Making significant changes in our lives often seems like an uphill battle. We set resolutions with the best of intentions, only to find ourselves faltering just weeks later. But what if there were an easier way to approach change?
In this 18 minute video, Nahid debunks the common “no pain no gain” approach, and offers insightful strategies to navigate the change process more effectively. Following the video, we’ve summarized the main points, and also provide a link to a change worksheet in our online learning center that you can use to put these insights into action!
Understanding the Challenge
Most people attempt to rely solely on willpower to get through the first few weeks of a new personal change initiative until it has become habitual. Unfortunately, this approach usually leads to exhaustion and failure. Our brains and bodies resist change when it feels draining or unpleasant, making traditional “no pain, no gain” methods ineffective.
The Key Principles
To counteract your natural emotional and neurological resistance to change, follow these five steps:
1. Know Your “Why”
Understanding the underlying motivation behind your desired change is crucial. If you can connect emotionally with your goals, then your brain will actually get excited thinking about them – and want to experience that excitement over and over again. This desire to experience excitement makes the actions worth doing, even if they are challenging and drain your energy. Your brain will fight to conserve mental energy, but getting excited actually ADDs energy to the mix, and the satisfaction of making progress towards something exciting releases dopamine, which motivates you to keep going! This is the best way to counteract neurological resistance to change. By framing your goals in a positive and inspiring light, you can maintain enthusiasm throughout the process, and solidify the belief that “it’s worth the effort.”
2. Clear Planning
Having a well-defined plan with actionable steps is essential for progress. If you can’t clearly visualize yourself in action, taking that next step, the confusion by itself can keep you stuck. The smaller, clearer, and easier each step is the better. Observe your motivation levels as you think about doing the next step, whatever it is. If you find yourself struggling, think about the first part of that next step and renegotiate with yourself. Can you do that much? Getting yourself in motion takes the most effort – so you want to make that first step as easy and pressure-free as possible. For example, if you don’t have it in you to practice piano, make it perfectly fine to sit at the piano bench and spend 30 seconds doing one scale, or even pounding a few keys. If you are struggling with yourself at that point, give yourself permission to get up and leave. But if you are crystal clear on the first thing you will practice – something easy – just a warm up, you might consider doing that before you get up. The clarity itself is what makes that next step doable. If you sit down without knowing what you’ll practice, it will be harder. Breaking down goals into micro steps and clearly knowing what is next prevents overwhelm and can get you moving before you have a chance to resist.
3. Establishing Routines
Integrating new habits into existing routines can streamline the change process even more. Your brain uses a whopping 20% of your energy each day and so it is designed to conserve energy wherever possible. This means any time you don’t have to think about an action, your brain won’t fight you as much. Your brain loves habits, because the more automatic your behaviors are, the less it has to expend energy thinking about what to do. Instead of trying to develop new habits from scratch, look at your existing routines. It takes a lot of energy to develop a new habit, but it doesn’t take very much energy to change a few steps in an already-existing routine. For example, if you have an evening routine that involves picking things up near the piano, it might be easy to slip onto that piano bench and sit for a few minutes before going upstairs. If you always put your running shoes on as part of your morning routine, it will seem weird not to go outside – even for a quick jog, before taking them off again. The more you can get your body to do micro actions without thinking, the more quickly these steps will become consistent and build momentum.
4. Visualization Techniques
Visualization can be a powerful tool for reinforcing desired behaviors. Athletes visualize their movements as part of their training, because your brain gets nearly as much “practice” from visualizing as it does from actually acting. Dancers will often “mark” their dance routines by walking through the steps without actually doing the more intense pieces of it. You can make progress on any goal just by imagining yourself taking the actions as you lay in bed! If you feel completely unmotivated and don’t have it in you to take action, try sitting somewhere comfortable, closing your eyes, and imagining yourself doing whatever it is you need to do. When you get to tough parts, work through them in your head. You may find yourself getting up and getting started before you’ve realized it! By vividly imagining each step of your journey, you are literally strengthening your neural pathways and increasing your ability to act.
5. Celebrating Small Wins
Sometimes it seems silly to celebrate small wins, but each time you acknowledge that you are “making progress” towards something that excites you, your brain releases dopamine and says “let’s keep doing this!” In the video, we give the example of how the trainers at Sea World get the whales to do tricks. They simply reward behaviors as they get progressively closer to what they want, while ignoring behaviors that don’t. This process is more powerful than you might think. We tend to try to motivate ourselves by beating ourselves up when we neglect to do what we want. But in reality, this negative mental association causes us to avoid the activity and do less. If, instead, you ignore your missteps and focus on your steps forward, you can work with your natural biology to build momentum and positive motivation. You don’t actually need to give yourself treats (although you can if you’d like). Acknowledging that you are “getting closer” to your goal is all your brain needs to release a bit of dopamine and reinforce that whatever you just did was the “right” sequence of behaviors and want to keep repeating them.
Put it into Action
Now that you’ve read about the five steps – why not try them and see how they work? We have a “Change Worksheet” in our online learning center, absolutely free, and it will walk you through thinking through applying each of these steps to a current goal. You can access the worksheet here.
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or would like the added support of working with a coach for extra support, guidance, and accountability.
