Change is Hard

This is it. You’ve put it off long enough. You’ve made up your mind. Now is the time to change. Great! Now what?

The truth is change is hard.

But that’s ok, trust me. You want it to be. I’ll explain.

But before you take your first steps down this new path, you subconsciously reflect on your past attempts — how you had practically abandoned going to the gym, trying to figure out when was the last time you made an effort to eat healthier, where those new skills you were going to pick up had disappeared to, and how you were going to be a different person once you achieved whatever it was you were chasing.

“This time will be different.” You think to yourself. You know it. You can feel it in your bones. It’s either that or arthritis - kidding.

Yet, a question must be answered before you begin: if it didn’t work out before, what makes you think it’s going to this time?

CHANGE

Although you may have failed previous attempts to change, you have learned a lot about yourself. With that in mind, you are convinced that you can tailor your new goals to fit your nature and personality. That way, you will likely follow through with and accomplish your goals.

“I’m not a morning person. But I am more active later in the day. So I’ll place my gym and exercise time in the evening instead of first thing in the morning.”

“I don’t have time during weekdays to start picking up those skills and language lessons I want to learn. But I do have more time on the weekends. So I’ll take those courses on the weekends instead.”

“I want to eat healthier and cleaner. But the food around me and at work is not. So I’ll do meal preps so that I know what I’m eating and can keep it clean.”

These proposed solutions sound pretty reasonable, right? Making changes to your goals to fit you and adapt to your habits. Like fitting a piece into a puzzle. Perfect.

Here’s the problem with that.

Assuming your goals have stayed the same (exercise more, eat healthier, learn new skills, etc.), what you have done is change the conditions under which you can achieve said goals. You have made the journey more comfortable and doable, and yet it’s entirely possible that on your way to your destination, you get lost, or you give up because it’s taking too long, or it’s not the right time to start. You’ve changed the how, but you still need to change the who.

You haven’t changed you.

Read on.

HABITS

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” - Albert Einstein

The quote above perfectly sums up why you must ask yourself if it will be any different this time than the last. How do you know if you have grown in maturity and mental fortitude? How do you know if you have developed the habits to pursue your goals successfully?

There’s no perfect time to make a change. So why wait and make it a New Year’s Resolution when you could start changing your life for the better TODAY?

Consider setting “Create opportunities to cultivate successful habits” as a resolution to start and then work from there, attaching a goal to a habit.

Change comes through habits.

For example, one of the habits I want to cultivate is spending my early morning time creatively and not with work tasks. To that habit, I attach a goal I want to reach (write every day). Combining the two, I make it a habit of doing creative tasks, giving myself more time to write and improve. As Will Durant sums it up nicely:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”

So a great resolution, no matter your goals, is one where you can create habits that will propel you towards them. After all, we are a collection of our habits.

Don’t wait for the perfect time to do this. JUST START.

Forces

Many reasons can get in the way of your efforts to change for the better (your habits). Still, I think they can be summed up into two forces: the environment we interact in and the addicting properties of instant gratification.

Let’s start with the environment. Your environment consists of everything you interact with: the objects (like your computer or phone) and the people (friends and family). The quality of the environment also has a part to play in this (air quality). All these elements form your operating environment — where you will learn or unlearn habits.

For example: If you are trying to stop drinking but find yourself surrounded by friends who drink and an environment with accessible means to alcohol, this is your operating environment working against you.

Moving on, if you want to pinpoint exactly one reason you don’t get anything done, it’s probably because of instant gratification. What is it? You need to have your desires and feelings of fulfillment and contentment now. Feeling good feels great, and you want more of it.

Instant gratification is probably the most destructive bane of human productivity. Do you know what instant gratification spawns? Procrastination.

It feels nicer to relax now, lying in bed, scrolling aimlessly than get up and start practicing the skills you are trying to learn. “Maybe later,” you tell yourself. Later comes by, and you put it off again. And again. And again. Soon you lay the goal of learning into its grave. Instant gratification, through procrastination, has killed forming a good habit.

Never-Ending Battle

Instant gratification warps your view on what to expect. It makes you think you can implement changes as easily and smoothly as flipping a light switch. Viola! Change completed. Time for a reward!

But in reality, change is a slow and often painful process. Usually, it can’t be rushed, and if it is rushed, it doesn’t last long. Easy come, easy go.

Where do you think instant gratification comes from?

We, as humans, love feeling good and fulfilled, so naturally, we want more of it. In some sense, it’s always been a part of us. But our environment exploits how addictive feeling good is and manipulates it until we are conditioned to want it all the time. How?

A 2-minute compilation of a workout transformation. A 4-step plan to make money quickly. An easy strategy to lose weight fast. A few taps to call in food. A single button to shut off the alarm. All of this plays with your need for instant gratification. This is the environment you interact with.

Watching a 2-minute compilation of someone else's amazing physical transformation is easy. However, what went unnoticed was two years of hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

It’s easy to see how to make a delicious meal prepped lunch for a week. What you don’t see is the discipline and willpower needed to keep eating it every time.

These are the small battles that you are faced with every single day. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. However, both outcomes are in your control.

CHANGING WHAT “CHANGE” MEANS

Change is scary.

It feels abrupt and yet necessary.

Change involves breaking the current version of ourselves and rebuilding- often from the ground up. We must leave behind our old ways of thinking, unhelpful habits, and ideas of ourselves. We have unlimited potential, but we have limited capacity. So if a change is what we’re seeking, we must provide ourselves with a greater level of ability to grow.

Change involves shaking up your environment and reshaping how you live your life and the people you interact with, even if that means moving or cutting people out of your life.

Change is not deciding to eat healthily or learn another skill. It’s much more than that. The successful practice of habits leads you to the change you want. Change comes about after, not before, the formation of habits.

And as you practice, your very being adapts to your habits. It has become the new norm. By the end of it, a new you would have emerged from shedding all of your old habits.

You don’t just change. You evolve.

You change to fit your environment, but evolve to thrive in it. As the landscape of the battlefield changes, so must you adapt to it.

The next time you consider a new goal or resolution for yourself, consider it an evolution instead and ask yourself, “How will I evolve this time?”