How To Make Changes This Year That Stick
For the first time in forever, I’m not spending the twilight zone between Christmas and New Year recovering from some combination of burnout and emotional dumpster fire.
Instead, there’s space in my head to think about what I want my life to be; to acknowledge what’s working and let go of what’s not.
Over the past year, I’ve started to glimpse what it might be like to make things happen for me, rather than life being a relentless onslaught of things happening to me.
I’m cautious because of all the times I thought I had it together only to spiral back down to where I started. Convinced I had banished negative ways of thinking only to have brutal reality rush in and fill the hole.
I’ve put in some pretty solid work unlearning the damaging messages of my childhood; beliefs unwittingly reinforced by the choices of my adult life. Woven in between were diagnoses of autism, ADHD and generalised anxiety and the quandary of how trauma shapes and is shaped by neurodivergence.
I read articles and followed links. I listened to podcasts. I read the important books: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C Gibson, Untamed by Glennon Doyle, How To Do The Work by Nicole LePera and John Bradshaw’s classic Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing your Inner Child to name a few. I heartily recommend them all.
Gradually they chipped away at the baked-on belief that there was something inherently wrong with me; that I was unworthy and unlovable. Learning how widespread patterns of suboptimal parenting are made me feel less alone. Learning strategies from thought leaders and experts gave me hope.
But there was still something that refused to release its grip on me. An invisible force beyond my reach, determined to pull me back in spite of my efforts.
It was like peddling an exercise bike — expending all the energy but not actually moving anywhere. I was at the same time consumed by restless activity and bound by inertia.
And on a really bad day, the weight of overwhelm would press down on me and crush any belief in myself. Like a muscle memory, I would feel the pang of ancient hurt whenever my defences were down.
The brief to my psychologist: I want to get to the bottom of these negative core beliefs that are holding me back. I need to do this to move forward with my life and to be the person I want to be.
My nervous system was out of control. Even though there was nothing particularly stressful about my work environment, I was in a constant state of fight or flight.
Now that I had my rational thought processes in order, why did something under the surface keep conspiring to undo me? I was desperate to break through this impenetrable final frontier to take control of my life.
The psychologist’s answer was beautifully simple: you have to change your behaviour and take active steps.
I was thinking nothing would shift until I banished the last of those pesky core beliefs. Turns out, the way to rewire the inner circuitry is to show it who’s boss by striding forth and doing stuff. Eventually the core beliefs have no choice but to fall into line.
It fits nicely with what James Clear has to say in his book Atomic Habits. The overarching premise is that to achieve our goals, we need to shift our focus from the outcome to the steps that will get us there.
Success is the product of daily habits, not of once in a lifetime transformation. It comes from the systems, processes and practices that you build up over time.
This is not toxic positivity, but an approach firmly grounded in reality. He acknowledges that sometimes you’re too tired or slip up and do things that don’t help you. But as long as the overall trajectory is heading in the right direction, all the tiny, incremental steps will add up to something.
But you can’t just establish enduring good habits in a vacuum. Clear says the real reason we fail to stick with habits is not laziness or lack of willpower but because our beliefs about ourselves get in the way. If you want to be a writer, it’s not enough just to write regularly, you have to see yourself as a writer.
It’s your identity that provides the driving force behind the habits you put in place. People are more likely to maintain behaviour that aligns with their identity and the stronger the identity, the more motivated they are.
It’s a feedback loop between thought and action — your identity shapes your habits which in turn reinforce and shape your identity. Each experience modifies your identity as you become the person you believe yourself to be.
It follows that if your identity, beliefs and assumptions about yourself aren’t aligned with the habits you’re trying to maintain, you won’t get very far. If you’re driven by negative self-beliefs you may even be sabotaging your efforts.
It wasn’t hard to apply James Clear’s ideas to my life. I had been trying to establish a freelance writing practice for over a year but wasn’t getting anywhere. I would compare myself to other writers, convinced I would never be as good. Discouraged, I would slink away, returning a few weeks later to do exactly the same thing.
It didn’t matter how diligently I went about developing and pitching story ideas because I didn’t believe in myself as a writer. This was one area where I hadn’t really tackled my beliefs about myself and I couldn’t establish effective habits until I did.
But then something shifted. With more time on my hands, I had an opportunity to take myself seriously as a writer. I began to structure my days like I would if I was a proper writer. I put routines and schedules in place and set up my workspace properly. I listed writer among my roles on forms that I filled out.
Something magic was happening — thought and action were aligning and it was paying off. I still got pitches rejected, but I got some accepted. That is what being a writer is.
The main thing was that I saw myself as a writer, not someone pretending to be one.
I’ve heard it said that pangs of envy are simply a message alerting you to what you really want to be; a longing to grasp the thing that holds meaning for you.
I realised that instead of comparing myself to the achievements of other writers, I could look closely at what helped them get there.
I listen to a lot of podcasts where writers talk about their writing process. While incredibly diverse in background, genre and style they are united by a resolve to see themselves as writers from the start.
I’m sure there’s not a writer alive who hasn’t struggled with self-doubt. But the ones who succeed overcome it by just getting on with it. They are writers, therefore they write.
The stories we tell ourselves can seem like they have an unshakeable grip but we also have the power to change them. It is just one story. It can be replaced with another.
As James Clear says:
“The task of breaking a bad habit is like uprooting a powerful oak within us and the task of building a good habit is like cultivating a delicate flower, one day at a time.”
Although I had been trying to make changes in my life, it felt like I was operating within constraints that I believed were beyond my control. I could make the best of a bad situation, but it was too late to turn my life around.
But who I am and how my life has panned out isn’t the result of some unassailable force of destiny. It is simply the product of a tangle of circumstances that happened without rhyme or reason.
The big constraint I was operating under was my own set of limiting self -beliefs. The big divide between me and people who enjoy the success that I covet is that they are powered by a belief in themselves.
I needed to accept the authority to take charge of my life and my decisions. Only then could I work towards being the person I wanted to be and achieve the things I know I’m capable of.
Now as I grasp the power to transform my beliefs about myself, I can dare to want more. And I can make it happen, one little step at a time.
