The Explosive Power of Disruption in Driving Sustainable Change

The thing about explosive diarrhea: it's pretty disruptive. The consequences of food poisoning can be so extreme and pretty immediate. Contrast that with, say, 0.18 inches of sea level rise each year, or a temperature increase of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit every decade. Environmental poisoning tend to happen more slowly and can be hard to tie to specific behaviors. So it's easy to ignore, and it's easy to put off making change.  

But the response to the current Cyclospora outbreak has me thinking about how quickly we can change our behavior when we are truly motivated to do so. If you quit eating bagged lettuce as soon as you heard the news, you're proof of humans' ability to pivot on a dime. And while those quick-change behaviors don't always stick once the original motivation disappears...sometimes they do. We find alternatives and develop new habits more easily than you might expect. Two years ago, I got chased by a dog twice in the same location. I changed my bike route the next day and have not been on that road since. I don't even think about the reason any more—I just avoid it out of habit. On a broader scale: It took four years for the stock price of Chipotle to recover after being associated with E. coli and norovirus outbreaks in 2015. And many of us are still taking some of the health precautions we started during the COVID pandemic. 

I'm not a psychologist or a doctor, so don't take this as medical or psychiatric advice. But let's just say you told yourself that buying things in clamshells will give you explosive diarrhea. Not forever. But maybe just for the next month. You definitely don't want explosive diarrhea. So you don't buy anything in clamshells. 

During the month of your self-imposed disruption, you'll explore some alternatives. You'll eat more frozen strawberries and fewer fresh ones. Maybe you'll shift to peaches instead. You'll eat more homemade muffins and fewer store-bought ones. Maybe you'll shift to bagels. Some of the alternatives you try or consider will be ones you like better; some won't be. Some will be better for the Earth or your own health; others might be worse. But forcing yourself to make the change will break you out of the convenient comfort zone of clamshells. You'll find out which swaps are easy and which you can't sustain. You'll develop some resources to make the harder swaps possible, for the times you want to make them. And if you go into the experiment prepared with alternatives in mind and resources on hand, you'll be in even better shape for making changes that stick.

Of course it doesn't have to be clamshells. Maybe you want to avoid synthetic clothing, or factory-farmed meat, or styrofoam, or getting coffee to go. One big change I finally made last year: I stopped microwaving things in plastic. This year, I decided to play it safe and start using metal instead of my favorite black plastic spatula. There are so many positive changes we can make quickly by giving ourselves an explosive-diarrhea-like moment of disruption—one that prompts us to explore the alternatives and develop a new habit. 

*Or don't, because again—I'm not a psychologist and not a medical doctor. Only use behavior-change strategies that feel healthy for you.

Photo Credit: Robert's picture of some very safe, very local lettuce. No Cyclospora here!