If you’ve ever tried to make a change in your life you know this to be true – change is hard.
Think about something you’ve been trying to change in your life that hasn’t gone so easy..
Your nutrition, exercise, income, problems with team members, managing cash, or relationships…
If you are honest with yourself, you may even look back and realize it’s something you’ve been struggling with for months, years or even your entire life.
If change was so easy, we’d all be doing it and living our most perfect and best lives 100% of the time but that’s often not the case. Today’s episode is for those of you sick of the battle and who are ready and willing to start making changes. Let’s dive in…
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Change is difficult, but it doesn’t have to be
Simple steps to get you where you want to be in life
Learn better ways to manage your relationships, money, and much more
Change does not necessarily mean more work but rather smarter work
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Alright, hello hello, Jennifer Dawn here with Happy Productive. And today I want to talk about change. Why is change so dang hard, right? And if you’ve got something in your life that you’ve been trying to change, you probably have already figured out that change can be really hard. And change is hard. I mean, let’s be honest here. And anyone who says that, you know, it isn’t hard is kind of full of crap. Or they’ve never tried to change anything really difficult that maybe you’ve been struggling with for a really, really long time. So if you have struggled to make a change in your life, and something that maybe has been with you for a while, you know, already that change is hard. Now, just because it might be hard doesn’t mean however, that it’s impossible. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible at all.
So if you think about something that maybe you’ve been trying to change in your life, and it has hasn’t been going the way that you want. It could be anything. It could be your nutrition, it could be your exercise regime, it could be your income. Maybe you’re a business owner, if you’ve got problems with your team members, right? You’re just always like, why am I always struggling with these employee issues? It could be managing cash, why am I always living check to check? Why do I never have enough cash. It could be a relationship that maybe you’re struggling with, right? It could be any of these areas that, you know, you’ve been trying to change, and it just isn’t happening.
And for some of these areas, if you’re really honest with yourself, and you look back, you might even realize, heck, I’ve been dealing with this for months, years, or maybe even your entire life. This is something that I’ve experienced, and I know I’ve helped my clients on Earth, you know, certain limiting beliefs or things that have really been with them their whole life. Now, if change was so darn easy, we’d all just all automatically be doing it and we’d be living our most perfect and highest and best lives 100% of the time, but that is often not the reality.
And think about this for a second, even with like really rich or really successful people that you tend to think, oh, they’ve got it all figured out. They don’t! If you’ve seen the cover of these magazines, you know, they might have a lot of money or success in their career, but maybe they’re really struggling in a relationship or they’re really struggling with their health, right, because they’ve had some sort of a disease or a diagnosis. And so just because you might be successful or have money doesn’t mean that you’ve got it all. It’s very, very common for us to succeed in one area of our life, but then be struggling in another.
And so it’s those trouble areas right in our lives. That can be such a struggle for us to change and those are also the areas of our life which really those areas if we can get the change going those of areas that we’re going to grow from the most. And we’re going to be able to learn, and we’re going to be able to get ourselves past our current skill level and our current ability level. Now, you’ve probably heard the term “oh, that’s a growth opportunity.” If you’ve been dealing with something for a long time, like you’re just like, “shut up,” you don’t want to hear that, right? I don’t want to hear that this challenge I’ve been dealing with for years of my life as a “growth opportunity,” right?
Instead, you want to know how how, how, how do I finally overcome this? How do I get the change that I’m needing, that I’m desiring. And so that’s what I want to talk a little bit about in today’s episode, for those of you who want to change, but you’re really struggling to make it. So maybe you’ve decided that you want to change but you’re just feeling a lot of resistance around it or you’re just frustrated or really, really down in the dumps. I’m seeing that with a lot of clients right now with this Covid-19 and I don’t know when you’re going to be listening to this podcast. You might be listening years in the future and be looking back and go “oh Covid-19” you know, “remember when we went through that?” but for those of you who are we’re in it right now. And I’m hearing a lot of people just kind of really being sick of the whole thing, they’re ready to get back to normal or whatever that new normal is going to be like, let’s just get on with it already. So I’m definitely seeing a lot of that.
Maybe if you have started to take an honest look at your life, maybe you’ve identified some patterns or some limiting belief systems which have held you back and you’re just kind of like sick of it. Like you’re tired of these patterns, and you really are ready to get on with it get on to something better, and you’ve just had enough. Or maybe you have been trying to change, right, and you’re trying and you’re failing, and you’re trying and you’re failing, and you’re just not really getting those tangible, real results. And so, wherever you’re at in that today’s episode is really going to be for you.
Because here’s the simple truth about change. It might feel really overwhelming and huge, but it isn’t that complex. And if you guys have been with me for any length of time, you know, I like things simple! Like them simple and easy to understand so that we can implement them and really start to see results very, very quickly. And the truth is, when it comes to changes that anyone can do it, anyone can absolutely do it! But there’s going to be 2 things that are absolutely required. And I’m going to go into those two things.
Now, one thing that I do want you to know, and I’m not going to go into, you know, brain chemistry and the science of the brain, even all that science, it’s totally out there. I’ve read so many books on this topic. But again, just make it simple and easy to understand. When we do the same things over and over again, it creates these groups in our brains. It’s the same idea behind we’re able to get in a car and drive somewhere not only remember the drive, right, because we just sort of go on autopilot and the same thing can happen over and over in any area of our life. So just think about this groove that’s kind of been created our brain and we just go on autopilot and we just kind of get stuck in these groups.
So if we want to change something in our lives, it’s going to require us to think differently, and to act differently, and to basically stop using the old grooves and start to create new grooves in our brain. Now, that sounds like it should be easy, but it isn’t. It often isn’t. And if you felt the resistance or you’ve tapped into willpower, and you do good for a couple of days, and then you fall back, right, or you do good for a week, and then you slowly fall back and you what happens is you fall back into that old deep groove that you’ve been operating on for months or years or even a lifetime, okay? So just be aware that what we’re doing when we talk about change is we’re really, truly creating a new groove in the brain.
And to create the new groove, we need 2 things. One, you have to actually want it for real. You can’t just give it lip service. You can’t just you know, talk, talk talk, you have to truly in your heart, like want the change. And sometimes we’re just not ready and that’s okay. I’d rather say you know what I know I need to change this, I am going to change this, but I’m just not ready to change it yet. I think that’s totally okay, you’ve taken ownership. And when you’re ready, you’ll be ready. And then you can start making the changes, alright? But when you’re just talking it, but you’re not really serious, you’re not going to be able to stick with it. And so number one is to really spend some time getting clear on what it is you want to change, why you really want to change it, and really and truly in your heart want to make the change.
Number 2, is that okay, you’re clear, you really want to make the change. Part 2 is simply this, you have to show up, and here’s what I mean. And for some of you, this is going to be like, “oh, yeah, I get it. I’m not showing up and I need to start showing up.” But I want to give you some examples. So here’s what I mean is that you want it and now you have to start showing up. So I work with business owners, I’m a business coach. And generally when I talk with business owners like when we do a free consult call, they’re usually in grouped into two kinds of groups.
There’s the ones who get on the phone, and they’re all jazzed and they really, really need the help. And we talk about coaching. And they’re like, “wow, this really sounds great.” And then they say, “okay, I’m gonna think about it.” And then they disappear. And they come with up with a whole bunch of excuses or reasons, or I’m still thinking about it, I’m still thinking about it. And that’s okay. They can think about all they need to think about it because I don’t do high pressure, but I can generally tell from the consult as to which group they’re going to fall into. And there’s the first group that don’t make a decision. They don’t pull the trigger. They come up with a bunch of reasons why they have to think about it. And those are the clients that do not change. They stay stuck in their business. They stay stuck in their life. And they have all these justifications and excuses that kind of like keep them company in their stuckness.
Then there’s the second group. And these are the clients who get the very, very best results. And these are the clients who they sign up, right? They say they know that they need help. And so they sign up to get help. They pay their bill, they then show up for the calls, and then they keep showing up. And they’re not just showing up to a call and passing time or distracted, right? They’re showing up to the call. They have an open mindset. They’re taking notes. And then after the call, they’re actually taking action, right? They’re doing something with the information that they’ve learned on the calls. These are the clients who double and triple their revenues. They reduce their workload, they make a lot more money and long term, they’re much much happier as a result, and it almost never fails. Like they’re gonna fit in one into those two groups. Everybody has the best of intentions. But it’s the ones that show up and are serious, that get the results.
Now, just because you signed up and you show up doesn’t mean that they always show up in a wonderful, great mood. No! Does it mean that they show up and they have all the answers. No! Does it mean that they show up? Because oh, they did it perfectly? No! It doesn’t mean any of that. All it means is that they showed up and they showed up when they were in a bad place. And they showed up, even though they didn’t know what the next steps were. They showed up even though they didn’t do it perfectly right. But they showed up and they kept showing up. And that right there is the difference maker between those who get the change that they’re after and those who don’t.
Now, let’s just talk a little bit about how showing up might look like for you like in your business or in your life because it’s really easy to confuse this you guys with thinking that showing up has to be perfect. Doesn’t mean that at all. It really just means you have to do something. Big difference between just doing something and then trying to be, “perfect” at it. So let’s look at some different areas of your life. So nutrition, nutrition is an example that I use a lot. Because as a business owner, if you want to scale your business, if you want to fix some of the problems going on in your business, if you want to change some things in your business, you’re going to need energy to do that. And if your nutrition is awful, and you just have no energy every day, it’s going to be really, really hard for you to show up and make some of these changes.
So when we talk about nutrition, and “hey, I need to make a change in my nutrition.” What might that look like when we talk about showing up? Does that mean that you show up and you eat perfectly every day? No, probably not. But in the beginning, it means that you show up and maybe you just eat something healthy, every day. And instead of counting the ways you screwed up, you flip that and you start counting how many things how many good things you did for your body every single day, right? So I’m going to show up for myself, I’m going to eat something healthy today. I’m going to drink something healthy today. And then I’m going to start counting how many good things I did, right? That is showing up. It does not mean like beating yourself up.
And guys, when it comes to nutrition, I am not recommending any particular diet or anything like that. It’s so funny. I’ve tried most of them. None of them work, ever. You know, you get little results here and there but nothing ever really stuck. Or you know, you’d eat these things that are just like intuitively I would know were really bad for me. And I would just feel terrible. So now the joke in our household and with my husband is I told him I’m going to create the CFS diet which stands for Common FREAKING Sense. It’s the Common Freaking Sense diet. And as part of the Common Freaking Sense diet, we eat fruits and vegetables, right? We eat things that intuitively we know have nutrition. They’re live living healthy foods, they’ve not been packaged or processed, right?
These kinds of foods, like there’s nobody spending billions of dollars to convince you that broccoli is good for you. Because you already know intuitively broccoli is of course, it’s good for you. So just be aware that, you know, a lot of these industries, they spend so much money convincing you of the health benefits of their food that just aren’t there. And so when we talk about nutrition, we’re talking about getting some living whole foods in your body, some leafy greens, some fruits, and you know what, nobody ever got fat from eating an apple ever. It didn’t happen. And so I know that fruits sometimes get a lot of bad wrap. But it just isn’t true. I’ve tried both ways. And so, for example, when we talk about nutrition, it might be as simple as you know what I’m going to show up, I’m going to eat something using my common sense that I know is good for me. And that might be all that you need to do.
All right, when we talk about exercise, and what would showing up look like there, it might just mean moving your body every day. It doesn’t have to be 2 hours. And in fact, in the beginning, if you’re really out of shape, it could be 2 minutes. And I’m not kidding when I say set the bar at 2 minutes. If you just started showing up every day for 2 minutes, and you did that for 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks, you would be in the habit of showing up for 2 minutes. And so to then extend the 2 minutes to 3 minutes or 4 minutes or 5 minutes is going to be a whole lot easier. Because you paved the way, right? You started to create that new groove in your brain by just showing up every day for 2 minutes and it does start to get awkward whole lot easier by lowering that bar.
Let’s talk about your business. So let’s say that you are looking for change in your business. Business owners and I’ve been one most of my entire life, like we can get so caught up in never wanting to ask for help and our little egos always looking at what our sales are but never really looking at the bottom line of what our profits are, right? Never wanting to ask for help, never wanting to admit we’re wrong, pretending that we’re more successful than we really are. Right? We get caught up in all of these things. The International Coaching Federation actually found that 70% of business owners who got a business coach actually found it to be very, very valuable.
So when we talk about showing up a way of showing up could be just like getting out of our own way, deciding that we’re going to check our ego deciding that we’re going to actually ask for some help. It could be getting a coach, right? Actually pulling the trigger and getting a coach. And then once you have a coach then showing up might look like, hey, preparing for your coaching calls, spending a few minutes like giving some thought to how you want to spend that coaching time, and then taking action. And this is really critical. You guys taking action after the call of receiving that guidance and then doing something with it. That’s what showing up could look like.
Maybe you need to show up in your finances a little bit more. And so does that mean that you show up one day and everything is perfect? No, it means that you take small steps forward. So when we talk about showing up, it might just be “hey, I haven’t balanced my checkbook in 6 years.” So that’s showing up might mean I’m going to I’m going to get my balance my checking account balance reconciled for however long that takes okay. It might mean having a budget maybe you have a budget but you don’t look at it. So it might mean looking at the budget, okay, you look at the budget but you haven’t updated it with your actuals. Like you haven’t gone back to see how accurate your budget is compared with actual expenses from your past months. So it could mean doing something like that.
It could be just setting aside a little bit of time each day or each week to show up and just manage your finances. Depending on how far behind you might be. It could really, truly be 30 minutes a day, “I’m going to show up and manage my finances.” And if you have a lot of resistance to that, go back to the 2 minute example, show up for 2 minutes and work on your finances. In 2 minutes you just get logged in and you post a transaction. You know what, that’s still better than not doing anything. And the next day you show up, log in post two transactions, that’s better. That’s change. That’s a new brain groove.
Now, when we talk about showing up some things that it does not mean, it does not mean you got to work harder, you’ve got to work longer hours. Now, most business owners that I work with are already working long, hard hours and so that’s the last thing that I want them to do when I talk about showing up. It means showing up in working smarter, okay? That’s what showing up is going to mean it doesn’t mean grinding yourself into the ground. Now, if you’re on the flip side of that, and you know you’re not doing anything all day and you’re cruising Netflix and you’re on social media and you’re making up a lot of excuses, and you’re not really taking a lot of action each day and you’re not really working those hours, then showing up for you would be different. That does mean get your butt off the screens and get to work and take some action. That’s where showing up means.
But for those of you who are who are just working those really long, hard hours and I say show up and you go” oh my god, I just can’t do any more.” That’s not what I’m talking about. When I say show up, I’m talking about working a lot smarter, showing up for yourself, okay? When we talk about showing up I’m not talking about being a victim in any way shape or form. I’m not talking about punishing yourself or beating yourself up. No the idea like why showed up and I paid attention to what I did today, and look at all the things that I did wrong. That’s not showing up. All right, that’s just beating yourself up and keeping yourself in a victim, the victim place and losing all your own power. We don’t want that at all.
Okay, we’re talking about change here. And change is about doing something different. So if you already show up and you’re, you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself, then change would actually be the opposite of that right? Showing up and giving yourself credit for the things that you did, right? That day, that would be change, that would be good. And this is what we want to do. We want to show up for the good change that you’re trying to make in your life or business. We want to show up with love from your heart space, not in this like abusive head space where we’re always beating ourselves up. So if we want to make change easier, which we absolutely can, it’s important to lower that bar, lower that bar.
I have a horse and in horse training, the idea behind horse training is to make it as easy on the horse as possible to do what you want them to do. And if you go slower, you end up going faster when you’re training a horse, but when you push them as fast as they can go, you end up having to go back and re-do things, okay? So it’s about lowering that bar going a little bit slower, truly in your heart wanting to change and then just starting to show up in the best way for you. And showing up every single day. It doesn’t mean that every day is going to be perfect. Think of it almost like a dial right? Some days, we’re in a really good place and we can dial it up. Some days life is crap, and we’re going to dial it back, we’re just not going to turn it off. Because we want to create keep creating those new grooves in the brain.
This is also with the A task right in the Best Planner Ever is all about. It’s that step forward. I’m going to take every single day, that step forward, that step forward to get the change in my life that I’m after. Remember doing the same thing, every day is not going to get you the change you desire. So if you’re really feeling stuck, just look at what you’ve been doing. And if it’s is the same thing day in, day out. It’s like, “okay, we’ve got to show up and we’ve got to do something different.” Once we start to do something different now we see that it’s working, just stick with it. And then of course, we can gradually then start to increase the time that we’re working on it.
Now if you need some help with this, I would love to help you just come on over and you can check out Goal Achievers, which is our monthly life coaching program, which is all virtual or Inner Circle for business owners where we really take you by the hand and we help you with all of these concepts every single month. We will get you back on track to get you bet change that you’re seeking in your life or your business. And we’ll do it together. We’ll make it as fun as we possibly can. All right, guys, you can find out more on either of my websites bestplannerever.com or jenniferdawncoaching.com. That’s it, get out there and have a Happy Productive day!
xo
Jennifer