3 Golden Rules for People Who Want to Change When Change is Hard
There are drug addicts who change for the better.
Some obese people finally decided to take care of their health. Some executives influenced a company to change.
How do we break negative behaviors when breaking them seems laborious? What are the critical factors that affect change in human behavior?
1. Influence the rational side of your brain
In Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch, they talked about the importance of understanding our brain’s two systems: the emotional (instinctive) and the rational (analyzing and conscious) side.
For change to happen, you need to appeal to both.
Way back in 1990, the government in Vietnam asked Save the Children, a worldwide organization that focuses on helping children in poverty, to fly into the country.
It was Jerry Sternin, who was working for the organization at the time, who led and acted upon the request of the Vietnamese government to help the country decrease malnutrition.
Sternin arrived, with his wife and son, having a few staff joining him, and read as much as he could about malnutrition. However, the traditional malnutrition solutions Sternin found from reading needed funding: sanitation systems, clean water, and getting rid of poverty.
With these challenges rising early, Sternin decided to go boots on the ground instead. He went to a few small towns and asked the mothers if they had seen poor kids who are fairly healthy.
One of the mothers he asked replied “Có. Có.”
In the book, Chip and Dan coined the term bright-spots — successful situations and people which we can model. Sternin planned to find those bright spots — the poor kids who are healthier than a typical kid, despite suffering from poverty. He focused specifically on those kids and eliminated factors such as children having relatives from the government sending them extra groceries.
What he found was that the healthy kids from another village had a different set of eating practices and cuisine. It turned out the bright-spot mothers were feeding their kids, more often actively, four meals every day.
The bright-spot kids were also eating a different variety of food. To be specific, the mothers were preparing seafood and sweet-potato greens.
Instead of announcing this phenomenal breakthrough to the village suffering from malnutrition, the big solution Sternin came up with was to create a program for the village based on what they found, with clear instructions on how to cook a healthy meal.
The mothers of the unhealthy kids were already motivated emotionally anyway. They just didn’t have a clear direction on how to improve their kids’ health.
Sternin executed. They gathered 50 families who are malnourished and prepared seafood, shrimps, and crabs to be specific, and sweet-potato greens, and cooked together.
The result? A significant change happened. 65% of the kids in the village became healthier and were better nourished.
The rational side of our brains loves to analyze complex problems. If you have a vague goal like “help my kids become healthier” with no instructions, it will overanalyze and seek hundreds of options — leaving you in analysis paralysis.
And when your mind is paralyzed due to your brain being all over the place, you stop. No progress will be made. Hence, no change.
“Having clear instructions, having a clear direction is a critical factor to change.”
Think of the behavior you’re trying to change. Do you have a sense of direction of where you’re going and the specific steps to go there?
However, directing your rational mind is only one part of the equation.
2. Motivate the emotional side of your brain
We are driven by emotions at the end of the day. We won’t do something if we don’t feel either motivated or worried.
The emotional side of the brain doesn’t give any love for rational arguments and analyzing problems. It’s 99% driven by human emotions.
I think you’ve experienced this: You saw a commercial or news about a soap you’ve been using for a few months now. And you saw this product made someone lose money, sick, or worse, die.
Your brain went “What in the world! I think should stop using this.”
You experienced negative emotions such as fear, worry, and anxiety. You worried “What if that happens to me too?” And that caused you to stop using that particular product.
On the other hand, if your dream is to become a world-class programmer, and you see someone like Zuckerberg who started creating the biggest application that was ever invented, Facebook, in their dormitory room with his roommates, you’ll be inspired, excited, and motivated.
You experienced positive emotions such as hope, inspiration, and excitement.
Both positive ( from the programmer example) and negative (from the soap example) emotions can motivate that emotional part of our brains and help us fuel our desire to change.
If you’ve experienced enough pain (negative emotions) from your current job and feel a tremendous amount of excitement (positive emotions) to start your side hustle, armed with clear instructions, you’re more likely going to change and quit.
Think of change this way:
Change occurs when both the emotional and rational sides of our brains align, and we are in the appropriate environment.
So think about your reasons for change. Why must you change? What would it cost you to not change? Clear instructions aren’t enough. We need strong and compelling reasons as well.
However, notice the last part. Change will be extremely difficult if we don’t have that last ingredient in our recipe.
Because to change, we must also be in the appropriate environment.
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3. Create the Appropriate Environment At All Costs
There’s no doubt people would love to change. They know what they want, why they want to change, and how to change. They have good reasons and clear instructions to follow.
But what often happens is life kicks them in their faces, because they are in an environment that is discouraging.
And they think “I can never change. This is just my destiny.”
I struggled with this for a long time. When most of my days were full of worries and self-doubts, I would ask my depressed friend for advice, with the hope of feeling better.
When I changed who I was listening to, and started to listen to happy people, I changed.
“Who you listen to is a huge part of your environment.”
Think of it this way: You set the goal — you want to improve your attitude, and you want to be kinder, more compassionate, and empathic to your significant other.
But if you spend 4 hours a day in your favorite coffee shop with 4 jerks, you will never breakthrough and change.
If your social circle is full of jerks, you become them. If you hang around with drama mamas, you will become a drama mama yourself.
If you want to stop being unhealthy, get a bulldozer and get rid of those bags of chips, chocolate bars, and every unhealthy snack you have at home. Then you won’t even try to resist eating those because there’s nothing to resist in the first place. Environment.
The environment in which you’re seeking to change matters.
Any Real Change Must Be Hard
To change, we need to influence the rational and emotional parts of our brains, and we must construct an environment that supports the change we want to make.
“I understand all of that John. But there are days when I don’t feel like it. It’s so difficult to stay consistent.”
Here’s my answer for you:
Change must be hard. If it isn’t difficult, it wouldn’t be a real change.
And always remember: nothing changes if nothing changes. No change will occur without a change in your routine.
Doubts come up when I write too. I still feel an impostor in some days “Who am I to share what I’m learning about human psychology and happiness?”
But since I learned that it’s about being of service, I have never focused on the negative since then. Instead, I’m focused on the question “who can I impact when I share what I’m learning?”
Once you see who you’re serving and how it would feel like when your life changes, beyond the current day-to-day problems and worries, you change.
Thanks for reading.
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