Behaviour Change Works Well When You’re Having a Good Time

At the weekend I combined three of my favourite things – ‘shopping’, socialising and snacks when I attended a clothes swap with other local mums. It struck me afterwards that this was a perfect example of BJ Fogg’s approach to helping people change behaviour – by emphasising the stuff that they already want to do, making the behaviour easy to perform and creating environments that facilitate success.

Successful behaviour change is all about focusing on positive emotions and making new habits simple and manageable and that’s exactly what happened on Sunday.  

We walked just a few streets to someone’s house (kudos to her for instigating the whole thing!), took bags full of pre-loved clothes that we were happy (desperate!) to say goodbye to, emptied them out on the floor in a huge heap and then took it in turns to hold the items up and share the details – size, brand and clothing stories (one jumpsuit had played a role in a proposal!) before raising a hand if we liked it. There was a huge sense of satisfaction to be had when someone liked your stuff or when you got what you wanted from the pile but also a sense of fun that came from more than one person wanting an item – we added it to a new pile, had a try on session and then drew cards to establish the winner! At the end of the day, anything unclaimed went to the charity shop and we all felt a lot lighter.  

It was a great afternoon that gained me two pairs of trousers, cost me nothing, and helped me connect with a new group of likeminded women. It was also a very liberating experience as women of all sizes jostled about in someone’s lounge in their undies, trying on their new clothes.

Another unintended consequence this week has been the sharing of photos (mostly terrible bathroom selfies like mine) of us proudly showing off our ‘new’ clothes to each other, which has continued that fuzzy feeling that we did a nice thing together.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, we were doing our bit to lower consumption and save clothes from landfill. But that’s not the headline here and it doesn’t need to be either – it’s about people doing something that feels easy and makes them happy and to me that’s the perfect way to change behaviour.