Episode 121: The Secret to Creating Lasting Change

Do you get excited to make a change in your life, only to find it falls flat a few weeks later? In today's episode I'll walk you through a step-by-step process for learning from your setbacks so you can keep making progress and finally experience lasting change. 

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Transcript

(Transcript is autogenerated and may contain minor errors.)

 Hey there, welcome. Hey, does this sound familiar? You decide to make a change in your life, some kind of a habit or a routine, and you feel filled with motivation. So you sign up for the gym membership, or you buy the class, or the cleaning supplies, or the organization supplies, whatever it is.  And you feel excited to begin. 

You've got your brand spankin’ shiny new stuff. And you've got your motivation all ready to go. You go ahead and get started. You feel great. And a few weeks later,  a friend asks you, Hey, how's the blah blah blah project going? And you awkwardly say, Yeah, I'm not doing that anymore. And then you feel bad about yourself.

Right? You know, you say to yourself, I just don't seem to have the willpower that other people do.  Which, let me tell you, this is nonsense. I really dislike the idea of willpower. It's just a useless concept to me because it makes it sound like you've got this kind of static trait. You've got this thing that you either have or you don't.

If you don't have willpower, you're not going to get the life you want. If you do have willpower, fantastic! You're going to be able to achieve your dreams and it's, it's silly. It's limiting. It's not helpful.   I'm sure that we have all had this experience over and over again, which is, again, this is why the idea of willpower just doesn't make sense to me.

The first thing you want to do is to think about it. Think about when did you stop doing this positive habit, this change?  Maybe you want to look back at your planner. Try to come up with an approximate time frame. When did, when did things just kind of fall by the wayside? 

Number two, ask yourself why. Okay, what was going on just before I stopped?   This is where habit trackers can be handy. I personally don't usually use a habit tracker, but I know some people really like them, and if you look at a habit tracker, it will tell you right away, oh, bang, yeah, look, I stopped doing it on Wednesday two weeks ago.  And you can kind of look at your planner and be like, oh, yeah. Wednesday, that's when I worked overtime, or whatever, and that can make it easier, but you don't need to have that data right in front of you. You can just kind of mull it over and think, okay, seems like it was maybe right around the holidays and what was going on at that time, or whatever, okay?  

Thinking about what was going on just before you stopped, you want to zoom in  and see if you can try to remember  how were you feeling right before you stopped doing the thing.  What kinds of thoughts were going through your mind? What kinds of stressors were you experiencing? What kinds of changes were going on in your life? What led to your decision not to do this anymore? Because, make no mistake, it is a decision. I mean, it may be more or less conscious, but there's a decision involved.  

So, let me give you an example. Years ago, I had a goal of following a workout schedule. I was consistent with working out at a certain time. Things were going great.  And then we went on vacation. We did like a family camping trip.  And I told myself as we were getting ready to go on this trip, I was like, okay, no problem. We are camping in an area with plenty of options to get active. 

This is going to be great.  But by the time we packed up our gear, we packed up the kids and all their gear, we drove there to the campsite, we set up the campsite.  Had a bite to eat, uh, and then I told the family, Okay, you guys go on down to the lake. I just want to lay down for a bit.  And you can guess what happened. I totally  conked out.  And I woke up in the middle of the night with zero desire  to do anything except use the bathroom and go back to bed. Right? Right? 

So the next day, I felt bad. I was fully conscious by then and I was like, oh my gosh I did not keep up my streak of working out. Why didn't I go to the lake with the family and then go to bed? That would have been so easy and then I could have kept my streak going and I let myself criticism.  keep me from going back to my workout plan. Cause I thought, oh, well now it's ruined, right?   So much for the workout plan.  

And so, you know, when you look at the number two, okay, when did I stop working out? I stopped working out on vacation. And what was going on at the time? I let my  self critical thoughts keep me from going back to the workout plan. So there's the thoughts right there. I also didn't have a clear plan  prior to going on vacation. I just thought, oh wow, there are a lot of options.  But once we got there, I was happy to read and relax, you know, to kick back. I didn't really have any kind of a clear idea. I just had this vague idea, Oh, options.  So that didn't really help. And then after vacation, not only did I have these downer thoughts about my streak, I also just didn't feel the oomph to go back to the gym. I just felt like, you know, a deflated balloon.  And so, motivation like, poof, gone. Gone in the campfire smoke.   And, you know, that change of being on vacation,  you may not think of being on vacation as a stressor, but it's a change. Every time we experience change, there's stress involved with that. It can be good stress, but it's still stress.   

Number three.  Ask yourself, what was the outcome of my choice? My decision to not keep going?  So this may seem like a silly step, right? You may think, well, I felt bad because I didn't keep doing it.  But, here's why you want to pause here and ask yourself, What was the outcome of the choice? Because you want to make the reason for getting back on the horse, so to speak, more vivid. You want to reconnect with your why.  

So going back to this example, when I looked at the consequence of stopping my workout schedule,  I knew that, okay, yeah, I feel bad about not keeping my streak going. I feel bad about not achieving that goal,  but I also, another outcome of that was I realized my workout goal was too rigid. 

 I had set this goal of a certain type and amount of physical activity, seven days a week, and let's just keep this streak going.  And so the outcome of stopping the streak was that I realized, okay, yeah, I want the benefits of fitness, but this has to be realistic. This is a long term change I want to make. This isn't just some silly, woohoo, look at me, 21 days in a row. You know, I, I wanted to have a sustainable habit.  And a sustainable habit meant  not where I'm working out even if I'm exhausted or even if I'm sick or something. You know, I had to be kind to myself to make this work. I had to revise my internal rules for this so that my goal remained positive and motivating.  

So this leads us to number four.  Go back and look at each of the things you wrote down in number two.  What was going on at the time, what were my thoughts, what were my feelings, and so forth. Look at each of those things that you wrote down. And write down a possible solution  for each of these. 

So, the solution for being too tired to work out in the future would be, you know, at the time I said, oh, why couldn't I have just worked out beforehand? And then when I thought, okay, let's be realistic, um, to jump in the lake and go swimming when I was bone tired is not really a solution. So instead I said, all right, to make this sustainable,   I could do gentle stretching for just a few minutes and just ask myself, okay, do I want to do a little more? Do I want to do a little bit of gentle movement? If not, then it is totally fine to rest. Just more like just a couple of minutes of checking in with my body as I stretch. 

The solution for going camping,   for that specific situation of like a change in routine,  I thought, okay, a solution there is to think about,  when would I have energy while I'm on vacation?  The first day, once you get there, no, I'm not going to have energy. Uh, but the next day Maybe after breakfast. And then to think specifically, what could I do? Not just, there are plenty of options, but, oh, I could go for a walk and kind of check out different campsites, that's, that's kind of fun, you know, I could walk down to the river, whatever, you know. 

 And the solution for coming back from camping when I felt like I have no desire to go to the gym. It just felt like too, not only was I feeling deflated, but also it just felt too difficult to make the transition from camping to Work, and gym, and kids in school, and all that sort of thing. So,  I thought, okay, let's have a day of transition. A day of doing nothing. If this were a really challenging trip, if we had gotten on an airplane or something, I might even want to do more than one day.   And then the next day  Let me have a workout that is especially motivating. So, a good candidate there. Sometimes I like to watch an addictive show on my iPad while I'm on a machine of some sort. So, , that would be a good plan for a situation like that.  

And, finally Step five.  Reconnect with your why. With why you want to do this. So this helps move us away from shoulds, ideally. You don't want to just be like, yeah, I should be better at working out. Yeah, I should be more consistent. You know, you want to be a good encouraging friend to yourself.   Just ask yourself, why is this important to me in living the life I want to live? Why is this change important to me?  And really, you know, think specifically about what you would answer to that.  Not what so and so on social media would answer to that, but what you would answer to that. 

So, going back to the example,  I wanted to work out because it was really important to me to have the energy to be the kind of patient and playful mom that I wanted to be for my kids. I didn't want to be dragging myself around, snapping at the kids, telling them to leave me alone. And I knew that those things tend to come with not having energy. And what's the best way to get energy? Well, one of those things is to exercise. So I thought, all right, so I really do want to do this for that reason. 

So clearly picture your why. Give yourself encouragement. You know, remember that you are getting better and better at learning about yourself and learning what you need. to live a rewarding life, not just following someone else's plan, but following your plan that you have created specifically for you. And this is a work in progress. 

I think it can also be helpful to, this just popped into my head, I think it can be helpful to remember that the research is in your favor when you have a setback.  There's been research finding in the field of sports psychology, for example, that when they had athletes imagine doing the skill that they wanted to master if they had them imagine  struggling and failing at first so they didn't sink the shot or whatever, but then continuing to keep practicing and doing it when they kept visualizing success after the struggle, they were more likely to actually succeed than if they just imagined succeeding all the time.  And there has also been research on smoking cessation, where people who wanted to quit smoking actually were more successful if they had the experience of relapsing and then taking the time to learn from the relapse.

So what we're talking about is spot on for what you want to do to be able to succeed  and not just feel bad about yourself.  As someone once told me, and I've never forgotten it. I love this image. She said when you get a flat tire, you don't jump out of your car and grab a handgun and shoot the other three tires. So now you're totally flat at the side of the road. You repair the flat and you move on. And I've never forgotten that. It's such a great image because we are so prone to doing that. We are so prone to just jumping into the all or nothing thinking and being like, Oh, I can't do this. Oh, I don't have willpower, that dirty word again. I'm just not the kind of person that's going to be able to succeed at this. And that's basically shooting the other three tires. So don't do that. Repair the flat and then move on. Success comes from patience, with being human, with being willing to be curious about yourself and learn more about yourself. So enjoy the ride and have a great week. 

Oh, and quick reminder before you go, if you want to create positive change in 2025, or you want to maintain your gains that you made in 2024,  join me for the Values and Vision Party this Saturday, January 25th, 2025 at 11 a. m. Pacific, 2 p. m. Eastern, that's 7 p. m. GMT for our international listeners.  I will take you through thought provoking questions to guide you through what you can learn from 2024, and what you want for yourself in 2025. And we will be creating vision boards. Sign up today at https://www.prior10.com/vision.