How To Be Better At Following Through

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the mindset mentor podcast the number one mindset podcast the entire world. Thanks to you guys for always tuning in. And if you are the type of person who's always looking to grow, to improve and to understand yourself better, go ahead and subscribe to this so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me a favor. Give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms like Spotify and Apple actually show this podcast to people who have never heard of it before and it allows us to grow.

0:38So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about why change is so hard. I'm going to talk to you about why you give up so early in the game when you want to do something. And I'm also going to teach you how to follow through better. And we're really going to talk about the cycle of change that you go through. So to most of us, we all want to change. We all want to be better. Like you're listening to this podcast because you are at least someone who knows that you want to change and evolve and grow in some sort of way. But then the next question is, why the hell is that so hard to do, right?

1:16Why is it so hard for us to change when we want consciously to change? And so I'm going to take you through something that's called the emotional cycle of change. So you can understand kind of what's going on inside of you as you're actually trying to change. And if you're someone who's really bad at following through, if you're somebody who's really good at starting something, but really terrible at finishing it and seeing it all the way through. What I'm going to teach you, if you can really understand it, will be a game changer. If you're sitting at home, I would recommend that you take out pen and paper.

1:46If you're driving, take some mental notes as we go through this. In order to create the life you want, you're going to have to change. We all know that. That's why you're here. You are not unconscious zombie walking around anymore. You're the type of person that's going, okay, I want something to be different. And I know that I need to change. That's why I'm here listening to how to change my mindset. You're going to have to change. You understand that. There's no way around it. And if you do not change, you know that your life will not change. And there is a psychological cycle that you will go through in almost any change that you have.

2:20And there were two psychologists, Don Kelly and Daryl Connor, who developed this model that really deals specifically with the emotional aspects of change and what it looks like. And if you can understand it and you can identify where you are, it will make it easier for you to go, you know what? Okay, I can see I'm at stage two right now. I just need to keep going. Oh, you know what? I can see I'm at stage three right now. I just need to keep going. Oh, I'm at stage four. Things are starting to work out. I just need to keep on going, right? And so when you can understand what stage that you're in, you can understand how you need to keep pushing through and how to do so.

2:56You know, one of the things that I always hear from people a lot in what I do is, man, Rob, I'm pretty good at starting things, but I almost always give up. Like I'm really good at like starting a workout plan, but I almost always give up like a month into it. And there's this thing called the emotional cycle of change. And there's five different stages in the emotional cycle of change. And you can use this to understand and anticipate the emotional responses that you're going to feel. Like, okay, I'm in stage two. I know that stage three is coming. I know that it's actually going to get worse before it gets better.

3:29So at least I can prepare myself. And so when you understand each stage in detail, you can better prepare yourself. You can use these tools to then cope and, uh, and work through your changing emotions. Okay. So there's five different stages in the emotional cycle of change. The first one we're all very familiar with, and it's stage one and stage one is called uninformed optimism. in this stage, you're excited about the change, right? Like whenever we're going to do something, like we might be a little bit nervous, but like, man, it's so exciting. It's so exciting. I'm going to do this new thing.

4:01I'm going to change myself. I'm going to change my life. I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to gain muscle. I'm going to get sexy. I'm going to look fucking amazing in a, in a bikini, right? Whatever it is that you're working towards. But it's the reason why you're so excited about it is because you are not aware of the difficulties that you could and probably will face ahead. And so you're only seeing all of the good stuff. And this is a reason why, why people are all excited in the beginning of starting something new. Um, one thing that you can do to capitalize your excitement here is to, to make a, an actual letter to yourself, to journal why you are doing this, right?

4:41It goes back to like, when you think about quitting, remember why you started. So when you're in that moment of like excitement, really good to put all of your, your excitement down on a piece of paper, what you're looking to do it and why this is so important to you to make this change. At the first stage, people are filled with enthusiasm and excitement and you see all of the potential benefits of the change. But the reason why you're so excited is because you see all of the benefits, but you're yet to experience any of the costs. Because when you say yes to something, you're going to say no to something else.

5:12If you're going to make a change, there are going to be some costs. There's going to have to be some shifts in your life. And at the stage of uninformed optimism, it's filled with a sense of positive emotion and excitement. And I can't wait to go ahead and do it. So imagine all of the benefits that you have and how exciting it is, but you haven't seen all the costs and everything has a cost, as I said. But then what happens? We all go into stage two. Excitement starts to fade. The more that you learn about how long you have to go and all of the things you're going to have to fight through and all of the work it's going to take and what it's going to be like.

5:48And you can start to see a little bit further in on the journey, which brings us to what's stage two. And stage two is called informed pessimism. So the first one is uninformed optimism. Uninformed, you don't really know, but you're optimistic. Quickly, we, and some of us quicker than others, we get to stage two, which is we become pessimistic. We are now informed a little bit and we have a little bit of an idea of what it's going to take. And now we start to get pessimistic. As the changes progress and we start to see what happens and what we have to work through and how long it could take to get to where we want to be, negative emotions can start to come up.

6:27And this is where we really start to shift and go from, once again, optimistic to pessimistic. The benefits that you saw in stage one, they don't really seem as real. And what you were excited about in stage one, you're not as excited about because you're not even seeing the things to be excited about. You're seeing the costs. You start to see the costs more and the benefits less. And this stage is where you really start to get frustrated. You start to get a little bit more anxious about what's coming up, about the fears and the limiting beliefs. And you're starting to now get the desire to quit.

7:04You're starting to think like, maybe this wasn't for me. Maybe I, you know what? Maybe this wasn't for me. Maybe I made a mistake, right? And this is where usually stage two and stage three are where most projects fail. And this is usually like, yeah, maybe I took the wrong path. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I took the wrong path. Or this is going to take way too much time. I don't have this much time. I have a full-time job. I have children, right? And as reality starts to set in, the positive emotions that you did have start to become negative emotions. You went from optimistic to pessimistic really damn quick, didn't you?

7:39This is what happens when people, when they have New Year's resolutions, it's like, yes, the first day I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to drink my water. I'm going to do my meditating. And by day three, they're like, screw this. That's a lot of work. The benefits of the change seem less real and they seem less important. And the costs that come in what you need to do become much more apparent. And so we start to question if the benefits of us changing are worth the effort that it's going to take. And so people may start to question the worth of the effort and really start to find and look for reasons to abandon the effort that they need to put in.

8:17And it sounds terrible, right? Damn, now I'm pessimistic. It became pessimistic so quick. It sounds terrible. It couldn't possibly get worse. Well, it does. So if you fight through stage two, you think it is stage three, which has been titled in one of my favorite titles, the valley of despair. You know, so it's the valley. It's the lowest of lows. It's the lowest part of the cycle. If you didn't quit in stage two and you are going to quit, you're definitely quitting in stage three because it gets lower. You get more pessimistic. It gets harder. This stage is where people experience the pain of change and the benefits.

8:55It's just, I'm feeling the pain of all of this change and the benefits, they just seem light years away. They seem unimportant. The easiest thing to do at this point is quit. It's so easy to quit. It's easy to quit and return to your old ways of doing things. At the lowest point of the emotional cycle of change is a valley of despair. And this is where many people are going to give up. And this is where the change, the pain is really felt more than anything else. And the benefits are just like, no, they're not happening. There's no way that I, I see how other people could do this, but there's no way that I could do that thing.

9:30And it's easy to quit and to want to quit and to go back to your old ways. But the problem with all of that is giving up whatever you decide to give up. And you're like, well, you know what? Maybe this business wasn't the right business for me, but there's this other business I've been thinking of. The reason why that other business sounds better than your current business is because your current business, you're in the valley of despair. The other idea for a business, you're in uninformed optimism. And I guarantee you, if you go and you decide to switch and start another company, you're going to be all excited for a little while.

10:05And then what's going to happen, that's stage one, stage two, stage three. You're eventually going to find yourself in the valley of despair. It's just the stages that we go through as we're trying to change anything and trying to change ourself. And so in the valley of despair, it's very easy to quit because of the fact that you see something else, like a shiny object that seems way better because you're in stage one with that other thing. I'm like, oh my God, uninformed optimism. That must have been the thing I was supposed to go for. And this is where most people give up. The reason why the grass looks green on the other side is because you're in the valley of despair.

10:38And the other thing that you're looking at is stage one. It's uninformed optimism. My God, it's amazing. So what you have to do here is you have to just keep pushing. It's important to have a really compelling vision of the future that you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. Not just say, this is the thing that I want, but it's also like, this is why I'm doing it. I'm doing it for my family. I'm doing it for my children. I'm doing it for the world. Whatever it is that you're working towards, you have to have a really compelling why because it's so damn easy to quit and it's so much harder to keep pushing.

11:14This is also why it's important for you to journal in stage one, because when you think about quitting, remember why you started. Go back and read the reasons why you started, what your vision is, what you're doing this for, who you're doing this for, why you're doing this. So you just have to fight through, knowing that if you fight through long enough, eventually you're going to get to stage four, and stage four is where things start to get better. And stage five is where everything's amazing. Well, it's where things start to become amazing. We'll put it that way. it. Stage four is now informed optimism.

11:46So you went from informed pessimism to informed optimism. Informed pessimism is like, oh my God, I now know what I didn't know and I don't know if I can do it. Informed pessimism, I'm sorry, informed optimism is I now know what I didn't know before and I think I can do it. Like at this stage is the possibility of success starts to increase. You You start to get into much more of a positive state because you start becoming more confident in yourself and trusting in yourself. Success is starting to seem possible. And the benefits of what you're doing are starting to show because sometimes you got to plant a seed and it takes months for that seed to grow.

12:27And so sometimes before you get to stage four, you're not really seeing the benefits yet. They haven't really popped up. And so now you're starting to see the benefits of your actions a month ago, two months ago, six months ago. And the cost of the change is actually starting to seem worth it. And it's starting to seem easier. And you now are starting to see a little bit of the fruits of your, just a little bit, enough to get you excited. You're starting to see those breadcrumbs of success in front of you. You're starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel and going, you know what? Damn it.

12:58I think I can do it. I think I can get myself there. So that's stage four, which is informed optimism. And then stage five is what we're all trying to get to, which is success and fulfillment. Success and fulfillment is the final stage of the emotional cycle of change. It's the one that the least amount of people get to because usually somebody gives up at stage two or stage three. Like 90 % of people are going to give up at stage two or stage three. Very few people are going to push through because it's just so easy to give up. It's so easy to do nothing. It's so easy not to change. It's so easy to sit on the couch and eat ice cream compared to get yourself to go to the gym and have to push yourself.

13:39Whatever it might be that you're trying to make that change. The benefits of the new behavior in stage five though are fully experienced. All of the vision that you were thinking of, you're now starting to see it. And the cost of the change is now worth it. Oh my God, I see it. I get it. And stage five, depending on what it is for you, can take years to get to. Years. I was out to dinner two nights ago with my wife and this couple, and this couple are also both in self-development. And the wife, we were talking about how long it takes. This podcast, I had five years of this podcast before it really started to take off, which is like 700, 800 episodes.

14:20And we were talking about, I was like, yeah, you ever heard the story of the Chinese bamboo? She's like, no. And I told her, and I've done episodes on it before in the past, but if you don't know the story of the Chinese bamboo, is you plant a Chinese bamboo seed. In year one, nothing happens. Year two, nothing happens. Year three, nothing happens. Year four, nothing happens. Year five, but you've been FYI for the first five years though, you're giving it water, you're taking care of it, you're making sure it has everything that it needs. At year five, it finally cracks out of the ground. So it takes four years of nothing.

14:51And then stage five, year five, excuse me, it comes out of the ground and it grows up to 80 feet in six weeks. That's what success is like. And so stage five, if it's losing 10 pounds, if that's what it takes, it might be 60 days away. But if it's growing a multi-million dollar business, it might be five years down the road. It might be seven years down the road. It might be three years. It might be 10 years down the road. But at this point, the success and fulfillment, this is where you're seeing all of the cost of the change and it's now perceived as worth it. You did all the work and you're like, damn it, I'm so glad that I didn't give up on myself.

15:26Right? It doesn't seem worth it until you cross the finish line. And the actions that were once really difficult for you in changing, like you had to push yourself and force yourself to do what needed to be done, those actions that were once difficult are routine. They're habits. It's just become who you are now, which is what's awesome. You are now the person that does this thing, whatever it is. You're now the person that goes into the office and makes 100 phone calls a day. Or you're now the person that goes to the gym five times a week. or you're now just, you just become the person that does the thing that you always wanted to do.

16:00And success comes from that, whatever success means to you. And it marks the, this marks the final stage of the emotional cycle of change. And the benefits of all of the new behavior are fully experienced. You can see, and you can go, you know what? It was worth it. I'm so glad that I did it. But you have to understand that no matter what it is, whether it's you trying and getting into a new relationship, you're going to go through the emotional cycle of change. You trying to go on a journey of losing weight, you're going to go through the emotional cycle of change. You trying to build a business, the emotional cycle of change.

16:33You becoming a parent, the emotional cycle of change. You're always going to go through this psychological, emotional cycle of change with everything that you do. You have to just understand stage one is this. Stage two is this. It's going to be hard. Stage three is going to be this. It's going to be even harder. Stage four, stage five, those are the stages that I'm fighting to get to. And so if you can just start to understand the emotional cycle of change, you can really start to understand yourself more and anticipate what could be coming up in the future. So therefore you're not caught off guard.

17:07So that is what it looks like for you to grow, to change and to become the person that you want to become. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.