The Secret to Making Change Stick
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I put out episodes four times a week for the past nine and a half years to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. Because if you can improve yourself, you can improve your life and create the life that you desire. Today, we're going to be talking about why change is so hard.

why you resist change, and then how to make sure that your change that you put in your life actually sticks. And so we're going to talk a lot about beliefs. We're going to talk a lot about your identity, what you think of yourself, your self-limiting beliefs. And we're going to really dive deep into that because I want you to understand this before we dive in, just because you believe something doesn't make it true. So we have thoughts inside of our head.

And then those thoughts, if we think the same thoughts long enough, they eventually turn into some form of a belief. And just because we think something long enough, it becomes a belief that we hold does not make them actual facts in reality. And beliefs about ourself create our identity. And if we believe something long enough, it doesn't make it a fact. We just assume, oh, well, it must be a fact because it's been going around in my head for so long.

I think that the most important thing that somebody can do in their life to change their life is to change their beliefs about themselves. And if they have enough beliefs about themselves, that creates an identity. And your identity is who you think you are.

And so if you could change your beliefs about yourself, if you can change your identity, who you think you are, then you can actually start to change the actions that you take. And long-term, those actions that you take turn into habits.

So the root of all of this that we're going to talk about here is that humans do not like inconsistency. They make us feel like there might be some form of a threat. Like we don't like being with somebody who believes different than we believe. This is why people who are political, they only want to hang out with the other people who believe the same political stuff they do.

A lot of people who are religious only want to hang out with other people who believe the same religious stuff that they do. And the reason why is because when you're around somebody else who believes differently than you do, your quote-unquote solid ground of belief that you think that you stand on can start to feel like quicksand. And when your beliefs...

that are not solid ground, and you thought were solid ground, start to feel like quicksand, we start to feel threatened. And so we'd rather just hang around people who believe all of the exact same stuff that we do. Because in our beliefs about ourself, our identity doesn't have to come into question.

And so when we come across some form of inconsistency in our belief patterns, we want to restore consistency as soon as possible. And we try to do this through basically one of two ways. Number one is we rationalize behaviors or beliefs.

We try to explain away what we did or what the person that we follow did and why that belief is okay or whatever it might be because we're trying to re-solidify the quicksand that we're standing on. Or a lot of times, more often than not, people trivialize it. Oh, it's not that big of a deal.

They don't know what they're talking about. This person's here and trying to tell me this thing that's different than my beliefs. Like they're just not as smart as I am. They must not have read this book that I've read. And so it's really interesting because it brings in this question, like, why do we not like, why do we want consistency so much? Why do we not want inconsistency? Why do we feel like we need resolve? And it really comes down to, it starts to make us feel physically uncomfortable.

When we are finding something that is inconsistent with the way that we think the world is or our belief systems or our beliefs just about ourselves, we feel physically uncomfortable. They've actually shown that your heart rate a lot of times will start to increase. You'll actually experience some shortness of breath. Some people get fidgety. This is the reason why experts can identify when somebody is lying just by looking at their body language is because literally the lie itself is inconsistent with the truth.

And so it causes a physical and mental discomfort. And so we feel like we have to restore consistency so that we can feel better physically and also mentally. And so basically as a human, because we build our identity of ourself is built on a set of beliefs, which are not factual in reality, but they're just a set of beliefs that we've built. We always want to know who we are and where we stand, right?

We always want to know who we are, where we stand. And anytime people can call this the ego, anytime the ego is threatened, it usually in some sort of way wants to clap back to make sure that it's like, no, this is who I am. This is my firm position.

this belief of who I am, my identity of the type of person. This is also why like when someone on one side of politics or religion says something to somebody on the other side of politics or religion that's threatening their beliefs, what do they do? They usually try to bring that person down. They try to trivialize that person. Oh, they don't know what they're talking about. They're not as smart as me. They're not as educated.

And the reason why is because it causes this cognitive dissonance, which is what's going on in our head and what we think of ourselves and our beliefs and our beliefs about reality don't actually line up. And really what it comes down to

is there's this thing that's inside of us that's called, in psychology, it's called the principle of consistency, is because of the fact that we build this identity of ourself and we have a set of belief patterns around it, we have this self-image to uphold. And this image of who we are in our heads to uphold, we have to do everything that we can to keep it that way because it's so fragile because it's not actually real.

that we have to try to fight to keep it alive. This is why a lot of times I'll see people like fight for their insecurities. And so to challenge that self-image makes us extremely uncomfortable. And so we have to push away or we have to fight anything that comes against it. And this is why change is so hard.

This is the reason why change is so hard. Not because you need to take different actions. You need to create different habits. Yes, those things are important. But if your identity doesn't line up with those habits and those actions, you're not going to do them. And if you do do them, you won't do them long term. This is why somebody can have so much trouble trying to create a habit. It

It's so damn hard to create a habit. And the reason why is because you actually have to change the identity of who you are so that it lines up with the actions and habits that you're creating. This is why change is so hard is because it requires you to shift your own personal beliefs about yourself. There's this thing that we have in psychology inside of our brains called the confirmation bias, right? It's basically like having a filter on your brain that only allows you to see what

what you agree with or what you want to be true. So it's about looking basically for evidence for what you believe in and then ignoring anything that's against that. And we will be right back.

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And now, back to the show. So,

We will look through this filter to see the evidence of our own personal beliefs about the world or about ourselves. So whenever we see a story or we look through a lens of our own beliefs, it makes us feel comfortable. We're looking for that evidence that supports our beliefs that we already have versus looking at evidence from the other side, which might make us feel as if we're wrong. And so let me give you a few examples of what I'm talking about.

Because we'll always search for evidence to confirm what we think about ourselves and disregard the evidence that proves otherwise. And so let's say if your belief about yourself, which is common for many people I hear all the time is,

Something along the lines of like, I'm unlovable. And that can translate into many different things like, oh, there's no good men in my city. So it's like the I'm unlovable transmutes to there's no good men in my city or I'm too old to get into relationships. And so let's say, you know, unlovable is what you have inside of your head and what you believe about yourself. Usually comes from some form of childhood, your relationship with your parents, whatever it might be.

So maybe you have a friend that cancels your plans. They're going to go out with you. They cancel plans. And in your head, you're like, of course they would cancel their plans because nobody wants to spend time with me. So it lines up with what you think of yourself. So you basically take that evidence. You store it away as, hey, see, I'm unlovable. Let's say somebody doesn't respond to your text in a certain amount of time. Oh, okay.

They're probably ignoring me because they don't care. I'm going to take that piece of evidence. I'm going to store it away as true because why? It lines up with what I think about myself. And so let's say, for instance, a friend, though, surprises you with a thoughtful gift. Well, what you do is instead of taking that and storing it as true, we try to trivialize that thing. Oh, they're just being nice to me. They probably feel sorry for me. Let's say that your partner takes you out to a nice dinner and, you know, really you can tell they mean it and they say, I love you.

And it's like, you take that and you don't store that one as evidence. It's, you might say something like, oh, they don't really mean it. They're just saying it out of habit or because they feel like they have to. You see what I mean? Like there's many times where, and this is the reason why a lot of people have a whole lot of trouble with, um,

accepting some form of a compliment from somebody else is because a lot of times that compliment doesn't line up with what they think about themselves. You know, like one of the things that I see a lot of times is that women are very, when they get around their friends, they're very positive affirming of each other.

And I see it all the time. I see it with my wife's friends when they come over and when they're in groups and stuff. It's not just women, but I see this a lot of times just in these social settings where they're like, oh my God, you look so pretty. And then immediately what will happen is the person will then take that and flip it. And so they'll say, because it doesn't line up with their view of themselves. Oh my God, you look so pretty. Oh yeah, but I've gained five extra pounds and I hate the way these jeans fit on me. They immediately smash the little bit of

In that moment, they smashed the little bit of evidence that proves that their belief about themselves is not true. And so they're always looking for the thing. We're always, our brain is always looking for evidence of truth to what we believe about ourselves. If you believe, you know, I'm unattractive, well, then somebody doesn't compliment your new outfit. When you're just like, well, I guess it looks bad on me because I'm not good looking.

You know, maybe you see an unflattering photo of yourself when you're out with your friends and someone posted on Instagram. You're like, see, I knew I wasn't photogenic. I'm not good looking. But let's say, for instance, that you receive a compliment from a stranger like I was talking about. Oh, they're just being polite. Or maybe your partner says, oh my gosh, you look beautiful today. He's just saying that because he has to.

And so what happens is we're always trying to find this evidence and we're always trying to disregard the evidence, trying to find the evidence that proves that what we think about ourselves is true. We're trying to get rid of the evidence that proves that what we think about ourself is not true in this case, right? So...

Your belief about yourself is I'm not good enough. And you go and you put in a job application and you get rejected for your job application. Well, this proves that I'm not good enough for anything. You know, you make a mistake on your presentation for something. Everyone must think that I'm a failure. All of this evidence gets stored away as true. But maybe, for instance, you go out and you receive praise for excellent work on a project that you did at work. Oh, they don't really mean it. They're just being nice.

Maybe you won an award for something like a performance that you did. Oh, it's probably because there was no one else that was better. You see what I'm trying to say here is we're always trying to find evidence for what we believe about ourselves. And we're always disregarding the evidence that proves that what we believe about ourself is not actually true. Maybe you think that you're a bad parent, you know, so, you know, you forget to pack your child's lunch one day and you're like, see, this is just proof that I'm not good at parenting.

Maybe you struggle to calm down your son while he's in the middle of a temper tantrum. It's like, see, I can't even manage my own kid. And then maybe on the other side of that, so that's the evidence that you're looking for. Maybe on the other side of it, you go in for a meeting with the child's teacher and they talk about how well behaved your kid is. You've done such a great job at raising him. Well, she probably says that to all of the parents to make them feel good.

right? Or your child says, I love you. And, you know, thank you for being so amazing. You know, like they don't understand what a bad parent I am. So you're trying to trivialize this thing. And so what I want you to start to think about in this case is when you're looking at what you want to create with your life, when you're looking at, say, the next

six months, the next year of your life and what you want to create, we can consciously sit there and say, oh my God, I want to create this amazing business. I want to create this amazing relationship. And you can consciously want to create something different than you have. But if your beliefs about yourself don't line up with the future that you want to create, the only thing that you need to do is change your beliefs about yourself.

And once again, the reason why this is important is because your beliefs about yourself are just thoughts that you have thought for a long time and you think that they are true. But just because you think something doesn't make it true. And just because you have a belief does not make it a fact in the universe.

Like I, if, if I were to look at your, your tag that you were made up from, you know how like you can look at like, oh, this is 5% polyester and 95% cotton. If I were to look at the tag that of, of what you're made up, would it say, oh, not good enough, unlovable. Uh, this one was born with the deficiency in this way. No, it's, it's not going to say that, which means that you're the only one that's holding this belief about yourself. And if you don't change the belief about yourself, change is not going to happen.

And I think this is what's really important, especially this time of year. So many people want to create a different life. They want to do something different. They read books about how to create habits, how to take different action, and they try it for a little while and it doesn't stick. And they're like, damn it, I just can't change myself. Well, the reason why you can't change the actions that you take, you can't change the habits that are stuck inside of you, is because the actions that you need to take to create a different life don't line up with what you think about yourself.

So you need to change what you think about yourself. What is the belief that you must have in order to create a new life? Get rid of all of your own beliefs. Like just act like they don't exist. Okay, here's the life that I want to create over the next 12 months. What is the belief that you must have about yourself in order to make that possible? And what you do is you identify it. You get very clear on it.

Make sure there's some form of emotional attachment to it. So it feels like, yeah, this one's definitely got some weight to it. And you start to actually brainwash yourself, like brainwash it into yourself. Brainwash it into yourself. Say it over and over and over and over again.

write it down on a paper a hundred times a day. Wake up in the morning, say it a hundred times yourself. Go to the bed in the evening, say it a hundred times yourself. Say it so much that it's a broken record inside of your head because if you say it long enough, guess what happens? Yeah, just like all of your old crappy beliefs where you just started to believe them somehow, if you say something long enough, eventually you start to believe it. And when your old beliefs pop up, because they will, you know, old habits die hard. They're going to fight.

when they're trying to be squashed. When the old habit or belief pops up, you stop what you're doing in that moment and you repeat your new belief about yourself over and over and over again. Your BS meter, I promise you, will go off. It's going to go crazy in the first week of doing this, the first couple weeks of doing this. But as you do this for two months, for three months, for six months, it starts to become like a new song that's stuck inside of your head.

And so it really comes down to if I'm going to change, sure, I need to change my actions. Sure, I need to change my habits. But ultimately, I need to change my identity of myself. I need to change my beliefs about myself. I need to change my thoughts about myself so that they line up with the type of person that I need to be to create the life that I want to create. So that's

That's all I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, I'm actually going to be going much, much, much deeper into this on my workshop that's coming up on January 15th and 16th. I'm going to teach why habits don't stick and how to actually get them to stick based off of your identity and your beliefs about yourself, a

big, big part of that is identity and beliefs. So if you want to join me, it's absolutely free to join it. It is habits2025.com to sign up. Once again, habits with an S, 2025.com. And with that, I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.