← Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
Why Change Feels So Hard - And How to Finally Do It
00:22:32
In this episode of The Motivation with Brendon Burchard Podcast, Brendon breaks down why most people struggle to change and what high performers do differently to create lasting transformation.
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If you're not willing to face bigger problems, please don't ask for a greater future. Most people avoid any problems. Successful people take on their problems. High performers look for complexity. You have to be willing to go, ooh, to have that next level, I'm gonna have to take on next level problems. That's the difference. Do you know why most people don't change? Why they don't pull themselves up and go to the next level? Why they never achieve step changes in life? Because they have a preference for pacing that is less than what's required. When we prefer life's pace to be at a certain speed, acceleration or progress. But a new demand comes in, and he goes, you gotta go faster, you gotta go harder. You better go longer. When that comes in for people, they bail. They go into avoidance because they don't like the pace. And I want you to know this. This is so hard. I wish somebody told me this. I'm be honest with you. Most people are running a very slow race. They really not because they're slow mentally. They've just been running with people who are barely jogging. It's why when you join like a startup, what they always talk about, it's always about a sense of urgency and pace. We ship, we move, we don't say stagnant. And this is not just in technology. You know, you go to Thomas Keller's amazing French restaurant, and you get to go in the back, you know, back in the kitchen, and you'll see all this amazing, you know, all these tools and cookware and some of the best chefs in the world. But they all look up at the clock and up on the clock, and right beneath the clock of the most famous restaurant in the world is a little plaque that says, sense of urgency, urgency. Most people don't change because they don't have urgency. But they've been running a pace so slow, they go, oh, that requires too much of me, too many hours, too much focus. I just don't run a race like that. And most people, and this is not speaking ill, it's literally just math, right? The average person is average. There are averages and rules, and it's just true. Most people are average by the definition. And at the average pace, most people will not achieve their dreams. Let me say it again. At the average pace, most people will not achieve their dreams. It just won't happen. And I don't even mean that in a negative way. Look at it financially. For most people, at the average pace of their savings and investment in America today, most people can't handle an emergency of a couple hundred bucks or a couple thousand dollars because we don't train people. No, no, no. Your pace of saving and investment needs to be sped up, and it needs to be earlier. Because if you'll start saving and investing earlier, the odds are you'll have that dream life. It will compound. Your pace will compound over a period of time. But most people's pace for that compounding, it's too slow. It's way too slow. And so they hope to get there, but then they retire with nothing. They started too slow, and then if they did get into it, it was too small, not hurried, not fast enough in technology, in startup, same thing. It's like people want to break through in technology or they want to break through in their business, but their pace is too slow, their team's rhythm is too slow. To say it another way, when I work with entrepreneurs all the time, I go, tell me the rhythm of your team. What is your team doing on an ongoing basis to f fill those 40 hours? What is it? Is there urgency there? Is there high pace and the lower the pace? Well, of course that feels more comfortable. So often the people say, culture's good. Yay. And then the business dies. Your job is to accelerate the pace. As a leader, your pace to be comfortable is preventing you from winning the race, right? To win the race, you have to pick up the pace. You've heard it before, right? It's like that's why you have a coach. You know, if you're a marathoner, there's a reason that coach is there, especially at that mile 12 and that mile 18. All right, let's just really look at the pace here. You better really be dialed in at those two pace points. Like, really specifically, how's our pace point? Right there, right there, right there, right there. Your coach knows your pace points and where to ask you to kick it up. They're not telling you to go 24, 7, 100 hour work weeks for 10 years. That's not what they're doing. But there's moments when the pace has to pick up. And your preference for the pace being comfortable versus demanding steals your greatness. Your pace for being comfortable versus demanding steals your greatness. You need a demanding pace to achieve greatness, not 24700 hour work weeks all the time. But trust me, more than average and more than you are comfortable with. Pick up the pace, babe. To change your life, pick up your pace. Second, most people has a preference. Oh, this one took me forever to understand about people with what's Called problem complexity. Most people, they think about a problem and they want it to be simple. Great people think about a problem, and they love that it's complex. Isn't that crazy? The innovators of the world are thinking of more complex problems. The great leaders think about and solve more complex problems. The highest paid people in the world are solving more complex problems. They're taking on problems that are more complex and require more persistence or endurance. The less successful you are, the more you hope everything is simple. But the more successful you become, the more systematic you need to think. There's systems thinking at play. You're looking at problems, and you're looking at 50 different ways into that problem and out of that problem versus just hoping everything is simple. And that's what's important. Most people avoid any problems. Successful people take on their problems. High performers look for complexity. They simplify their actions. We'll get to that. They simplify their actions, but they don't avoid complexity. Right. They see complexity. They want to simplify the actions to handle it, but they don't avoid complexity. I take on complex problems in my life, in my career, in my business, so I'm rewarded differently. Does that make sense? You're just rewarded completely differently. Right. A person who makes a toothbrush and sells the toothbrush makes less than the dentist who does the procedures. Why complexity? So you have to think about like, oh, can you go at another level of complexity? Will you endure the mental time, attention, and competency to get there? That is a fundamental willingness of life. If you're not willing to face bigger problems, please don't ask for greater future. Don't you have to be willing to go, ooh, to have that next level? I'm gonna have to take on next level problems. That's the difference. That's the difference. It's so profound. When it gets in your mind, you're like, oh, I complain about problems versus, you know, I'd like to explore handling this problem. I like to solve this bigger problem for people because I want to get paid more. Toothbrush or procedure. Different. Very different. Another reason people don't change is because their level of people interaction. Oh, my God, this is so true today, isn't it? Their level of people interaction. What do I mean? You have a preference for how much you want to deal with people and what kind of people you want to deal with and for how long. Right. A lot of people like myself who identify as introverts, we limit ourselves because we go, well, I have a preference. I don't want to Deal with a lot of people. Now, see, that was me. I'm a writer first. If you ever say, brendan, what do you do? I always say, I'm a writer and then a coach, but a writer first. If that was my dream career, that's what I manifested. I never thought about teaching and doing all the things I do now. So that for me was everything, right? I wanted to be the writer, I wanted to be the coach. And so along the way, as I was a writer, I was pretty good at being introverted. But I had to learn. If I want to become a successful author, I need to learn to deal with people. And if I want to promote a book, I probably need to stand on stage in front of a lot of people and tell them about my concepts, about my research, about the breakthroughs, about the book. Like, if I want to start a movement of people falling in love with personal development like I did, I'm going to need a team. Ah, a team. Ah, I just want to see my laptop. No, not a team. Yes, a team. Like, I had to get over my preference. My preference for people interaction is basically for me, my real life, my real preferences. In real life, my preferences are basically my wife, my family, and maybe about 10 really close friends. That's it. My preference isn't actually on stage. My preference isn't like, in front of thousands of people on broadcasts or in big old zoom rooms or at this huge stadium event. You see me at like, that's not the preference. I had to change my preference for the purpose. Sometimes the purpose requires you to overrule your preference. Your comfort, your purpose demands more than your preferences. If you're operating your life based on your preferences, don't be shocked you don't have more. That's tough coaching, isn't it? People is one of the big areas of that. I don't want to deal with people. Especially it's not just like, team, please listen. A lot of people, they say, I don't want to deal with the haters. So their preference, I don't want to be judged. I don't want to be made fun of, I don't want to be attacked. Prevents them from going from a bigger dream. That of course, because it's a bigger dream, would be judged, would be attacked because it's new, it's innovative, it's different, People don't get it. A lot of people attack change and that comes from people, right? So you have to understand, like, if you're that person, goes, I don't want to deal with doubters. And haters. I don't want to deal with the people who are going to make fun of me. I'm like, okay, then just accept your comfort zone right now. Your success, your contribution, your art, your level of being and succeeding in life will be stuck to your people preference. That's it. Sometimes purpose demands you to rise above your preferences. My purpose? To reach millions of people, to help them make self improvement a way of life. Like it changed my life. Like these deeper dives that I'm doing. You know, this is not a 16 minute TED talk. It's not a 30 second TikTok. This is hours and hours of preparation to deliver this to you extemporaneously. I don't have anything in front of me. There's no teleprompter. Like I've got my slides here. That's it. I'm writing, I'm working. I've had to train myself to be able to speak this long, talk this long, train this long, keep my head together, tell all these things in a certain order. It's taken years of preparation. I didn't want to do that. That sounded like a big ass problem talking to some people I might not even know. Get outside your comfort, Brendan. Your purpose demands you to be a great communicator, a great teacher. I know you just want to write your little books in your little room, Brendan, but you were called to write that message. You should know. You're called to share it too. You're gonna have to learn to share that. You're gonna have to get over your embarrassment of standing on stage, of not knowing what to do with your hands, of seeing people judge you, seeing people cross their arms, of seeing people, you know, text and sleep while you talk. You're just gonna. Brennan, it's gonna happen inevitably. You're gonna talk to millions of people. Somebody in that millions, they're gonna be sleeping, they're gonna be distracted by going to be judging, they're going to post something negative. That's part of it. You are called for the message. Don't think, you don't have to develop yourself into the messenger. I had to learn my preferences for being small town kid. Just focusing on this tight little circle had to be obliterated. This was the hardest preference for me to overcome. I could not change and achieve the next level. Until I realized I'm going to have to be way better with people, with more people than I ever imagined and with more people who are going to judge me than I ever conceived of. That was a big shift for me. That changed everything. Shifts can happen when you get over your preferences in pursuit of a purpose. Next up, I think it's important. Many people, they never change because their payoff window is too distant. They go, why even try? Because the payoff is five years out, right? They're into instant gratification, to use a different language, they're into instant gratification and immediate comforts and pleasures versus long term success. And for them, their preference for payoff is too near term for the dream that they want. Their payoff preference is, well, you know, I'll try for three months, but if it doesn't turn out, then I quit. Their payoff window is three months. So they do, they work hard for three months and they quit because their payoff window is short. Successful people have a longer payoff window. In Silicon Valley. I work with so many startup founders, you know, and some of, you know, I've had my unicorn level exits and, and investments. And it's pretty incredible that you see that, that startup thing where a company becomes unicorn, traditionally that's 10 to 13 years on average, of course, accelerated in the space of AI, but outside of that, it's, it's a long haul. It's a decade, decade plus for these big outcomes you see, or for a company to go public, to start from somebody's, you know, back garage or back office or parents, you know, spare room to becoming a public company. That's decade plus, man. Sometimes decades. It's so hard, it's so difficult. And if the payoff needs to be immediate, they quit. And if you don't enjoy the journey and honor the hardships that make you better along the way, if it's just one outcome. But life kind of sucks when you're going for one award, one outcome, one simple thing, because all of your life leads towards that one thing and you didn't enjoy it or become more. Well, you get the thing and you're empty. So I'm here to tell most people don't change because their payoff window is just so silly. They need a near term thing versus long term thing. But they don't understand the payoff window is also now the journey. The difficulty of becoming more, it really is profound. Another reason that people don't change and they just don't know it is because of their choice and their preference for their physical state. Their physical state. What do I mean by that? The comfort of the physical state where I don't feel that tension is in my mind or my body. Right? That tension. That's what I mean. By physical state here specifically, we have a preference for comfort. But it means, specifically, I don't want any tension in my life. And yet what we find is high performers. The tension is good. The mental edge, the tension in your mind that makes you sharp, paid attention, focused. Alertness itself is tension, isn't it? Activity readiness, physically is a sense of tension. Tension is not something to never feel. We need to release it and calibrate it. We need to release tension and calibrate it, meaning we control that physical state of energy. This is why my dominant metaphor of my entire life you've heard me teach is the power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. I can generate the energy of which I will and decide over a period of time, even if here I can be compromised, there I can be tired, or there I get sick. Over the long haul, I'm the generator. You're the generator of energy. And most people, they want their physical state just to be relaxed, satiated, fed, watered, nurtured, well slept. And of course, we want all those wellness truths. But for them, anytime they feel tension or difficulty or strain, they quit. They go to the gym for three weeks, they're sore. I don't know about this. I quit. Even though they're seeing progress, or if they're not seeing progress, they're right at the cusp of it, but they're just physically uncomfortable, so they quit. Right. Or you're physically not energized all the time at work. So you're like, I only work when I'm inspired or enthusiastic. And so your preference is I only work when I feel inspired or enthusiastic. And that's why you don't write, that's why you don't get the project done, because you want to feel a certain way versus just do the thing. The difference between enthusiasm and discipline. The difference between discipline and endurance. All right, Enthusiasm says, I want to. Discipline says, this is what I do. Endurance says, I can do it a long time until I achieve my result. And so I think it's important to understand, like sometimes just your preference of how you want to feel. That's a physical thing, right? A feel? Yes, emotional. But remember, emotions come and go and emotions themselves are automatic, impulsive, and usually physicalized. It's a sense. And so when I use physical state, I mean, the state of being might be better for other people. Broadly, a state of being might better. But at the end of the day, I don't feel it, so I don't do it. Their preference is for a state of heightened energy to act. But that's not true for high performers. They just have the discipline to do the thing. So if you know someone who's not changing, I'm here to tell you they have preferences. And usually those preferences are just unconscious. They don't know their pace. They don't engage the change. Maybe too fast paced for me. They don't engage the change. That's too complex for me. They don't engage a change. I don't want to deal with people. They don't engage. A change wouldn't pay off anyway. I don't engage a change because it doesn't feel good. These preferences prevent them from engaging and working hard. I would score yourself on these if you want to be a high performer. When you think about a change, are any of these preventing you from making the change? And you need to question that mindset or that habit or that routine that might be holding you there.