Hello My friends and welcome to Five Minute Mojo. The process of making significant changes in your life isn’t always easy. In fact, it goes against the mindset that is, on some level, engrained in our being. Have you ever thought about that? I am not a big fan of creating divisions but it is important to point out that people who seek to grow each day are the minority. I was speaking with John Vespasian the other day on ZEN commuter and he mentioned that only 5% of people take steps to be better each day. I would have taken this number with a grain of salt if I hadn’t heard the same figure from other personal development coaches and authors as well. Of course I want it to be higher.
Many people try to make changes and end up giving up once life tries to reassert itself. The fear of change and comfort often times is a force to be reckoned with. Like I mentioned before, seeking comfort is the default, growing, which represents change is not.
What gets in the way? I want to spend some time talking about that today and of course ending with a question that will hopefully bring it into perspective for your own life.
One of the biggest things mindsets that often leads to frustration and eventually quitting, is the understanding that the change will be easy to implement and will face no hurdles at all. Expectation is a nasty thing. It sets you up time and time again, and in many cases leads to your changes’ demise.
The title of this episode is Nothing happens in a vacuum. While it may sound mysterious the premise is quite simple. The change you want to make will never go perfectly. It will be interacted upon by a variety of circumstances. Life will happen. You can never make a change and expect it is free of daily sidetracks.
Suppose you want to start eating healthier each day. In the beginning you are all hyped up in a great way. You may start off by reading a bunch of different articles about healthier eating. Hopefully you will turn to trusted sources and not internet hype and hucksterism. Then you head to the grocery store and get all your supplies. You're stoked. Amped up to be starting a new way of life, a new chapter.
That night you make all your food and pack it away in your cooler and off to bed. The next day comes and you are ready to begin. You head to work and the morning may start off mellow but then reality hits. You look at your schedule and you have back to back meetings, a ton of stuff to do. Each time you go to get a healthy meal or a snack the phone rings or an urgent email comes in. Before you know it is time to go home and your healthy food its still there in your cooler.
You beat yourself up, thinking you failed. You had the best of intentions, you were so ready, so prepared and yet it didn’t happen. You forgot to enter life into the equation. Your instinct is to give in. You think about it and you get frustrated with yourself because you didn’t even make it one day.
You forgot to figure in life, to figure in failures. Nothing will ever happen flawlessly every time. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s definitely part of the process. Success doesn't happen in a vacuum either. In fact it is the failures that you endure that make the victory that much sweeter.
I talked about expectation because I think many people start a new change or program with the expectation that it will be effortless, perfect. Then the first bump comes along and they give up. You are much stronger than that. The simple advice is to plan to fail. But know you will eventually succeed.
Never give up hope and never stop striving to be the best that you can be.
Now let’s make this point concrete for you with a question of the day. It may take some thinking, but that’s okay. You are no stranger to thinking.
What was the last positive change you made in your life, something that is now a positive habit? How many times did you fail before it became engrained in who you are. What was the first hurdle you encountered.
If you found today’s episode helpful then share it with your friends. Help them become better for themselves as well. Go one step better and leave a review out on iTunes or Stitcher. Best of all, subscribe to the show so you don’t miss one episode. This is Thom Walters signing off for Five Minute Mojo. Go make the rest of the day amazing, sleep tight and sweet dreams.
