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Your Life Systems is a podcast about building practical systems for everyday life.
Join Wes as he shares simple ideas, practical frameworks, and real-world experience to help you make consistent progress in the areas of life that matter most.
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Why People Stay Stuck Even When They Want to Change
Hi, I'm Wes. Welcome to Why People Stay Stuck Even When They Want to Change. This is Your Life Systems.
Please subscribe so you don't miss any new episodes.
Wanting isn't enough.
Again, why people stay stuck even when they want to change, or what's the real reason people don't change?
Here's today's question.
Keep this question in mind as we go through this episode: What is missing between wanting to change and actually changing what you do?
Now, if you're like me, and you probably are in some ways or you wouldn't be watching an episode about success or creating systems for your life or business, things like that.
But if you're somewhat like me, then you probably recognize there are certain things you want to change in your life.
Now, things that you might want to change, some things are more important than others.
Some things you know, you realize need to be changed immediately, drastically.
Other things you might want to change or know that they need to change, but they're not urgent.
It doesn't matter what kind of change it is.
Almost everyone I work with through consulting or helping people set up systems, whether in their life or business or anywhere else, almost everyone I work with wants to make some changes.
In fact, most people, when they realize how powerful creating systems can be in their lives or in their business, they recognize they need to make a change.
So often they don't know exactly what to change or where to start, and that's where a good system, or building or creating a good system, can come into play.
But the point is all of them know that they need to change something.
The problem is, a lot of times, even when we know something needs to change or know we need to change something, it seems like we can't change or we don't change.
So the answer that we're looking for today, and I'm going to give you some reasons that I've found that have helped me and helped people I've worked with.
The answer we're looking for is why people stay stuck even when they want to change.
So is there something in your life right now that you want to change but you feel like you're stuck on?
Stuck and you can't kind of break loose or make the change?
So I'm going to give you some things I've learned over the years to help you if you're feeling stuck and you can't make a change but you know you need to.
So here's the first thing.
Desire is the start of change, but desire alone does not create a repeatable process.
And what do I mean when I say repeatable process?
If you've ever watched any of my episodes before, you know I talk about systems.
I help people create systems, and the reason I use the word system, you can use the word framework or a lot of other words, but basically to me it's a system, and a system is something repeatable.
Something that you can design, develop, test, tweak, and you end up with a series of steps that we put into something called a system, and then you repeat those steps to improve whatever the system's for.
So I said desire starts every change.
For example, we don't often change unless we're forced to change or we want to change.
Now, being forced to change, even in that instance, if you're forced to change something, it's best if you can intentionally change in certain ways if you're being forced to change.
But mostly this conversation is about when you desire a change.
So in order for change to start happening, you have to desire the change.
So I'm going to assume there's at least one thing you'd like to change.
So that's the desire, that's the first step, and it's important, but it alone, your desire to change alone, is not going to create something repeatable that leads to permanent change.
That's why a system, and it can even be a simple system, doesn't have to be complicated, a simple system can create change and lasting change.
Let me give you an example.
When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is I put on my shoes.
I keep them right beside the bed.
I need to protect my feet.
That's a personal issue, but it's also somewhat health-related.
Nothing serious, but I need to protect my feet.
And I got tired of getting up and stubbing my toe on stuff or stepping on something, etc.
And I wanted to change.
I don't want this to happen anymore.
So when I first wake up in the morning, it takes me a few minutes to wake up and I'm stumbling around.
So I said, I want to change this.
So what I did is I created a very simple repeatable system.
What was the system?
I already told you what it is.
When I go to bed at night, I take my shoes off right beside the bed.
When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is put my shoes on.
Now, this sounds simple.
It is.
It's very simple.
It's common sense.
If you don't want to walk around without your shoes on, then put them on first thing, take them off last thing.
But it's a perfect example of I desired change.
I created a simple system that's repeatable that's led to that change, and that's where every system, that's where every change starts.
It starts with what's the first simple thing you can do that gets you closer to that.
Now, every system, every change is not that simple.
I'm not trying to say that, but it's that simple to get started.
You desire to change.
You make a commitment to change.
Then you figure out what's the first thing you can do that's repeatable that's going to get you closer to the change you want.
Next, old environments, your defaults, whatever they are, routines and rewards keep pulling behavior toward the familiar.
For example, remember the question was why people stay stuck when they want to change.
Well, here's a lot of the reasons why.
Old environments, defaults, and usually defaults is behavior defaults, thought-process defaults, routines that you're used to, habits, and even rewards, usually mental rewards but sometimes otherwise, keep pulling behavior toward what you're familiar with.
Now, change means something's going to change, different, right?
You're looking for change. You're looking for something different.
So by definition, you have to pull away from what's familiar.
Now, these are some of the things that keep pulling you back to what's familiar, and these could be some of the reasons why you want to change but you're not changing.
So, old environment. Sometimes you've got to change your environment.
Sometimes you've got to change the things around you to make it easier to change the way you want.
Defaults. How often do you sit down and examine what your default thoughts are, your default reactions are?
Same thing with your routines.
What are you doing by habit or routine now that might need to change in order for you to make the changes you desire?
Talking about rewards, maybe sometimes the biggest positive changes we make are because we figure out a way to reward ourselves for making the changes.
Sometimes, like little kids. Little kids a lot of times get a star or a sticker, right?
That's a reward for behavior modification.
What can we do to reward ourselves?
Maybe it's if we follow this new routine that we want to change every day for a week, we buy ourselves a pizza, or we go out to eat, or maybe we reward ourselves with, we get a watch, go out to a movie, or whatever.
It doesn't matter what the reward is if you figure out how to tie something that rewards you.
It doesn't have to be physical. Maybe you can give yourself some sort of a mental reward.
The magic of a lot of this is it's so much a mind game or a mind thing, and you get to decide what you want to change, how you're going to change it, what systems you're going to start creating and putting in place to change.
So you have the power to change a lot of different things.
You also get and have the power to do your rewards.
Like I say, it could be a mental reward. Maybe you give yourself a mental break for 15 minutes or an hour afterwards.
Now, to some people that won't work, but some people that could be perfect.
Maybe you give yourself permission to turn off the busyness in your brain for an hour and enjoy something.
Like I like to read, so maybe I give myself permission to read for an hour after I've done whatever I said I was going to do throughout the week or throughout the day.
And it doesn't matter if it sounds silly to you if it works for me, and it doesn't matter if it sounds silly to me if it works for you.
And these are just examples. You can use any type of reward you want.
Try it if you never have and you're struggling to change.
Try to develop some sort of reward system for yourself and see if it helps.
Big intentions fail when the next action is unclear or unnecessarily difficult.
That's why I said so many changes, even big changes, start with the first simple step or the first simple thing of the system.
You don't have to figure out the whole thing ahead of time.
If you can figure out what the next thing is that brings you closer to what you want to change, then do that.
Then figure out the next thing.
Again, focus on small things.
They don't have to be big things to reach big changes.
There just have to be a bunch of small things.
Choose one behavior that represents the change instead of trying to change an identity overnight.
The behavior, back to what I was talking about my shoes, the behavior was not to take my shoes off and leave them beside the bed.
Again, this is simplified, but it works for everything if you can find one simple behavior and change it instead of trying to change your entire identity immediately.
You can change a lot about your identity if you find the small behaviors and keep changing the small behaviors and make them repeatable, and then you eventually build the new identity.
Build triggers to help you think about things.
Friction to make it more difficult to do the things you don't want to do.
Feedback around whatever this behavior is you're trying to create the change with.
See, behavior and change are closely related.
You want to change something, you're probably going to have to alter your behavior in some way or some ways.
So you tie them together.
You build triggers that trigger the behavior.
You create friction on things that work against the behavior, and you learn and get feedback as you go along.
Expect setbacks and create a restart plan before you need it.
Anytime you're trying to make change, there's going to be pushback.
There's going to be setbacks, especially if it's a big change.
Expect this to happen ahead of time and put a plan in place before you need it to get you back on track.
Maybe put a trigger of some sort in place so that it triggers, like, hey, I'm getting off track here.
I knew this was going to happen.
It's okay. I've already got this plan to get me back on track.
So that's some reasons why people stay stuck even when they want to change, and some ways that I've found that you can use to start making the changes that you want to change.
Again, please subscribe so you don't miss any episodes.
This is Wes with Your Life Systems. I'll see you soon.