5 Myth's About Change - John Assaraf

Myth: Crisis is a powerful reason for change.

Reality: In a recent study, ninety percent of patients who’ve had quadruple heart bypass surgery continued to live a lifestyle that would worsen their condition and threaten their lives.

If you won’t change despite a life and death decision, then what?

Solution: Most people use “will power” and “persistence” to make the changes they want or need thinking that they are doing the best they can. After all that’s what we were taught.

Although it’s a gallant effort, we now know that permanent change takes reconditioning the brain to a new way of thinking and behaving. According to scientists, it takes approximately 30 days of daily reconditioning to create the new “neural networks” that are needed for long-term permanent changes in a person, before you can expect your business or life to get better, and stay that way.

It took time to create your beliefs and habits and it takes time to get rid of the ones that don’t serve you.

Myth: Change is motivated by fear or loss.

Reality: Absolutely not true! People almost always go into automatic denial of the bad things that might happen to their business or themselves no matter what the potential severity of their decisions and consistent actions are. It’s as natural as breathing for us to wait till the absolute last minute to change.

Solution: Creating compelling, positive visions of the future with a viable plan or solution is one of the best ways to inspire long term and permanent change. You must get emotionally involved with why you must change and then follow your plan. If you have a big enough reason to change, you may be more serious than if it’s just convenient. Having a buddy to help you is also a great way to ensure you follow through. In addition, create an environment around you to help support any new changes you seriously want to make and keep.

Myth: Facts are what we need to help us makes changes in our lives.

Reality: Our thinking is guided by our internal stories, narratives and habits of thought, not facts. When a new fact doesn’t fit our current internal map of reality—which we use to make sense of the world—we automatically reject it. Change is best achieved when emotions are involved and invoked quickly, not facts.

Solution: If you seriously want to make significant gains in any area of your life or business, you must get emotionally charged regardless of the doubt, fear, obstacle or size of your goal. Emotions are the brains fuel for making your goals a reality and as mentioned above, get support to help you along the way.

Myth: Gradual and small changes are the best way to go to achieve your desired goals or outcomes.

Reality: Radical, fast, and severe changes are often easier to sustain because of the quick results one derives. We thrive on fast gains and will do a lot to sustain them. When we see that our efforts have paid of fast, we are 100% more likely to continue vs slower to see results.

Solution: Make a specific decision on what you want to achieve and go full out executing a well thought out plan. Make sure you get the support you need to sustain the changes during and beyond the 30-day mark. And remember the change MUST happen on the inside first or it will be very short-lived.

Myth: We can’t change because are genetically predisposed to certain thoughts and have become “hardwired” early in life and have to many bad habits to change.
Reality: The latest findings suggest that only 50% of our “hard wiring” is genetically based and that our brains have extraordinary “plasticity” that can be molded and plied in new ways throughout our lives. We have the ability to grow complex new “neural networks” very fast that can help us create a new reality for our business and life no matter how young or old we are.

Solution: We can rewire our brains by creating new beliefs of what is possible for us to achieve. You can create new beliefs using affirmations, visualization techniques and meditation. You must then act upon our desired goals as if your life depended on getting great results regardless of the doubts or fears that we feel due to your old conditioning or past results.