What you must consider before making a big change in your life or career
What do you need in place before you can make a big change?
Making the kind of changes required for big things to happen in life is rarely easy and many of us fall prey to the myriad of pitfalls that stop change in its tracks: overthinking, avoidance, or demotivation (just to name a few).
We are all familiar with the fun that comes with future-scheming and dreaming about the future we seek. But the changes or sacrifices we have to make to get there (e.g our routines, habits or lifestyle) can often be less fun.
That’s because they require letting go of the comfort of the status quo; which can be painful. Even when it no longer serves us.
Coaching is centred on change, and over the past few years I’ve seen my fair share of changes happen in clients lives. In this post I explore what it really takes for a change to happen. Read on for a change checklist that you can follow if you’re ready to make a big change in your life or career, for good.
You gotta want to change
Pre-requisite number one on the change checklist, is the desire to make a change.
This is not a desire for the end result (e.g. to be a non-smoker) but the desire to do the thing it takes to be one (experience withdrawal symptoms and internal struggles of breaking the habit). Or more in keeping with this audience, the desire not to have a profitable business, but to make the changes required to be the person who builds a profitable business. Accepting a loss in certainty, feelings of discomfort and fear along the way.
The 1970s transtheoretical model of change developed by psychologists James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente revealed how when it comes to making change, there are preparatory stages that come first. One of which, ’precontemplation’, is actually referring to those who have no desire to make a change within the next six months, whether consciously or otherwise. Source.
You know that friend who's been complaining about their job for the last five years running… yeah.
Why do we stay in precontemplation and refuse to make progress towards important goals?
The model states the reason is either a lack of information about the change itself, or demotivation towards change, due to past failed attempts at it already.
Too many setbacks one after the other will naturally create a period of demotivation that can last for years. The reality for most people is that change is nonlinear and we can return to this state at any time throughout our journey. Consider the saying ‘one step forward, two steps back’ and you get the idea.
Some of my 1-1 current clients are not on their first attempt at going self-employed, for example. In the past they’ve attempted to create products or services that would allow them to leave their employment behind but this didn't work out for various reasons. Following that, a period of demotivation took over.
Eventually, with enough time, external pressures or internal desire, the next stage of change took over: contemplation.
They reached out, and invested in coaching, thus signalling a readiness for progress and change once again.
Simon Sinek describes how when people have enough time to explore change, their receptiveness to it increases. In this video on how to overcome the fear of change he says that when those around them show empathy to their situation (as is present in a coaching relationship) the conditions for change are in place.
But the desire for change, is just the starting point.
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Tackle the forces that resist change
Your desire for the end point you seek (a new business, career, riches and fame) gets stacked up against another force. This is the force of inertia which sees your life as you know it, and gets accustomed to this reality. AKA your comfort zone.
When you want something that you don’t yet have, the only way you can get the thing is by changing your current reality. To put it bluntly, the career, relationships and bank balance you have today are a mirror of your past decisions and circumstances. They are your current reality for a reason.
Changing your situation requires facing the obstacles that stand in the way of making change happen. This piece by Steve Schlafman on investigating and resolving resistance towards change shows just how often you’ll experience tension and push-back from your own worst enemy: yourself.
He quotes Philosopher Alan Watts:
“I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good ‘I’ who is going to improve the bad ‘me.’ ‘I,’ who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward ‘me,’ and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently ‘I’ will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make ‘me’ behave so badly.” – Source
He says it’s our role to take stock of our own resistance; which is typically a form of self destruction rather than external factors that stand against us.
As a coach I am privy to the ‘resistance’ in my coaching conversations as I support clients to navigate their next career move or business idea.
Common forms of resistance I see include:
Who am I to do this thing? I should get back in my box
I’m too busy to give this focus right now
This probably won’t work, I should stop now
My friends / family/ partner will not like if if I’m successful
I need more time to think, plan, research before I should take another step force
Such resistance keeps many people playing small, not reaching their potential, often for years. These are subconscious thoughts and feelings, also known as limiting beliefs, which need to be tackled head on.
Julia Cameron’s book ‘The Artist’s Way’ has been used by hundreds of thousands worldwide (including myself) on their quest towards bigger, bolder, more creative endeavours. Cameron created this book as a 12 week course in order to combat the often destructive, fear-filled “Creative U-turns” many people experience before retreating to their “cave of self-defeat”.
Knowing this resistance was expected in my self-employment journey helped to squash the resistance I felt when putting content on the internet for example. To me, this was an integral step on my self-employed journey. The rewards have more than made up for these early fears.
In every area of your life and career, there will be a tension between the life you have, and the life you could have. If that tension feels great enough, read on for what the next stage of making change entails.
Taking your next steps
As we have seen, the desire for change and overcoming your resistance to change, come first.
Then, comes the action. Which is why when helping entrepreneurial professionals to navigate professional transitions, decisions, planning and action are the core coaching pillars I use and in previous posts I’ve written extensively on career decisions, planning, and executing on goals.
However, for this post, I want you to pay attention to something required across all of the pillars which is perhaps even more important: belief.
The belief that you can change and that what you seek is attainable.
Over the years I myself have had periods of low self belief. It shows up when I doubt the reality of something occurring (making a success of a project, an income goal or a personal aspiration) I might say something along the lines of “I’ll believe it when I see it” or “I’ll feel confident I can do the thing, once I have already done the thing”.
But that’s the wrong way around. I’ve since learned belief has to come first.
Believing you can have what you want is a big prerequisite to it happening. Believing you can run a successful company, meet your soulmate, lose weight, write a winning novel… you create these realities in your mind first before they become your reality.
Sadly, sheer hard work, talent or being a good human being do not in themselves create the desired future you want. Sure they help, but the stories of delusional leaders winning big despite their almighty egos and hairbrained schemes demonstrates the immense power of high self belief. Donald Trump, Adam Neumann, Elizabeth Holmes… These people believed in their own hype and the world around them reflected that back to them (at least for a period of time).
Of course, certain privileges, backgrounds and circumstances make the belief side of this equation much easier for some than for others.
If this sounds a bit airy-fairy, let’s consult science on the matter.
Lisa Feldman Barrett is one of the world's most highly cited scientists in the fields of neuroscience and psychology and wrote Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain to explore common misconceptions; revealing how our brains are like prediction machines. Similar to a dark box they will use historic data to make predictions before applying sensory inputs which confirm them.
The common misconception is that humans respond to external triggers to inform their beliefs. AKA you see a healthy bank balance and believe you can hold wealth.
But neurologically Barrett reveals that brains are predicting what actions to take based on experiences they have had in the past. Then confirmation bias seeks to confirm this existing set of beliefs.
So basically, if you don’t believe that you can hold wealth, you won’t.
Thanks to this post by David Elikwu for bringing Feldman’s work to my attention and for sharing these examples below:
Two years post-surgery, the patients who had the fake operations reported the same level of pain relief as patients that underwent real surgery
A study showed that people who drank a milkshake thinking it was healthy exhibited caloric impact as though it was healthier, while people who were told the same milkshake was unhealthy exhibited greater caloric impact
A group with migraines took a migraine drug labelled with the drug's name, another took a placebo labelled "placebo," and a third group took nothing. The researchers discovered that the placebo was 50% as effective as the real drug to reduce pain after a migraine attack.
Given the evidence at play in these crazy examples, my advice as a coach is as follows: believe that the change you seek has already happened and you’ll make the chances of it happening exponentially increase.
With coaching clients, like Simon, that involved building conviction in a brighter future. We worked on affirmations of what he would go on to eventually achieve: quitting his job, setting up a freelance company, moving abroad, and ultimately making a huge impact within the first year of operations.
In my own experiences, that’s believing in those 5-figure months before they happened.
It can feel like magic. When your brain believes something to be true it soon finds the ‘answers’ needed to make it true in reality.
Try this at home by writing affirmations in your journal (choose whatever is important to you) and write them in the positive, current state:
I have a six figure business
I am working with my dream clients
I am a reputable figure in my space
I have a career that fulfils me
I have become a remote solopreneur
Whatever change you seek get really specific, and imagine you already have it in your life.
Create your change checklist
As we wrap up, hopefully you’ve been exploring what changes in your own life are truly worth investing energy into. The ones where your desire is greater than the resistance, and you can build a compelling vision, plans and self belief around them.
As Schlafmans essay argues… you won’t be able to make change unless you know what it is exactly that holds you back.
See how the formula for change brings this to life:
Even if you have a clear vision for what you want, you are dissatisfied by your current reality enough to change, and you’ve taken some first steps towards it, this won't be enough if your resistance is greater than those factors combined.
To change requires you to tackle the forces that keep you still head on.
Try the checklist on yourself:
You have an area in your life where you want to change
The pain of staying still is greater than your inertia
You understand what forces of resistance are holding you back
You have a clear vision for what you want instead
You have a goal and a plan to get there
You have the self-belief that change is possible
As you move through this checklist, be mindful of that pesky resistance. Consciously identify whatever forms of self-sabotage have hold of the steering wheel: Buying the cookies, putting other people’s needs first, spending the money you’d set aside for your new business… whatever it is you probably have those behaviours locked down as your own form of inertia.
It’s time to make those other forces greater.
If you are stuck, unable to fight the resistance, or clarify an exact vision for what you want, I can help. I help ambitious, entrepreneurial professionals decide and plan their next career pivot or business idea so they can feel clear and excited about their future with the tools, frameworks and mindset work that you need to make this possible.
Limited 1-1 slots for April and May are available now and you can book a non-obligation consultation here for us to review all the factors at play, what changes you seek to make, and what the bespoke coaching plan for your situation might look like. It’s a non-obligation call to see if we can work well together and your dreams are ones I can truly help you to make possible. I’ll help build your self-belief too, of course.
Best of luck on your change journey and a big thanks to the authors Angela Wood & Ralph Wood, David Elikwu and Steve Schlafman whose articles helped to shape this piece.
