6 Steps to Creating Lasting Life Change: How to Break Old Patterns and Transform Your Future

C H A N G E 😨

Such a loaded word. We love to hate it, don't we? We want different results in our lives, but we don't want anything to have to change to get them. We're conditioned to want (and expect) instant gratification, and change feels hard, scary, and way too slooooow. We associate fear and pain with change, so it's not a shocker that most people aren't big fans. 

Creating change -- and thus, different results -- first requires a decision, and the truth is, few people really decide anything. Consider the origin of the word:

To decide is to “cut off” all other options. The far more common path is to choose a course of action, later (or perhaps right away) begin to doubt, and then start going back and forth on "what to do," sometimes endlessly. Instead of making a decision, most people make a wish and a guess, then doubt, then repeat. 

We fail to create change in our lives when we keep playing out that pattern of wishing/hoping, guessing, doubting, and starting over again, on repeat. But we convince ourselves that all of that time and energy spent wishing/hoping, guessing, doubting, and starting over is failed effort, and proof that we can't have what we really want.  

Ready to break that cycle? Here are 6 steps to creating life change (and so, new and better results)

*Inspired by the book The Giant Within, by Tony Robbins. 

1. State what you want -- get clarity.
   This is not where you state what you DON’T want. Example: I don’t want to be fat. VS. I want to weigh 120 pounds by December 31. Decide what, specifically, you want, and then choose a course of action to create it.
2. Get leverage on yourself.
   Begin to associate PAIN to the old behavior and PLEASURE to the new behavior. Most of what we do has humans is to avoid pain and gain pleasure. Until you can learn to associate PAIN with the old way, and PLEASURE with new way (AKA the change), you won’t have enough leverage on yourself to make the change. Create powerful associations in your mind to support the change you wish to make / result you wish to have.
3. Interrupt your old, limiting pattern.
   When you start to do the old behavior, stop immediately, sit down on the floor and tell a ridiculous joke, or stop in the middle of what you're doing and run outside. It might sound ridiculous, but you MUST break the record that’s running in your mind, unconsciously guiding you to play out those old patterns and behaviors. To stop a record from playing the same song you have to scratch the record. The same is true for the patterns you have. Stop doing what you’ve always done and do something unexpected, IMMEDIATELY.
4. Create a new, empowering alternative.
   You can't just eliminate. You must have something to do in place of the old pattern. If you used to grab a bag of chips every night before bed, you must have a better option to grab instead. If you used to start nagging your spouse the minute they walked in the door, you must prepare something more empowering to share with them instead. If you used to look in the mirror and attack your appearance, you must decide to speak what you love about yourself instead. Play a new record instead. Don’t eliminate anything without an alternative in place.
5. Condition the new pattern.
   Condition the new pattern until it’s a consistent behavior. To do this quicker and with more lasting results, create a lot of emotion around making this change. Really consider how scary it would be to die of disease because you didn’t control your ____ (unhealthy pattern), or visualize how freaking amazing you'll feel when ___ (thing you desire). See yourself winning (or painfully losing) in your mind and FEEL the emotion, because your brain can't tell the difference between strong visualizations and reality. 
6. Test it.
   a.) Are you clear on what you want, and how you're doing to create it? 
   b.) Do you associate pain with the old way/behavior?
   c.) Do you associate pleasure with the new way/behavior?
   d.) Is the new way/behavior consistent with how you want to live your life? (Is it actually a win for YOU, something you really want, or just better on paper?)
   e.) Are the benefits of the old pattern maintained? (What did you get out of the old way/behavior? You have to get that benefit out of the new way/behavior, too.) 
   f.) Can you imagine yourself (and do you spend time imagining yourself) behaving the new way in the future?

I love this quote:

You'll never get where you want to go if you spend all your time doubting whether or not you can get there, or how you want to go about it. Getting new results requires creating change, and creating change requires making a decision. So decide. 

Update: 

Since writing this article a decade ago, I've learned a lot about creating change that isn't here. This is a useful approach to reconditioning, and absolutely the fundamentals of creating change. Do read it, and apply it! However...

Since then, I've come to understand that one of the (5) main components of creating lasting transformation (AKA change) is transformational work: Waking up to the thoughts, beliefs, fears, patterns, and unconscious programs that are running our lives, and transcending or shifting our relationship with them.

The external experience of that is depicted here. The DOING part. But the internal piece -- the BEING part -- is missing from this original post. If it was as simple as simply DOING, we'd all just go DO, and be on with our lives, no? Many of us, myself included, need to get to know ourselves a whole lot deeper, and unwire old ways of being, before we can effectively and efficiently create change. 

To be clear, the above steps will bring results, so DO take what's here and apply it! Functionally, it's legit. But please be kind to yourself, offer yourself grace, and know that you're not lazy or incapable if it doesn't all snap into place for you. My experience has been that deciding is simple, but it's not just a matter of changing what you're doing, it also requires changing who you're being. If that's your truth, too, you're not a lost cause. Add in the inner work, the transformational work, and you'll open doors that previously felt locked. 

Keep showing up, because everything you're dreaming about is possible for you. Keep going!