How is your brain stopping you from achieving new goals? Understand it and change it!

"The mind is like a parachute... It only works if we have it open." Albert Einstein.

Every day, we do hundreds of things on autopilot. We don’t even question them. We don’t wonder if we have to do them or not – we simply do them. And that makes sense for most of our daily things, but not always for the most important ones!

Very few decisions are conscious. It would be like having to think about every step we take when walking; life would become impossible. It would be neither efficient nor feasible.

However, we often lack the necessary flexibility to overcome the new challenges we encounter. In other words, we simply don’t have the muscle of change trained, that would most help us to achieve what we want and to set our intentions in motion.

In a disruptive world that never stops changing, the biggest differentiating factor will lie in learning to adapt and become more agile. For that, we need to develop new habits that help us to re-think ourselves. If we can do this, progressing and transforming won’t be an effort, but an enjoyable new activity that will motivate and galvanize us. This will help us to adapt in the face of new circumstances and choose how we accomplish meaningful progress and change.

Sometimes, the status quo makes it difficult to think with an open mind and different perspective. As we grow, we many times get trapped into the “I know it all” way of thinking. Expertise plus certainty can kill our development and happiness. Our behavior conforms to the incentives and obstacles that each individual system defines as correct or incorrect, and we in turn become conditioned to create automatic responses in accordance with each of these systems.

Powerful question to ask yourself:

What habits, developed throughout your life, act as obstacles between you and your desires and intentions?

Make change happen:

Changing, evolving and transforming shouldn’t be a constant effort. It can also be a new habit that energizes us. It all depends on the outlook we choose to focus on.?

I would like to propose an exercise that could help you change your outlook. Follow these steps!

• STEP 1: Identify your desires and intentions. Maybe you already have your list of resolutions for 2024 on hand?
• STEP 2: Identify those habits that hinder you from achieving them. There are probably more than you thought. But I have good news for you: You don't have to change them all right now! Any small change in habit will be one more step towards your success.
• STEP 3: Now, think of one, two, or a maximum of three actions that can change any of those habits. Plan your changes, mark them on the calendar, and track them daily or, at least, weekly.
• STEP 4: And, lastly, remember to occasionally pause, take a step back, breathe for a minute, center your mind, and switch off the autopilot that hinders conscious change. Can you also put this in your calendar?

I think this could be a great way to start the year 2024 with a good focus. Don't you think?

I'll wait for you in the next newsletter with a new enemy for change and some ideas on how to overcome it.

Regards,?

Fran Cherny

P.S. If you want to delve deeper into the art of transformation and organizational change, don't forget to read #BeTheChange