Aug 16

How Not to Change Your Life: Expect Change to Happen By Itself

Posted in Techniques

Up to a point, change does happen by itself. But it’s not usually going to be the change you want.

There’s a cheesy 50s song to the effect that thinking and wishing and hoping and praying isn’t going to be enough. Hope, as I’ve said before, is not a strategy (sorry, Mr Obama).

No, for change – the right change, the important change – to happen, you’re going to have to do something. You’re going to have to do it consistently, in fact, for some time.

So what is it that you’ll need to do in order to make change happen? I’m glad you asked.

1. Decide what you want

This obvious first step can be easier said than done. Often, we just want something to change, but we’re more concerned with “change from” than “change to”. Here are a few questions to help you decide on your change destination.

  1. What about the current situation bothers you most?
  2. What are you most afraid of if the situation doesn’t change?
  3. If you could have any outcome you wanted, leaving practicality aside, what would it be?
  4. Is anything starting to change already that you want to encourage?
  5. Out of all the things you could change, what would give the greatest bang for your buck?

Somewhere among those questions, you’ll find the answer to determining what change you want to create.

2. Do a “now” versus “then”

Take a piece of paper.

Draw a line down it vertically to create two columns.

Label one “Now” and the other “Then”.

In the “Now” column, list the things you are unhappy with, that need to change.

In the “Then” column beside each one, list how you want them to turn out.

I’d suggest that in the “Then” column, you use the words “more” and “less” a lot. At least in the early stages, change will consist of doing some things more than you used to and other things less. It’s not going to be instantly a case of switching from an old behaviour to a new one.

3. Figure out your motivations and rewards

Trophies
Creative Commons License photo credit: Snap®

To make a significant change, you’re going to have to persevere. That means you’re going to need a strong enough motivation to get over your natural resistance to change and to keep you doing the practices that will help you.

According to research, the way to do this most effectively is to first imagine the negative consequences of not changing, and then have a dessert of the positive consequences of changing.

Then, once you’re clear on your motivations, immediately take the next step.

4. Get your process clear

Imagining the process by which you’re going to change is going to give you a much better outcome than if you just imagine the change having happened. It prepares you mentally to go through that process, and reminds you that change isn’t going to happen by itself.

When you think about your process, think about what’s worked for you before. What have you succeeded at? What changes have you made already? What are you good at doing that would make one process easier than another?

For example, in my fitness goals I’ve discovered that having a tracking system that also tells me what to attempt next is a process that works a lot better than deciding for myself how hard I’m going to work. Which leads me to Step 5.

5. Gather maximum resources

I firmly believe that the more resources and the more techniques you have available to you, the better your chances of success. That’s why I write so many posts about techniques. (I just checked: counting this one, there are 93 posts in the Techniques category on this site, which is almost a third of all the posts I’ve ever written here.)

What tools do you have? What skills? What knowledge? And what tools, skills and knowledge do other people around you have – your friends, certainly, but also professionals who help people make the kind of change you’re considering? You live in a society, which magnifies your personal power immensely – if you make use of it by connecting to others who have the skills you need.

Some extra guidance and encouragement from someone who helps people change all the time can mean the difference between success and failure, or between moderate success and resounding success.

6. Be aware of the pitfalls

Don’t kid yourself. Any significant change is going to be hard. That’s why most people don’t change much, and why change won’t happen by itself.

You are going to have to keep trying even after you fail. You are going to have to do the equivalent of going jogging in the rain. You are going to question your ability to change. You are going to find yourself back in your old patterns again, just when you thought you were making progress.

You are going to need to circle back to your motivations and reinforce them, practice your techniques, get help from the friends or professionals you’ve recruited.

Something else that can help: non-obsessively consider in advance what issues may come up, and how you’re going to deal with them. My post on How to Make Hard Things Easier may help.

7. Count the cost, assess the benefit

Back in Step 3, you thought through the negatives of remaining unchanged. But there’s a cost to change, a benefit of staying the same – again, this is why so few people change successfully. It pays to be clear-eyed about these things.

What are you going to be giving up with this change? Is it worth it to you? You’ll need to remind yourself, in those moments when the costs are particularly vividly presenting themselves to you, of what the benefits of changing are.

If you’re particularly alert, and have done my free Seven Steps to Effective Personal Change course, you may have recognised the outline I’ve used here. The course has a series of videos in which I talk more about each step, an ebook with some of the most effective personal change techniques, and a set of planning sheets that you can use for self-reflection about the steps I’ve laid out above.

If you feel you want to change something in your life, don’t expect it to happen by itself. Take some action – like signing up for the free Effective Personal Change course (and, naturally, putting in the work).

One more thing about change. You need to set aside time in which to work on it – otherwise it’s just another form of expecting it to happen by itself. Schedule yourself a time that you’re going to spend taking action.

Because hope is not a strategy.

This post is part of a series, How Not to Change Your Life.

Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.


comments: 0 » tags: , , , , , , , ,
Aug 9

How Not to Change Your Life: Shun Success

Posted in Techniques

“Why on earth,” you might ask, “would anyone shun success?”

I can think of at least three reasons.

1. You don’t think you deserve to succeed

Sadly, some of us get tapes installed in our heads from an early age that say we’re no good. People like us don’t deserve to succeed. If we fail, that’s right and just because we’re just not right.

If you do get close to succeeding, you effectively sabotage yourself – jog your own elbow so that you spill. Time after time, you’re this close to making it, and you flake out at the last moment. Because preserving your understanding of how the universe works – that people like you don’t succeed – is more important to you than achieving your dreams. And because that tape comes on in your head again and tells you that you don’t deserve success.

If you have one of those tapes, let me invite you to eject it and install a much better alternative. I have one free for download, as it happens: Overcoming Self-Sabotage. (You do have to share the link on Facebook or Twitter to get access.)

2. You think successful people aren’t very nice people

Hong Kong: Blinged up Mercedes
Creative Commons License photo credit: Yiie
There can be a few reasons for this one. Perhaps you were taught it by someone who wasn’t successful, and used it as an excuse. Perhaps you’ve met a successful person who’s not a nice person – there certainly are plenty.

It’s an irrational generalisation, though. Some people, sure, become successful by being ruthless bastards. This has always happened and always will. But some become successful by helping people, especially these days – when the Internet is one of the main paths to success.

The main example I’m thinking of here is Pat Flynn. He teaches Internet marketing – a field that’s crowded with hucksters, rip-off merchants, scam artists and bunko men. He stands out from the crowd – and makes a very comfortable living – by adopting “helping people” as his sole business model.

I’m subscribed to his newsletter, and his stated policy – which he sticks to – is that he never makes sales offers in it. Never. He just offers genuinely useful content that will help people.

I can’t count how many newsletters I’ve unsubscribed from because they’re just one dodgy, over-hyped offer after another. I recently unsubscribed from one which recommended another marketer’s “free ebook” about the future of the Internet and “exactly what to do to make sure you benefit from the changes that are coming”. Well, it wasn’t an ebook – it was a sales letter, and a very overexcited, fear-mongering one at that. And it didn’t tell you what to do, unless “join my membership program” counts as telling you what to do. I was disgusted.

I trust Pat not to do that kind of stuff. Pat’s a nice guy. He’s friendly, positive, and unfailingly helpful. He answers reader questions all the time in the comments on his posts, by email and on his Facebook page. He never asks you to join his membership program or buy his product, because he doesn’t have either of those things. (Though people keep asking him to make something they can buy from him, because his free content is so valuable.)

So how the heck does he make tens of thousands of dollars a month, if he never hustles a product or joins in the latest hypefest for some other marketer’s overpriced e-course? He simply shows people how to do what he does, mentions the products he uses, and provides affiliate links for people to buy them if they see the value. (He also has other websites where he does sell products or run advertising, but he’s making more income now from recommending good stuff to people who trust him.)

Success doesn’t make you a horrible person, though being a horrible person can make you (by some, very limited measures) successful. Frankly, if you’re worried that success will corrupt you, it won’t. The kind of people who are corrupted by success don’t think that way.

3. You’re afraid of the work that would be required if you did become successful

I’ve left my own biggest reason for being cautious about success till last. There’s a very well-known blog in the personal development field which is one of the most popular blogs in the world, about any topic. The person who started it is almost completely inaccessible. He’s turned off comments on the blog and stopped using email, because it was just becoming too much to handle. I see other people at a lower level of success who are only a little easier to talk to – everything goes through their virtual assistants, who act as gatekeepers, because everyone wants a piece of the successful man or woman.

Becoming successful is very hard work (do not buy anything from anyone who claims otherwise). But being successful can be hard work, too. I look at these people and think, “Direct contact with the people who read my stuff, who want help from me or just want to tell me what they got out of one of my articles or courses, is one of the things I love most about doing this. Would I lose that if I scaled up to a point where I’m making enough money to do it full-time? Or would I spend all of that time buried in email, without enough time to do the other things I love, like producing new material? Would I end up with a blog full of guest posts and a shop full of affiliate offers for other people’s courses?”

Well, of course I wouldn’t. Pat Flynn, again, has several tens of thousands of people subscribed to his blog, newsletter, podcast, YouTube channel and Facebook page. He manages to answer all reader questions himself, and still produce huge amounts of useful material in all of those channels. Admittedly, Pat is a lot younger than I am, but in principle it can be done.

Success definitely brings a new set of challenges, but that’s no reason to shun it. You do deserve it, it won’t make you a bad person, and – if you think it through – there’s no reason why you can’t handle it well and enjoy it. Success is OK.

Action Now

If you’ve been shunning success for one of the reasons above, think it through carefully and logically.

Now feel it through passionately and honestly.

How can you shift your attitude to success so that it’s something you’ll allow yourself to do?

The book is coming

And speaking of success, we’re close to the end now of the How Not to Change Your Life series. Only four more posts to go on the original 25 ways I came up with in January.

My plan from there is to turn the series into a book. I’ll add a few more chapters, probably another seven, and expand the material I’ve done so far. I’ll make sure there are concrete steps to take at the end of every chapter, maybe drop in some other useful material from here an there, and create a few bonus recordings which will be accessible to people who’ve got the book.

It’ll probably end up about a third longer than the original blog posts when I publish it. I’m planning to do that in January, a year after I started the series and just in time for New Year’s resolutions.

If you think this sounds good, put your name down using the signup form below, and I’ll keep you posted on progress (and give you a discount when the book comes out).

Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.


comments: 1 » tags: , , ,
Aug 1

How Not to Change Your Life: Be Terrified of Failure

Posted in Techniques

“The burned child fears the fire.”

I’ve often thought about that old saying when I’ve held back from trying something because I was afraid I might fail.

I’ve talked here before, probably too often, about how I had a serious failure in my early 20s – I tried something I thought was challenging and exciting (training to be a youth worker), and it turned out really badly.

I’ve failed at a few other things since then, and part of the reason is that I haven’t committed myself enough – because the more I commit myself, the more disappointing failure is going to be.

But a big part of the reason that I’ve failed at things is that life is just like that. You’re never going to succeed at everything you try unless you only try the very safest things. And that’s a form of failure in itself.

Fail fast

Successful innovators use the phrase “fail fast”. What they mean is that you should try lots of things that might work, figure out quickly which ones don’t work, and move on to the next trial. Don’t spend a lot of time trying to make something work – go for the easy win.

Now, more patient people may well come along behind you, pick up something you abandoned because it didn’t work quickly enough, and give it the time and attention it needs to be a success. That’s fine too. Different strokes for different folks.

But there’s another reason for trying things fearlessly. Guessing an answer wrong, studying the material and then answering the question again is about 10% more effective than just studying and answering (according to Scientific American). I would guess that this is because, having got it wrong, you focus on finding out why you got it wrong. You’re more motivated. You’re paying more attention.

In other words, failure is part of the process of success.

Learning from failure

This series right here – How Not to Change Your Life – is a testament to the teaching power of failure. You think I could write this stuff without having got a lot of things wrong? And I got them wrong by trying them out.

The story of Edison and the light filament is so famous I’m sure it’s apocryphal. Apparently, when Edison had tried a thousand different materials to make a filament for his electric light bulbs, he remarked that those had been very useful experiments. He now knew a thousand things that wouldn’t work.

You know why I don’t give a lot of relationship advice? I’ve only ever had one serious relationship, with the woman I’ve been married to for over 12 years now. I had plenty of unsuccessful attempts to start relationships (which I learned from), but unlike the relationship gurus – most of whom have many unsuccessful relationships to look back on and draw from – I can only point to one experience, which may well not be typical.

Now, you might think that a guy with one successful relationship would know more about the topic than someone with thirty unsuccessful ones, but really, if you think about it – not the case. I wouldn’t take relationship advice from someone like me.

terrified
Creative Commons License photo credit: Casey David

How not to be terrified

You may be saying by now, “Well, that’s all well and good, but what if I am terrified of failure? It’s one thing to point out all the advantages of trying things and failing, but if I’m still terrified of it, that doesn’t do me a lot of good.”

And this is true.

Here’s where I suggest you start. Start by asking yourself, “What exactly is it that I’m terrified of?”

  • Is it being less than perfect? Sorry, you’ve already lost that one.
  • Is it people thinking less of you because you’ve failed? How much power are you giving them that doesn’t belong to them?
  • Is it the disappointment that comes with failure? That’s a stepping stone. That’s getting down to the bedrock so you can build something amazing.
  • Is it your mother’s voice in your head telling you that you have to always succeed or you’re no good? She doesn’t get to talk to you like that any more, and it’s not true and never was.

Ask yourself this: What’s the worst that could happen if I try and don’t succeed?

If the cost is too high, is there a way I can try something a bit smaller and less risky that moves me in the right direction still?

Can I mitigate the risk? (Don’t try anything where death is the probable outcome for failure, by the way. I do not recommend that.)

Can I – pay close attention here – can I redefine success so that trying is succeeding and not trying is failing?

Can I turn this into an intentional learning experience?

Try something. Take notes. Make it an experiment.

Write down your hypothesis in advance. “If I ask this person out, I will make a complete fool of myself and be humiliated.”

Now try to disprove that hypothesis by testing.

Observe the experience. Write down what you learned. What went well? What went badly? How much of that was circumstances and how much was your choices? (Because you can’t be blamed for circumstances, and you can change your choices, so either way you win.)

Find out how other people have succeeded and model them. What was it that created their success? (Small bet: Persistence and perseverance and a willingness to take risks will figure in there somewhere.)

Connect to your fear and, when you’re ready, let it go.

And then go and boldly do what you once wouldn’t have attempted, because holding yourself back in fear is the real failure.

You never know. You might reach your goal immediately. But if you do – you were probably setting your sights too low. Aim higher next time!

This post is part of a series, How Not to Change Your Life.

Sign up below to get early notification and a discount on my forthcoming book, How Not to Change Your Life.


comments: 1 » tags: , ,
« Previous Next »