Why We Don't Change

I recently listened to Brene Brown’s podcast where the guest was Lisa Lahey author of Immunity to Change. They went deep on goals and one point really stuck out to me and I will do my best to explain it here. So, here goes!

When people set goals, there is typically a large amount of motivation, yet research has shown that most people don’t reach their goals.

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It’s not that the goal isn’t achievable, it’s that we tend to do lots of things that undermine our goal.

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So, you must ask yourself: What am I doing and not doing that works against my goal?

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I will give you a simple example:

You sincerely want to lose weight and think you can do it. But, you also have goals of eating whatever you want with friends several times per week, you want to bond over a glass of wine each night with your partner, you like independence in your diet, you don’t want to feel excluded for eating in a new way, and you don’t want to appear vain in caring about your looks.

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The goal of losing weight competes with these other sub-goals. And those sub-goals undermine.

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In order to achieve your goal, you must understand the problem/why you are stuck before solving it. We need to recognize the ways we sabotage ourselves.

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So, a very important question after setting a goal is “what do I do that could sabotage that goal?”

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After answering that, you must be self-accountable. You sometimes perpetuate the exact behavior that is depleting you.

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Bottom line: before we can act in new ways, we have to understand the unconscious goals that are working against us so that we can correctly formulate our change.