Recently I was talking with a client about changing. Well we were talking about what he needs to do to lose weight but that's the same thing. The interesting thing was that I would start to make a suggestion and he would finish the sentence for me. This happened at least 3 or 4 times. Now to be fair we've had this conversation before and honestly a lot of the suggestions haven't changed. Also he isn't the only client this has happened with. It actually happens quite a lot. One of the last questions I always ask the first time I meet a new client is "what do you need to do to reach your goals?" Every client always gives the right answer, "eat better, exercise more, get more sleep etc etc." Everyone knows what to do...or least they know what they should be doing.
So why don't they do it?
They don't do it because knowing what to do and doing it aren't the same thing. There are some variables that have to be taken into account. We've already discussed the first one: you have to "know" what you want to change and what you need to do to change it. The second variable is that you need to know "how".
Here's an example of these two variables at play: if you walk outside to your car and the tire is flat, you KNOW you need to change the tire. Depending on a bunch of circumstances you may even know HOW to change a tire. If you do know how, you open your trunk and pull out your jack and tire iron and get to work.
You have to KNOW what to change and HOW to change it. A third variable has been introduced though: you have to have the tools for the change. It doesn't matter if you know how to change a tire if you don't have a jack or tire iron. Also you have to correctly know how to use each tool. If you don't know "righty tighty, lefty loosey" it might take you a while to get that tire off.
Here's what we've got so far: do you know what to change, do you know how to change it and do you have the tools to change it? These variables are relatively easy to measure (not necessarily easy to implement) as they are yes/no questions. This leads us to the last variable which is not so easy to measure but may be the most important.
The last variable is DESIRE. By desire, I mean the will and/or need to actually take the steps to change. Desire can and will be affected by any number of situations or circumstances. In order for change to occur DESIRE has to be greater than the sum of all the situations/circumstances distracting from it.
If you go out Monday at 10pm and realize your tire is flat, you have to be at work 7am Tuesday and your town doesn't have public transportation or Uber then your DESIRE to get that tire changed is going to be relatively high. Versus if it's Friday and you don't have to be anywhere until Monday morning then the DESIRE to change the tire will be relatively low.
This is just a simple analogy to show why change is hard even when we know what we want/need to change. Most people know that eating better will help them lose weight. The question is do they know WHAT "eating better" is, do they know HOW to cook better foods, do they have the TOOLS i.e. pots and pans so that they can cook. Then most importantly do they have the DESIRE to actually cook so that they can eat better? Usually if you can answer yes to all of these questions then you'll start to see changes.
