Is It Too Hard To Change?
It’s easy to gather evidence for why you can’t (or shouldn’t) do something.
You can look at your past and see that you’ve never done it before, that you’ve tried and failed, or that it’s been one way for so long it must be nearly impossible to change it now.
You may come to the logical conclusion that the chances of you succeeding aren’t very good.
None of that is true, but getting stuck in that type of thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The truth is this: your history doesn’t determine your destiny.
It doesn't matter how long a problem, result or pattern has been there - it can change.
But when you look to your history for proof of whether you can do something or not, it dampens your belief and keeps you from taking steps forward.
And it is the small, consistent steps over time that will always take you where you want to go.
Instead of feeling daunted and overwhelmed by why something shouldn’t work out, focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
As James Clear talks about in his book Atomic Habits, tiny changes create massive results.
He talks about how the British Cycling Team had nothing but mediocre results for a century.
Since 1908 they had only won one gold medal in the olympics and in 110 years had never won the Tour De France.
Based on past results, their odds of winning were looking pretty dismal.
In 2003 they hired a new coach, Dave Brailsford, whose philosophy changed EVERYTHING.
The philosophy was “the aggregation of marginal gains” or in layman's terms, looking for just a tiny improvement in everything they were doing.
They looked at every aspect of cycling and aimed to get 1% better at everything they did.
Brailsford said, “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improve it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”
They implemented and followed the steps like:
Re-engineering the bike seat for greater comfort
Putting rubbing alcohol on the tires for better road grip
Heating up the cyclists over shorts to maintain ideal muscle temperature
Even hiring a surgeon to teach the cyclists how to wash their hands so they would maintain greater health!
In a relatively short period of time all the small steps added up to big changes for the team and from 2007-2017 they won 178 world championships, sixty-six Olympic/ Paralympic gold medals and five Tour de France victories.
Amazing, right?
At the level of fact, it didn't seem to make sense that these actions could bring about massive transformation.
But when you boil it down, lots of little steps taken consistently and added all together IS transformation.
So it doesn't matter how long you've been stuck…for a year and a half since the pandemic began, or 100 years like the British Cycling Team.
That has no bearing on what's possible going forward from here - as long as you decide to take some NEW action.
What can you do to take action on your goals and dreams that would be a small step?
Make a list of everything you can think of and aim for just a 1% improvement in all aspects of your goal or vision.
Track your wins, celebrate your progress and know that as you plant small seeds of success (in service of your vision) and celebrate all the sprouts of growth along the way, these seeds will bear the fruit.