Potty Training for Grownups

The unglamorous viewpoint that showed me a better way to handle my own growth and guide other people through theirs.

Potty Training. We all went through it, but likely don’t remember. If you’re a parent of a child who is now potty trained, you might remember it all too well. For some kids it is a quick and easy process. For others it is an agonizing experience with progress and hope, followed by setbacks and worry. Will this kid still be having issues when they’re in college?

But let’s look at what’s really happening here when a tiny human is working their way through this universal process:

Stage 0: I’m very uncomfortable and unhappy. I don’t know why. Everybody needs to know and Somebody needs to fix this.

Stage 1: I’m very uncomfortable and unhappy. I think it might be related to this soggy feeling. It doesn’t matter how it happened. Somebody needs to fix it.

Stage 2: I’m very uncomfortable. It is definitely this soggy feeling and I felt it happen. I know if I yell, somebody will fix it.

Stage 3: Oh no, this soggy feeling is starting. How do I make it stop!? Can I? Help!

Stage 4: The soggy feeling is about to start. I think I can keep it from happening. Victory!

Trust me, this progression is very relevant to Grownups, too. We can use it as a way to step back and see what’s really going on when we’re correcting behaviors or developing new skills for ourselves, as well as facilitating these kinds of transitions in other people. Let’s take a look at both.

For Our Own Growth

When I apply this concept in my everyday life, I’m thinking in terms of horizons of awareness. Because changing behaviors is never a step function, and seeing a slowly evolving shift in real time requires a different perspective. I’ll share a very recent example:

My husband and I are both strong-willed, smart, and accomplished people. We’ve been together for ages (no really, almost 45 years!) and sometimes I might be guilty of not wanting to listen to his advice. Maybe more often than just ‘sometimes’.

Recently I’ve started looking for ways that I can continue growing in our relationship. The last time he mentioned this ‘resistance’ that I have to his advice, I decided to sit with it and think about it. Is he right? Am I missing out on some good advice, just because it bugs me if he has a better idea sometimes? I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that when he IS right, he is delighted to point it out. I digress. Back to the point. What if there’s some value here?

So the other day when he offered up some advice, as per usual, I quickly said “nah, I don’t think that will work”, and moved on. But then I heard those words echo back to me like a replay. And I stopped and asked myself why that was my first response. And then I asked myself if maybe what he suggested would work. And then I decided to try his suggestion. And it actually worked. Damn it. (Not really).

The next day I decided to ‘fess up, and let him know that I tried his idea. I thanked him for the input, thinking it would make him feel good that I actually listened to him. Instead, he wanted to poke on the fact that I initially dismissed it “like you always do”, he said. Ugh. My first thought was “why even bother”. But then I thought of the horizons of awareness. OK, yes, I didn’t prevent that ‘soggy feeling’ from happening immediately. I didn’t consider his advice up front without any pushback. However, I did recognize it after the fact. That’s progress! I moved out of Stage 0!

He knows I love this potty training analogy and I use it all the time in both personal and client settings, so when I said to him “Wait a minute. Give me some credit. I’m making progress in my potty training!”, he immediately started laughing, and the tension in the room was gone. I didn’t have to explain any further. He knew that I meant my horizon of awareness had shifted. I had made progress.

It still annoyed him because it was after the fact, but even while being annoyed, he was able to acknowledge that if he’s patient with me, I might be able to move that horizon of awareness over time. It was a surprisingly calm and positive discussion. He felt heard. And being heard, even after the fact, is better than not being heard at all.

Working with the Growth of Others

I worked with a woman many years ago who was incredibly smart and talented. She was strong technically and an amazing, caring leader. She was also pretty vocal about her ambition, and her desire to get to the next level. In fact, she talked about it all the time.

This was such a well known behavior that it was discussed at the executive levels when we gathered to decide on promotions, growth assignments, etc. It frustrated me that the executive she worked for wasn’t actually giving her any feedback about it, just talking about it as a roadblock to her growth, and hoping she would figure it out.

So when we had a reorganization and she came to work for me, I had already heard about her. I highly respected her as a leader and I was glad to have her on my team. I also wanted to let her know that this behavior was something she should probably consider working on. I prepared well for the discussion, so I could be both fact-based and also empathetic. It was hard for her to hear, but she took it well and committed to working on it.

What didn’t happen was a re-calibration on my part to start looking for progress. I didn’t realize I had missed that opportunity until about 3 or 4 weeks later, when I was talking with another exec and her name came up. He immediately said “She’s great! Well, except for talking about getting promoted all the time”, and I was nodding right along with him. I think I even started to say “Yeah, she really needs to wor-”, and then stopped myself. Wait a minute. She hadn’t been doing that as much, but I wasn’t actively watching to see that the behavior was tapering off. So there I was, ready to jump on the old status when it wasn’t true anymore. I felt so bad. I was the one who gave her the feedback, for goodness sake. If anybody should have been positioned to watch for improvement it should have been me.

As observers of other peoples’ behaviors, like in this example, and even my husband’s perspective in the first example, if we aren’t actively watching for progress, when there’s a failure in those painful middle stages, it can feel like there isn’t any progress at all.

So what can we do about this?

Potty Training → Horizon Awareness

Let’s look at the Stages again, but in the grownup context of horizon awareness:

Stage 0: oblivious

Stage 1 & 2: awareness is after the fact, starting well after the occurrence but getting closer to the occurrence over time

Stage 3: awareness is during the occurrence, with the option to interrupt the pattern

Stage 4: awareness is before the occurrence, with the option to prevent it entirely

You may be wondering why I have a combo Stage 1 & 2, and that’s fair. Why complicate the concept, right? In using this viewpoint for myself, I have found it helpful to have a “graduation” of sorts in those stages. Stage 0 to Stage 1 is pretty obvious. You used to not be aware at all, and now you’re aware of something. But being aware is still a far cry from knowing what to do about it. That’s the evolution of Stages 1 and 2.

At the start of Stage 1, when the awareness is super new, it rarely comes with any tools or solutions for dealing with it. OK, great, I see it now, but what do I do about it? And the time lag between event and awareness, is likely a bit long as well, which means more time for consequences. That can be really frustrating.

I don’t have a mathematical equation for determining what constitutes Stage 1 versus Stage 2. I just know that it has been quite useful for my own sanity to give myself credit for two things: (1) the awareness coming sooner and sooner, and (2) for working through thought processes and decision-making that help me build tools or solutions that will eventually get me to Stage 3. Calling all of that a single stage was just too sad, so it helps me to have a mini-graduation, somewhere along that line.

Now once you get to Stage 3, you can celebrate, right? Well, sort of, but a different set of problems shows up. Because there is nothing more conflicting than opening your mouth and starting a sentence, that you then realize you shouldn’t finish. A part of you that is comfortable with the pattern says keep going! It’ll be too embarrassing to interrupt yourself and explain yourself and bare your soul. And the part of you that really wants to become a better person has to decide how bad you want to become a better person.

Our Job, When it Comes to Horizon Awareness

We’ve got to stop looking for instant correction or instant perfection in ourselves. No matter how committed you are to changing, that’s just not realistic. It takes children years to go from Stage 0 to Stage 4, where everytime the situation arises, they make the choice to prevent the occurrence, and really don’t even think about it anymore.

Even for the kids that potty train fast and don’t have any setbacks, or those people who can start a new habit pretty quickly and not struggle: Progress still takes time. A steady slope in the right direction takes time. It is never a step function straight to Stage 4.

And for the rest of us, well, there’s a reason people joke about “two steps forward and three steps back”. Sometimes we move to Stage 3 and then regress back to Stage 2. As long as you don’t give up, you are still making progress. It’s just the hard kind of progress that’s impossible to see while you’re in the middle of it. This is where patience and compassion come into play. For yourself and for others. Without it, I think we would all be tempted to give up.

With my husband and listening to his advice, I’m still at Stage 1. I’m not even going to try to pretend I’m at a Stage 2 yet. But I am giving myself credit: I have moved from completely unaware that I was doing it, to denying I was doing it, to realizing I did it after the fact and doing nothing, to realizing it after the fact and actually considering his advice. It still looks to him like I’m ignoring his input, which is why it was important for me to circle back and let him know. I wanted him to see the slight progress that I saw and ask for his patience.

Ready to Try it Yourself?

Is there someone in your life that is currently frustrating the daylights out of you because they are supposedly working on an improvement, but their pace of progress is ridiculously slow? Or maybe you don’t see any progress at all so you’re assuming they aren’t even trying? Consider this horizon awareness concept and see if you can spot a move from Stage 0 to Stage 1. Depending on the relationship and the issue, it might even be helpful to let them know that you see the progress. They might be feeling too stuck in their own ‘soggyness’, and a little encouragement from you could be exactly what they need to keep from giving up.

And what about you? Are you frustrated because you can’t seem to stop a bad habit or get any traction on a new one? Take a moment to figure out what you’re trying to change and identify your current Stage (no shame in starting at Stage 0!). Now - really watch to see glimpses of a Stage 1 after-the-fact realization. I know for me, even when I hit Stage 3 and sometimes even Stage 4 of a behavior I’ve so-called mastered, there are still times when I don’t make the pattern-breaking choice. Maybe I’m tired, in a bad mood, or just plain ornery. That’s also called being human. Even that kind of behavior is all part of the process. Give yourself the time and the grace to keep trying.

Tell me in the comments: What change are you looking for in yourself or someone else and what Stage are you in that suddenly feels a little bit better after reading this?

Love and Light,

Pat ❤️ ✨

Crossroads Guide | Former Technology Executive

Human Design Coach | Compassion Key Facilitator