.  To my surprise, we all had very similar thought processes when it came to changing our behavior, and we all went into it imagining that it would be a lot easier than it actually turned out to be.  I even went on to read some of the posts of people who were not in my assigned category, and it was reassuring to know that I was not the only one who was not perfect, or really even close to perfect, in entirely achieving my behavior change.

After reading some of the comments that I got on my posts, not only did this reassure me even more that I was heading in a positive direction with my sustainable behavior change, but I was even happier to note that some students were finding my techniques helpful in changing their behaviors.  I thought that keeping a log of how many nights of the week I managed to turn the TV was something that would only be helpful to me, but it turns out that maybe some other students found this technique helpful as well.

Something that I noticed that we all had in common, whether it be TV use, AC use, or fan use, was that the hardest part in adapting to this change was breaking the habit, and stepping out of our comfort zone.  I realized that I am not the only person who was having difficulty in breaking my habit, and that this is probably the main reason that these behaviors are so hard to change in the first place.  We all had to sacrifice some of our comfort in order to make a change that would help to benefit the environment.

I think that putting us into these groups was extremely beneficial because not only were we able to see how others were attempting their sustainable behavior change, but it absolutely gave me a lot more reassurance, and confidence than I had before reading the others’ posts.  I realize now that I am not alone in my struggles to change, and I hope that other students reading my posts have done the same for them.