Hey, my friend, what is up? And welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I am so excited to have you here once again today. Thank you for tuning in. Today's episode is going to be all about why change neurologically and psychologically is so hard to do. Why are we the way that we are? Have we ever stopped and thought about that? Have you ever tried to commit to making a change and you haven't been able to start, or you started and then you stopped and you reverted back? Why do we act the way that we act? All of that today we're going to be discussing, and it's going to be a really valuable episode for you. I am obsessed with learning about our brains and why we are the way we are, and why we think the way that we do about the world and the things around us, and so I'm excited to talk to you today.
We're gonna dive into about this idea of the commitment and consistency principle. And what this means is that once we commit to something, whether that's a belief that we have about something or a decision, we have a really strong psychological urge to remain consistent with that. It's an internal habit that we have that's formed. It's an internal feeling that we have, and people will always try to align their behaviors with their values and their beliefs and what they think things should be or will be, and then any deviation from that means that, uh oh, I'm not in alignment with what I think and believe about myself. And then that causes this mental discomfort. And it's usually not something that we do consciously. It's all unconsciously.
So for example, you could say, All right, you know what? I'm going to wake up in the morning and I just want to be better today. But you don't do it, or you do it for a few weeks, and then you fall off. And you fall off because it just feels so out of alignment for who you think you are, or who you've been your entire life. And it's just easier to just revert back and let things click right back into place, right? We've all been there. We understand that we've all started something, and maybe it didn't we didn't get to finish it, and we reverted back, and it happens, but all we really want inside of us is to restore and feel this harmony within this piece. And so this commitment and consistency principle basically says that, all right, once you commit to something, you are more likely to follow through in a way that helps you maintain a stable sense of self. So if you think that you are a certain way to act out of alignment with that really feels unstable within yourself, and we don't like that on an unconscious level. And the reason why is because our identity of who we think we are is completely made up. But I bet you didn't realize that you can change, and it can change at any moment. Alan Watson once said you are under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. So we have this personality of who we think we are, right? But all of that is actually just made up. It's a character that we've continued to keep playing every single moment, every day, for as long as we've been living. We think this identity we have for ourselves is just set in stone. I am, who I am, I think, the way I think, and that's the way that it is. But your identity can change at any time. But what we try to do is we try to keep our identity stable so that we can have this internal harmony and this peace within ourselves and cognitive dissonance, if you've heard of that before, going back to my psychology days from college, right means a mental discomfort that a person feels when they hold two conflicting beliefs. So I'll give you an example of what that means. Imagine you have someone who believes really strongly about living a healthy lifestyle, but they also regularly smoked, this conflict between believing they're healthy, but also smoking causes this dissonance. It causes this discomfort within their body, and so to reduce this discomfort, they're going to do a couple of different things. They might try to resolve this discomfort by trying to stop smoking, or they might downplay the risk of smoking or convince themselves that, you know what, my smoking isn't really that harmful. I only have a couple cigarettes here and there, versus a whole pack, etc, that way this dissonance and this discomfort within themselves goes away. It disappears. Whenever your actions don't align with your internal beliefs, it causes this uneasiness, and so you're going to need to change your actions or your beliefs. One or the other has to change. Your beliefs can change at any moment. We think that our beliefs are set in stone, but they're just thoughts that we've been thinking over and over and over again, and we've trained ourselves to believe these things through repetition, through habit. So you can relearn new beliefs and tell yourself new beliefs and new thought patterns, and that can be your new way of thinking. It's why people often stick to their choices, even if later on, they realize that their choices weren't really very good, because it's just easier to justify a previous decision than to admit that inconsistency or that you were at fault. It's also why sometimes people might lie and not tell you the truth, make things up. But the bottom line is this, you will become who you think you are, and so if you want to change something about your life, you're going to have to change what you think you are. And a lot of times these beliefs about ourselves, they come from back when we were a child, and some of us are holding on to these beliefs about ourselves that were told to us when we were younger. So for example, you know, talking down to a child being told that you were lazy or never going to amount to something, you've got to now, if this, if you can relate to that at all, because it does happen, you've got to Now ask yourself, all right, let me just take a step back here and ask myself, was that positive or was that negative? That was told to me, whatever that thing was, that I was told, was it positive or negative? And do I want to believe this about myself, or do I need to change what I believe about myself because I don't want to hold on to someone else's negative beliefs about me any longer. And this is why it's so important for how you speak to your children, because a lot of times what we believe about ourselves was something that was once told to us by someone else in our earlier days.
So really having that awareness to just stop and ask yourself, all right, wait a minute. This thing that was told to me by that teacher or that caregiver or that family member, or whatever it was, was that positive or was it negative? And do I want to believe this about myself, or do I need to change the way I believe about myself, because I don't want to hold on to somebody else's beliefs about me, right? And so if you have children, if you're someone who has children, or you want to have children, you've got to be so careful how you talk to them, because you are literally creating their internal world about how they feel about themselves and what they believe about themselves, and this is how they form their identity. You can see how it can be so hard to actually change right, unconsciously, and this is all on an unconscious level. We'd rather not have the life we want than change. Change your beliefs, and then your actions will change. So yes, it is about doing something different, but if you're going to do something different, you must first believe something different about yourself, about the world, about what you can create. And then once we can commit to a belief or an action or identity, it becomes increasingly hard to change once we have that belief.
And so that's why, in my line of work, especially with what I do, I see so many incredible people with so much potential, but they just can't seem to get themselves to change, because they're holding on to this identity that somebody told them when they were younger, or they just created this own identity about themselves when they were younger. And it's really hard because it's deeply tied to our sense of self, which we think is real. We think it's set in stone. And, you know, I can give you an example I was always taught, which is a great thing, and I teach it to my kids too, to when you start something, you know, you should finish it. Like, there's no quitting, right? Like, if you commit to something, you should do it. You should do it to the best of your ability, and you should do it until it's done. And when I had my very first business, my health and wellness business, I was like, in my mind, I was like, I'm just going to do this forever. And so when I have this tug on my heart to go off and create my own coaching business, to create my own mindset program for entrepreneurs and for people to be able to silence their limiting beliefs and really be able to unlock their truest potential in business and in life and feel fulfilled and aligned. I have this discomfort inside. I had that cognitive dissonance because it was like, wait a minute, but you're supposed to be doing this, and you're supposed to be doing this forever, and if you stop this and then do this, then that means that you're a quitter and you are not a quitter, right? Like in my identity, I am not a quitter. And so for two plus years, I ignored that intuition to go off and start my own thing, because in my eyes, that meant that I was a quitter. And it wasn't until I realized that that doesn't mean that I'm quitting. It's called pivoting. It's called shifting. It's called when something is no longer in alignment with what you believe is important to you. It is okay to shift and pivot to get back on track, which is exactly what I was doing. And then I was finally able to go and create this podcast and create my own coaching program and my mindset accelerator course and all of that, right? So you can even relate this back to your work or job. If you work at a job and you no longer find it fulfilling or it's not in alignment with your personal values anymore, but you're committed to that career, it makes it really hard to make a change, because it's going to require you to admit that you no longer want to continue in a field, because it might make you feel like a failure, or you might feel like you know you're betraying your past self, and so yeah, you might be like, I don't know. I don't want to get out of I do want to get out of this career, and I want to do something different, but I've been doing this for 10 years now, or this is what I went to college for.
So I'm just going to stay this path because I've always been a teacher. So I guess I'm just always going to be a teacher, versus changing the belief about yourself and saying I was a teacher. But now I'm going to do something else, but now I'm going to be something else. It's the same reason why people stay in toxic relationships. It's the exact same thing. And so this is why it's so important for you to figure out who do you want to be in this world. You know, we don't do this often enough. We're so busy just doing what we think we're supposed to be doing and thinking what we you know, what we think we're supposed to be thinking, that we never actually like, open our eyes to like we're living here in a real world right now. Who the heck do I really want to be? Actually, ask yourself, have you ever asked yourself that, what do I really want? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be? So instead of unconsciously playing the character we were told to be when we were younger, it's waking up and saying, Well, who the hell do I want to be in my future, though? And these choices that I've been making do they align with who I want to be, or am I just holding on to past commitments that no longer serve me? You will become what you think you are. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is you have to change your beliefs about yourself, not based off of who you were or what you've done in the past, but on who you are becoming. Otherwise, you're going to always act in accordance to the past version of yourself, but that's not who you want to be anymore. So your view of yourself must change otherwise this unconscious cognitive dissonance and commitment principle is going to keep you stuck in the exact same place. So if you want your actions to change in your future, it's your beliefs about yourself, the beliefs about yourself, the world around you and your potential, that is what must change first.
So I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. Thanks so much for being here. You know I love you. I think you're awesome, and I'll see you the next time. Bye.
