You need more than motivation to make changes in your life
It kills me to see women make promises to themselves, do it for a period and then stop. Actually, it’s not that bit that kills me. It’s the thing that happens next. The self-flagellation. The thoughts of ‘I never stick at things,’ ‘I never do what I say I’m going to do,’ ‘I’m just not very good at this.’
That stuff we say to ourselves sticks and drives us. And it’s not true. The fact that you haven’t been able to consistently do the thing is not your fault. It’s because your brain is working against you and you haven’t been taught how.
To make change that lasts you need four things in place.
Want not should
Beware of the word ‘should.’ If you think you ‘should’ be doing something that for me is a warning sign that it’s not something you want to do. Instead, it’s something that you feel you should do to fit in. When you’re wanting to make changes make sure that you can articulate why it’s important for you to do this. If you can’t - then do something else. Or do nothing.
See yourself being successful in the thing you want to do
Our brain’s sole purpose is to keep us alive. So right now it believes it’s doing a brilliant job because you’re here, reading this. It doesn’t want anything to change. And it certainly doesn’t want to be doing something new because that means danger. It will therefore sabotage you by creating fear to prevent you from being successful.
The good news is that you can trick it. Because your brain doesn’t know the difference between a real and imagined experience. The more you imagine yourself living, breathing, feeling, experiencing what it would be like to be embodying the change you want to see the more your brain believes that it’s safe for you to do it.
Spend a few minutes each day, closing your eyes and imagining what life would be like for you achieving what you’ve set out to do. What will you be doing, thinking, feeling?
Do you believe you can do it?
You can really want to do something but if your belief system says otherwise then you’re going to lose the battle. Your mind/brain drives what you do and 96% of it is subconscious. So it’s likely that you hold beliefs about yourself that you’re not even aware of that are sabotaging your success.
Your role is to identify those beliefs that aren’t helpful to you. For instance – ‘I’m just not very good at sticking at things.’ Can you see how unhelpful that is? Identify them, acknowledge them when they appear and tell yourself that they are old beliefs not facts.
Now you want to implant beliefs into your subconscious that are going to support you. If you want to become the type of person who speaks up at work and doesn’t worry about what people think of them what beliefs would you need to hold about yourself? ‘I’m great at my job,’ ‘I love sharing my opinions.’ You then need to spend five minutes a day writing these beliefs on repeat. The more your mind hears something the more it becomes true for you.
How easy are you making it?
To get yourself to the gym 3 times a week you need to make it as easy as possible. What sort of things does a person who goes to the gym regularly do? They might make a plan each Sunday for the next week. Get their gym kit ready the evening before. Arrange to go with a friend.
Think about all of the things you can put in place to make it as easy as possible to do the thing. Or if you’re trying to stop something – think about how hard you can make it to do the thing. So if you’re stopping drinking – remove all drink from the house, arrange to go out to places that don’t sell alcohol, know what non alcoholic drinks you’re going to order.
To make change that lasts you need to:
know why it’s important to you
see yourself doing it
believe that it’s possible for you
make it as easy for yourself