'Butch Cassidy' and Keeping Change

In 1969, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” was the talk of all moviegoers. It starred Paul Newman in the lead role as Butch and Robert Redford as Sundance. They played bank robbers trying to escape the law in 1899. The film was selected for the United States National Film Registry and by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant.” It was ranked as the 73rd greatest American film by the American Film Institute.

In the opening scene of the movie, the audience observes Butch walking inside a bank and noticing all the new security changes. The high-tech world of 1899 has finally reached the bank as Butch notices the alarm bell, the enormous safe, the combination lock, and the bars surrounding all the windows. When leaving, he asks the security guard, “What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful.” The guard replies, “People kept robbing it.” And Butch then says, “Small price to pay for beauty.”

Butch hated the change. He hated the idea he was going to find a new way of making a living. Even bank robbers face change. Change was now a significant factor in his life, so he needed to be adaptable and find a new way to pull off heists.

In some respects, we are all like Butch. We might not rob banks, but we now must find new ways to get things done. The Coronavirus forced us to learn that working from home is not horrible, that connecting with our teams through Zoom is not the end of the world. Most of all, we’ve learned that we can change, we can adapt, and we can become even stronger if we continue to think of new ways to produce. How do we maintain the benefits of our change? We all know new habits work for a short time, but how do we make new good habits last forever?

These 3 strategies can help:

1. Redefine your new habits. Write down what you did before and what you are doing now and work to understand how you were able to make a change in your life. Get a pen in hand and make notes.

2. Find the cues that made you accept the change. Every habit has a simple loop — cue, routine, reward. Make sure you know what cue prompted the change and always keep the cue fresh in your mind.

3. Reward yourself for past performance, then start over. We often fail at habits because we don’t spend enough time rewarding ourselves. Make sure before you start working again that you reward your ability to handle change, and then double down on knowing you can do more.

Butch could never change. He could never stop robbing, so his ending was terrible. Don’t let all the hard work you have done the last four months slip away. Don’t revert to resisting change. The new you can handle anything.

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