Keep the Change: How to create sustainable transformation in your life

We live in a world where the word change comes up often. Things are always changing. And it is even said that if you can’t keep up with change, you will become stagnant, irrelevant, redundant. There is so much change that most of us feel like we simply can’t keep up. The pace of change is so staggering that it leaves our heads spinning.

And yet, have you ever stopped to consider what the word change actually means? Here is how the dictionary defines change:

make (someone or something) different; alter or modify; become different; be altered or modified; turn or convert (something) from one state, form, or substance into another.

Synonyms include adjust, adapt, alter, amend, improve, modify, convert, revise, recast, reform, reshape, redesign, restyle, revamp, rework, remake, remodel, redo, reconstruct, reorganise, reorder, refine, customise, tailor, tweak

Opposites include preserve, stay the same

In my article on I AM: The two most powerful words in the world, I shared that I attended Devon Bandison’s Game Changer Event. There I considered for the first time what the word change actually means and how it is not helpful to our growth and development. See, change works with what is there already and aims to alter, adjust, improve, modify, revise, redesign, rework, remake.

So, if I’m trying to change, I’m working off what’s already there and trying to make it better. I’m trying to revamp, redesign, reinvent myself. And that is how we end up in cycles of “trying to get better”. We are working with what’s there and we are focused on changing our current behaviours and habits. Essentially, I’m looking at my life and trying to decide what is not working or which habits I want to undo, and then I’m trying to change my behaviour or break bad habits and replace them with good habits.

What Devon shared was that change doesn’t last, because you are simply recycling the past. Think about it, when you commit to change, you tell yourself you will do better, or you will be better next time. You focus on changing your behaviour.

What I want to highlight here, is that when you try and change your behaviour or your habits, you are essentially treating yourself as a problem that needs to be fixed. You are looking at what’s broken and not working, you are critiquing it and then pushing hard to have it be different. The moment you judge yourself as wrong, bad, broken, not good enough, you invite your Ego in, and Ego is where the Inner Critic lives and there is nothing the Inner Critic loves more than to criticize. So, when you focus on changing old patterns of behaviour, you are asking your Ego Self, or your Inner Critic to help you change.

Here is how it goes. New Year’s comes around and we promise ourselves, this year we are going to be better. We fight with our partner, we make up, and we promise ourselves we will do better. We make a mistake at work, we clean up the mess – sometimes we don’t, we simply avoid taking responsibility – and we promise ourselves, we will be better next time. We go to the gym for the first two or three days, we work out, and hate ourselves, then we find excuses not to go to workouts, and we end up hating ourselves even more. You end up in a cycle of non-stop self-degradation and self-loathing.

And the truth is, you cannot degrade or punish yourself into sustainable transformation, because here is something interesting about human nature. We are naturally resistant to being told what to do, even if the person telling us what to do is ourselves. One of the very first things babies start doing to claim their own independence, is to learn to say “no”, and they say no to everything. A two-year old will even say no to something they want, if it means they get to resist you offering it to them. That’s how powerful it is. We have a natural resistance from the age of two.

When we try and force ourselves into change, life becomes this series of situations where we tell ourselves we will be better, we try to change our behaviour, sometimes we succeed, other times we don’t, and before long we fall back into old patterns of behaviour.

I have had conversations with clients who have spent their whole lives trying to fix themselves. They acknowledge to me that they are works in progress and although that is true – we are all works in progress – the way they are with themselves is not that they are works in progress. They treat themselves as major revamping projects. They see themselves as a problem that needs to be fixed. And the story – whether they are conscious of it or not – is that once they fix themselves, they will be happy, and all will be ok. So, they cannot stop until they find the solution to what’s wrong with them.

I spent many years of my life believing that I was broken and that there was something wrong with me. I spent years chasing every possible course, qualification, book, program, methodology etc. to find a cure or solution for what was wrong with me. My coach was the first person in my life who did not treat me as a problem that needed to be fixed. She did not see me the way I saw myself. She did not see me as broken. She saw me as naturally resourceful, creative, and whole and she treated me like that. It was the first time in my life that I wasn’t being judged by someone and it was so freeing.

Of course, I didn’t agree with her. I had a very strong Inner Critic, so I naturally resisted, and yet she just stayed patient with me. Over the course of three years, she has helped me understand that beating myself into submission doesn’t serve me. She has helped me learn to love myself with my flaws and to appreciate my humanity. She has helped me see that I can truly transform my life when I stop treating myself as a problem.

And there are no words to describe how freeing it is to not have to go through life believing there is something wrong with me.

We are all works in progress, but that doesn’t mean that you are broken. See, people only have part of the sentence. The whole sentence is: You are a masterpiece and a work in progress at the same time. An artist can create something incredible on a canvass – something that is already remarkable, and beautiful – and they might still feel that there is more to be done with the canvass; that they could add more depth, more shadows, more lines, or deeper colours. They might still be working away at their masterpiece for many years.

You are a masterpiece just as you are because there is no-one like you. And only you do life the way you would do life. You have strengths, and quirks, and things that make you YOU. And there might be things that you are working on, still learning, and growing.

When I think about this, it always brings me back to my children. They were simply perfect when they were born – i.e., little masterpieces – and yet, they need to continue to grow and learn. They can’t simply stay babies. They are becoming. So, they continue to learn and grow – i.e., they are works in progress – whilst retaining their original beauty and innocence. So, they are always masterpieces, and yet with every passing year, they grow and deepen, and evolve, and every step retains some of what was already there whilst adding more onto the canvass.

Breakthrough as an Alternative to Change

So, what is the alternative to change?

The one thing you can trust, is that people will do what they do. Our habits become our character because they are deeply ingrained. What we do often and long enough, is who we become over time.

The problem with focusing on behaviour, is that behaviour is three levels down from the root cause of the problem. When we focus on behaviour change, we are simply focusing on the symptoms of a much bigger problem. We are not truly addressing the cause of the problem. And we are not likely to see sustainable results for our efforts.

Our behaviour is merely the outcome of our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. How we think and what we think, determine our psychological state, and our perspective on the world, and our perspective on the world, inform our feelings and our actions. What I think, believe, and feel, determine how I will show up in any particular situation.

Underneath those actions that we keep trying to change, are thoughts and beliefs ABOUT ourselves and the world that inform the actions we choose to take. And so often our actions are unconscious, in the sense that we haven’t even examined the thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves, others, or the world.

In a world where everything moves so fast, and changes so often, we often also feel like we don’t have time to slow down and pay attention to our thinking. However, if you are not paying attention to your thoughts and beliefs, you will simply go through your life in an unconscious way, and you will keep repeating patterns of behaviour that you have learnt over time and that often don’t serve you.

So, what to do here? If you truly want to transform your life and the way you are showing up in the world, you need to let go of the idea of changing anything. Change won’t get you what you are after. Change is simply a way to recycle the past. It’s a partnership with your Inner Critic, where you are constantly beating yourself into submission and making the whole process truly uncomfortable and most of the time unsustainable. You keep trying to improve on the current version of you. You keep trying to modify, adjust, alter, fix, reorientate, improve, or revise your behaviour.

The only way to truly transform your life, is to drop the idea of wanting to change it. It’s what Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking you were at when you created it. For you to solve the problem, you need to shift to a new way of thinking. And that requires a breakthrough in the way that you think.

A breakthrough is defined as “a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development”. A breakthrough is a new insight, a new way of seeing the problem, a new way of thinking. It changes the game.

When I was teaching in higher education, one of the classes I would teach was a class in perception. And I would often start off with images of optical illusions where if you look at it one way, you see one thing, and then when you look at it another way, you see something completely different. Often people see the one image and not the other, and once you are able to see the image you were not able to see the first time, you can’t unsee it again. You now have a new insight, a new way of seeing and thinking that completely changes your perspective.

Our perception – i.e., how we see things – informs how we think, how we feel, and how we behave. When we change the way we look at something, everything changes, because suddenly we expand our awareness about what’s possible.

Recently, a client requested coaching after starting a new job. She was hired as an executive coach to support a particularly difficult business leader. The whole team shared their thought and beliefs about this business leader with her. The first thing we unpacked in our conversation was how she had already created a perception in her mind about who this business leader is, without even having met the person. And she was already feeling despondent, because she couldn’t see a way to change it.

There it is: change. How do we fix this person? So, I offered, what if the leader isn’t broken? What if she was the first person in his life who saw him as naturally resourceful, creative, and whole. What if she saw possibilities for him, met him where he was at, and allowed him the grace of his own journey? What if she got curious about who he was? In other words, what if she looked for the masterpiece that’s already there and helped him grow into that?

Although she immediately saw the value of holding the leader as naturally resourceful, creative, and whole, she was having hard time with it emotionally. So, we slowed down to look at what was getting in the way, and we discovered that she was telling herself a story about who she was that wasn’t serving her. She was distorting the truth about her own power.

If we had focused on her behaviour and on the behaviour of the leader, she would have had to push herself and the leader very hard to change.

Instead, we looked at her relationship to power and she had an incredible insight that helped her shift her perspective on her own power or what power actually means to her. This is a breakthrough, because suddenly she was thinking differently about herself and about the leader. Suddenly she saw possibilities for them both that weren’t there when she was focusing on what was broken and what needed to be fixed.

The issue is never the issue. How you relate to yourself and the issue as you go through the issue, is the real issue. My client discovered that in our session. She started to see that it wasn’t her behaviour that needed to change. It was the thoughts she was having about the leader and her beliefs about herself that were stopping her from seeing a way forward. Once she slowed down to examine her thoughts and beliefs, she saw possibilities for real transformation.

My sense is that my client will not be going into her new role trying to recycle her past behaviours and do things differently. She will be going into that role with a completely new perspective of herself and of the leader she is wanting to support. She will create herself before she walks into the room and who she IS will transform their relationship; not what she does.

Another client believed that she was too much for the romantic partners in her life and that they did not have the emotional maturity to be with her. So, I asked her how she showed up in these relationships when she believed that she was too much. She shared that she holds back, plays small, doesn’t ask for what she needs, and when she does have strong emotions come up, she pulls away from the intimacy in the relationship, because she believes that her partner won’t be able to handle it.

I then asked her who she would be without that belief. She shared that she would show up the way she does at work. It turns out that in her work, she shows up differently, because she believes she is exactly what her patients need. Not only does she show up more fully and take up more space, but she also trusts herself more at work. She does not let others’ opinions pull her away from service and from staying in flow.

So, I suggested she consider what would be different if she could apply that same way of thinking in her personal relationships. The insights she had, created an incredible breakthrough for her. Suddenly, she saw herself in her relationships differently, and she declared that she is now committed to attracting partners who could handle all of her, because she now believes she is exactly what she and they need.

It’s important to note here that she is not trying to fix her behaviour in her relationships. She is no longer trying to not be too much. She is not trying to keep her emotions under control anymore, because that would be trying to change her past behaviour. That’s not helpful, because opting to change her behaviour, is equivalent to continuing to shrink her feelings, and keeping herself small so as not to be too much. That is not sustainable.

She has tremendous emotional depth, compassion, and heart. It’s who she is in the world. In fact, it’s what makes her great at her work. So, instead of trying to change, she is opting for a completely different perspective – a breakthrough in her thinking so to speak – to consider the situation from a perspective that has her appreciate her gift for emotional depth and richness and build from that. Appreciating the masterpiece that she already is, whilst continuing to create and work on how she utilises her gift in other areas of her life.

A third client shared how she feels she is always being taken advantage of. I asked her why she thinks that is, and she shared that it’s because she is gullible. We slowed that down so that she could see how believing that she is gullible, was creating situations in her life where she was being taken advantage of.

We slowed down even further to consider the truth of that belief and discovered that she is actually very aware and has a powerful intuition. What is actually happening in these situations, is that she doesn’t trust her intuition. She doesn’t listen to her own Inner Wisdom. She disregards it, because of the belief that she is gullible. That has her creating situation after situation where she is taken advantage of.

With her new insight that her intuition is in fact powerful and that her most important job is to listen to her own Inner Wisdom, it has transformed the way she is now showing up to situations that feel dodgy or uncomfortable to her. She now has the good sense to trust herself enough to move away from the situation or to simply say no thank you. And my sense is that over time she will no longer find herself in these type of situations, because she is no longer running a story that doesn’t serve her.

One last example is from Devon himself. A few years ago, Devon was navigating a difficult divorce and he kept trying to “do it better”. Every time he was to interact with his ex-wife, he would tell himself he would not become triggered, and he would handle the situation better. Until he had the insight that he was trying to change his behaviour instead of changing his perspective. Remember, the issue is not the issue. How we are being with ourselves as we go through the issue, is the real issue.

So, Devon created something new that wasn’t there before. He made the conscious choice to be the best ex-husband ever. No matter what transpired, or what his ex-wife said or did, he chose to live into being the best ex-husband ever. This transformed his relationship with his ex-wife in ways he could never imagine, because he was no longer trying to fix himself or her for that matter. He consciously chose to create his future self instead.

The point I want to drive home here is: when I change the way I see things, the things I look at change. My perception informs my behaviour, so when I change how I see, I change how I will show up. That is true transformation, because it goes to the core of the “problem”.

If there is a situation in your life that you want to be different, my invitation is for you to slow down and consider the thoughts, beliefs, and feelings you are having about the situation. Ask yourself, do these beliefs serve me? If the answer is yes, then keep going.

If, however, the answer is no. Then consider how holding on to certain beliefs is causing you to show up in your life and whether that is who you want to be. If it’s not who you want to be, then ask yourself, who do you want to be instead? And create who you will become by choosing to believe something different about yourself.

We don’t create from the past. We create from the future, by pulling our vision of our future self into the here and now, and living into it as if it were already true. Or as Jillian Michaels puts it, “Transformation isn’t a future event, it’s a present-day activity.”

References:

1. Breytenbach, C. (2020). Getting to Know your Inner Critic. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/getting_to_know_your_inner_critic/
2. Breytenbach, C. (2022). I AM: The two most powerful words in the world. Available online at: https://chantalbreytenbach.com/i_am_the_two_most_powerful_words/