What prevents us from making the changes we need, and want?

I was listening today to one of those personal coaching recordings from Tony Robbins that I used to play a few years ago – and yes, I still return to his and other wise mentors’ teachings often. Tony’s sound, energy, and his lifelong dedication to serving people, helping them want and demand more from themselves and their lives, supporting personal breakthroughs for decades, really made me smile. A smile of huge respect and gratitude for his committed work.

In that particular lesson, Tony shares the common reasons why so few of us make lasting changes. We tend to stick to old habits, even if we want to change our routines, finances, relationships, or to think better, take more action, have that difficult conversation, make that tough decision, move more, do better, lose weight…

Whatever it is, we just keep going and should’ing this or should’ing that. But according to Tony, as long as we don’t turn our shoulds into musts, we’ll keep getting the same old results. When something is a must, we follow through. Sometimes that must appears only after something changes in our circumstances.

Need for certainty or variety?

Sometimes we might wonder why we’re not moving forward. We might feel truly inspired and motivated, until the moment we need to commit to ourselves to uncomfortable or painful. That’s when the motivation just fades. Maybe we simply don’t have enough discipline. Maybe the goal or dream seems too far away, so we settle for something that feels safer, more comfortable, and more certain.

It’s also helpful to recognize which of the six human needs (Discover the 6 human needs)are most important for us. We all prioritize our needs differently and that’s how we make decisions, unconsciously or consciously. According to Tony Robbins, the six human needs are:

1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure
2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
4. Connection/Love: a strong sense of closeness with someone or something
5. Growth: expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
6. Contribution: a sense of service, helping and giving to others

When we understand why we (and others!) do the things we do, how we define and measure success and why we make the choices we make, we develop more self-compassion, acceptance and tolerance for our own (and others’) sometimes stubborn, repetitive behaviors.

But why not stretch ourselves into areas where we could gain more skills and growth, and more joy and contentment?

Wishing you some new insights about yourself and some magic to your summer!

Rationalization

Let’s come back to our everyday behaviors. We all tend to rationalize, to keep telling ourselves stories that ”free” from doing the things that would actually move us closer to our goals or even our biggest dreams. We all rationalize unless the pain in staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

I can openly share the most common reasons I don’t get things done, or why I procrastinate with important stuff. Here are some of my ridiculous rationalizations (and the real truth that I must listen to):

• ”I don’t have time for this” => We all have 24 hours a day. it’s a matter of prioritization. There is always one moment for one thing. Just start.
• ”I’m definitely too old for this. I should have done this 15 years ago” => Well, I cannot change my age and I’m still alive and showing up. I am not going to give up.
• ”It will take me forever to get me into results, so why bother?” => Well, everything meaningful until today has taken a lot of time and effort, nothing new there!
• ”I will do it tomorrow” => Don’t we all know that ”tomorrow” never really comes, right?
• Me trying to record a video in English: ”I look sooo ugly in videos, and my accent and pronunciation are so embarrassing” => Honestly, it could be worse. Who cares how I look, if I have something worthwhile to share?

In the end…

I want to close with encouraging you to:

Give Extra Chances – Especially to Yourself.

If we’re not dead yet, we can still change things.