Most people are unwilling to change. The reason for the static nature of people’s own personal resolutions is that once you perform a specific behavior for long enough, it becomes routine and when it’s routine: it’s predictable. Predictability creates comfort and comfort is pretty addicting. Of course, people that are serious about creating change in their life are also probably serious about the idea of being willing to become uncomfortable, at least temporarily, to adopt some new patterns and behaviors. I have personally tried some pretty far out there methods in altering myself but there have only been a few things that have worked that I have been comfortable with; most of the time change is a very difficult process that takes a small leap of faith and a whole lot of patience. But how do we create that sort of drive and motivation?

For many people, no matter what the issue is, communicating to them that they should change is a lot easier than communicating to them to change. In other words, it is easy to highlight a problem to someone and to get them to agree with you but difficult to demonstrate why it would be worth it for them to go through the energy and effort required to change it. I call this whole idea relating to having motivation to advance and progress The Worth of Advancement. The Worth of Advancement basically states that 1) If something has worth, then we desire it, 2) If we desire it, then we are motivated to pursue it, and 3) Therefore, if something has worth, then we are motivated to pursue it.

Or, put another way: if someone sees why something has worth then they will want to obtain it and will work toward doing so. Without seeing why money has worth, you may be broke. Without seeing why love has worth, you may be antisocial. Without seeing why exercise has worth, you may be something like physically lazy.

So, the question of beginning to create a change starts with what we are doing to cause that change to begin with, and why we are going after that particular change. When you think about it, this is the same way that negative changes happen too, not just positive ones! Or rather, this is the same way that disadvantageous changes happen instead of advantageous and beneficial ones. Someone will take up smoking cigarettes because they perceive the bad health effects to be worth the sense of relaxation and control they get from lighting up.

Worth ties into beliefs. When we believe something to be true, our beliefs are generally constructed from our thoughts, feelings, and the actions we take upon our environment. Of course, the environment is constantly sending stimuli our way to try and convince us that we should act one way or another but the entire time we have to make choices and decisions regarding how we go about responding to our environment. Perhaps one of the first places you should always start for change is knowing what you can or cannot control. This is the truth: you can control your response to the environment but not the environment itself.

Robert J. Stanley, for example, in his book Stop Acting Rich: …And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire, remarks upon the fact that a huge percentage of modern millionaires avoid the stock market like the plague. My own grandmother has given me the advice that if you want a reliable return on your stock investments that you should never purchase a stock without a paying dividend. Still, some millionaires have avoided the stock market together for the reason that they have no control over what shifts the market takes; you can control your business as a business owner and how that business is run but you may not be able to control economic conditions and the actions of your competitors. From a certain perspective it makes total sense!

Now, am I saying specifically that you should avoid the stock market all together? Well no, not necessarily. In fact, one of my favorite coaches, the ever popular Tony Robbins remarked that while things have taken a drastic economic turn there is still tremendous opportunity for the right investors. I agree with him, he is right – when stock prices have plummeted and the economic conditions begin to recover you may just see the prices rise an amazing high at an exponential rate for a while. If you buy stock at $5 a share when the economy has hit either rock bottom or near rock bottom it is possible you could see that stock rise to around $12 to $14 or even more once the economy recovers. That’s more than a 100% increase and a huge return! Of course, I do not recommend that you gamble away all your savings on such an idea.

Another portion of change that is a huge element: some of the things that you believe are true and some of the things that are true you do not believe. Back in early 2006, I pitched the idea of my old t-shirt side business to my production company, Barton Ct. Productions Inc., so that we could have a source of income outside of the indie/amateur film industry (which in terms of money is basically non-existent). Later on in April of that same year, after they had shot down the idea saying it would be, basically, a waste of time if it did not work and something we “weren’t ready for” I decided to launch that side business myself and ended up coming out of it with over $15,000 in profit by the end of the business’s run. Not bad for a guy who had not even turned 21 and had only been through a couple semesters of college, running that operation part time!

Aside from just money, the lack of belief in what may be the truth constantly happens in other areas as well. Relationships can tend to suffer (or never even happen at all) because someone does not believe that they can grow being in a relationship with you or sometimes when you open your mouth to a stranger they will automatically assume, because of past experience or some other perception, that you have nothing to offer them. In many cases, rejection of a friendship or a romantic relationship can result from a belief in something that simply is not true.

So how do you tell the difference? How do you decipher the truth? To begin with, it certainly is not easy. Of course, there are right and wrong ways of going about it and the one thing you should probably rely on as little as possible is your emotional guidance, or intuition. The most fail proof way we have is engaging in the scientific method. I will not get too deep into the scientific method for this particular article but essentially it involves forming something you believe to be true in the first place, a hypothesis, and then setting up a rational process in which you can validly and reliably test that hypothesis. Many people probably already know about the scientific method because fortunately: it is taught as young as elementary school.

Under my conclusions, everything also relates back to Long Term Survival Theory, which essentially says that we should always be following this general process:

  • Survive – physical longevity, staying alive, being healthy.
  • Replication – reproducing aspects of ourselves but outside of our own mind and body.
    • Mimetic Replication – the expansion and reproduction of our ideas and non-material traits.
    • Genetic Replication – the biological reproduction of our physical body, our DNA, sexual reproduction.
  • Empower – enable the other people in the population around you to do the first two main portions of the process.

The last part can be a bit confusing to some but the reasoning behind it comes from findings demonstrable in the field of social network analysis, sociology, and psychology. If we exert effort on making sure the others around us are doing well it has been proven that it will aid us as well! If your family is happy, you are more likely to be happy. If your friends are all in a great mood then that great mood can be contagious and chances are pretty soon you might be in a great mood as well. Human beings have a remarkable ability for empathy due in part to our own ability for cognitive (or thought) constructs and something in our brains known as mirror neurons – where the brain will literally fire off some of the same connections that other people are firing off when those people express certain emotions that you see.

To sum everything up, it is really essential that you understand these basics regarding creating any life transformation, or change, from your core foundations. You need to:
1) Understand what your beliefs are, why you have them, and ask whether or not they can be known to be absolutely true.
2) Figure out what you feel has worth and consider why you want to work toward it. Make a list of other things that might have worth and another list of things that you feel are entirely worthless.
3) Begin to test and experiment with what you feel has worth, what you believe, and begin to learn and understand what is true. Remember that emotion should have little influence on this process. Be scientific and measure, measure, measure!

If you perform this exercise on a continuous basis you will quickly find that it opens up more and more questions which become more and more challenging to answer. For someone who has never really conducted this process on their life, it could prove to be challenging to simply write down the beliefs in which they have because there are many people who do not even know what it is they actually believe!

A general example of what this process might look like would be:
1) I believe that if I advertise for my business, I will receive more customers – is this true?
2) It is worth it to receive more customers for my business because I will receive more money and money is good – is this true?
3) Assuming that both things are true, let me begin conducting experiments to see if this entire concept is true.

Then you proceed to attempt different kinds of advertising and marketing strategies and so on and so forth. The interesting thing is that, in this example, sometimes not all businesses will receive more customers from advertising. Sometimes “money being good” might be true but maybe the fact that the money being good being your motivation actually presents a problem in your action plan. This is not an absolutely concrete process, it is an abstract one that is designed to get you thinking about all kinds of different angles on one single concept, which will then turn into endless concepts.

Remember that creating a change should happen from first understanding the foundations of where that change, and the desire for that change, are coming from. You must understand why it is you believe what it is you believe before you decide whether or not it is worth changing the belief in the first place. Sometimes being entrenched in a single belief without truly looking to outside sources with an open mind can be remarkably damaging and will only cause you to become further entrenched in a harmful, useless, or just plain false belief. Forming a hypothesis and testing it through rationally oriented experimentation is the best way to finding reliable and valid solutions to any problem that you may face whether those problems relate to relationships, money, or any aspect of health and beyond.

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