[00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the So Here For It podcast. My name is Amy Mingin, thank you so much for joining me. Today I'm talking about why it is hard to change. There are people who I speak to on an everyday basis that feel like they're stuck. They feel like they want to change. And even when they do, there's some sort of self saboteur that comes out.
And if you go back and listen to some of the other episodes that have already recorded about this, I've talked about self sabotage, I've talked about procrastination, I've talked about perfectionism, I've talked about paralysis that we can get ourselves into, but this one's going to be slightly different.
And I'm going to start this episode with a story. I'm going to tell a story about, it's an ancient Chinese proverb, and it starts like this. In a village, there was a man who was living in a place and in every single day, when he was out [00:01:00] tending to his garden, he could hear this dog yelping, and he wondered why the dog was yelping.
And one day he finally figured out that it was actually his neighbor's dog. So he thought, well, I'm going to go over and just see if the dog's okay, because maybe they go out. Maybe the farmer, the other guy next door just isn't there. Maybe he's a farmer as well. And he's like gone out and tending to the fields and maybe the dog is at home and it's lonely.
So he goes over to his neighbor's house, but the man answers the door and he's like, Oh, I didn't expect you to be home. And he goes, well, why is that? He said, well, I can hear your dog yelping all the time. And he goes, yeah, you can come and meet my dog. And he's like, well, is your dog okay? And he goes, yeah, my dog's fine.
And he's like, but why is it yelping all the time? And as he got closer to the dog, the dog wasn't moving. And he goes, are you sure that the dog is okay? And he goes, yeah, the dog can [00:02:00] move at any time. And he goes, well, why doesn't the dog move? And he goes, because the dog has sat down on a nail. And he goes, well, don't you want to help your dog?
And he goes, I already have, and I help it every day, but it keeps going and choosing to sit on the nail. And the man who went to his neighbor's house was very confused about why the dog would stay sitting on the nail, given that it was so painful. And the man whose dog it was said, Look, what I realize is this, that the dog simply isn't in enough pain yet to want to not be on the nail.
It reminds me of this other quote that I've heard, that people would rather be in a familiar hell than to go into the unknown, the fear of the unknown and find themselves in an unfamiliar heaven. And it's a [00:03:00] really big thing to change. I know that everyone wants to change at some stage of their life, but if you reflect on it right now, when you got to that point where you had the motivation to change, were you going through a really big painful experience?
Or did you simply decide? Because there's a really big difference between people, particularly in relation to their health, but this can be in relation to anything in life. People wait until there's enough pain before they change, and they will not make the choice to change prior to being in enough pain.
But the problem is this. If you wait too long, then sometimes it's way too hard to even make it back to zero. And what I mean by this is if we say that the first level of pain is say minus one, and then you keep putting up with this minus one in life, like, yeah, okay. The job that I'm in, I don't like it. I'm in a minus one, but you [00:04:00] keep going to the job. Because it's paying the bills, right? And by the end of three months, you're at a minus three. What tends to happen to your energy levels? You're in minus three. You're not even at zero. Other areas of your life are going to suffer because you're deciding to stay in a familiar hell. You have choice. You can change. But you stay in your familiar hell because, oh, it's paying the bills.
Another thing, your health starts to have some form of symptom and I'll call this the feather moments. So you get going down the steps and all of a sudden your knee hurts. But you're like, Oh, I'll just walk it out. It'll be right. But you don't think about why is your knee hurting? You don't think about what were you thinking about when you, when your knee started to hurt. You don't think about what the metaphysical meaning of your knee means. [00:05:00] You might, maybe, maybe some people might go and ask a physio and you might get exercises, but how many people actually do the exercises from the physio? Not that many.
How many people actually think about the strengthening that is required around that knee? Not that many. These are just a couple of examples of things that play out in an everyday sense. You think about the voice inside your head that's speaking negatively to you when you look in the mirror, that's speaking negatively to you while you're checking your bank account, while you're spending money, while you're hanging out with a partner, while you're with a friend, or when you walk away from the friend, if there's some sort of toxicity playing out in that relationship. It is a familiar hell, right?
So I want you to have a think about the nervous system now, because that's all like, you know, I think everyone can relate to [00:06:00] something that I've just said. And we've all been in some form of familiar hell before, before we get to the point of change, before we get to the point of like, Oh, this is like, I'm in the minuses and some people are going to wait till they're in like minus 100 before they make a change.
We all have different boundaries around this and we all have different coping mechanisms. And there's no right or wrong here. I just want to say, even if you're in plus 100, you can still change. Okay. Now, I want you to remember that your nervous system is not wired for happiness. It is wired for survival.
So it is negatively biased. And what does this mean? It means if there is a perceived threat, i. e. when you try and change because it's familiar and you're going into something that's unfamiliar and unknown, that is a threat to your nervous system. Your nervous system is going to send off alarm bells.
That is going to cause you to feel something, i. e. it could be fear. It could be something like nervousness. It could be you overthinking something. And what does that do? That [00:07:00] usually puts people into paralysis or it slows them down enough to make them question things. And it's then once you slow down, one of two things happens, you either get clarity and you make the change, or you simply talk yourself out of it because you've been procrastinating on it.
And I know for sure that we usually know what we want really early on. If we're presented with an opportunity for growth, usually there's that little part of us inside of us that goes, Oh my God, this is amazing. I really want to do this. But then the logical brain wants to think through all the different possible scenarios and possible solutions. And all of a sudden we have this very lengthy list of boxes that must be ticked in order to feel safe. It doesn't always work that way, right? It does not always work that way. But also this, people will say, follow your feel good, particularly in the human [00:08:00] design. You know, you think about generators, manifesting generators, they're often told to follow their feel good.
And I think that like, there's something really cool about that because that helps people to realize what it is that they do want or don't want. Really good to get really good signals from your body. What's a yes. What's a no. All about it. But. I think that there's more nuance to it than what people realize. And this is what I mean by that. You can't just keep following things that are exciting your whole life. And here's why, because the excitement becomes the familiar. The excitement doesn't necessarily mean that you're going beyond your, and risking that fear going beyond what you've already done. It might just mean that that thing feels good so you're going to go do it. Just like eating a piece of chocolate feels good. But that's not unfamiliar, right? And you see what I mean? Something exciting like, Oh, well, I could do this thing that I need to do for work, or I could go meet that friend at the beach and go for a swim. [00:09:00] What's more important.
You're going to feed this through your behaviors and you're going to feed this through like what's most important to you at the time. And if growth is important, then do the thing that's going to give you the growth. Because it is not your skillset that stops you, it is your beliefs about how you'll feel in the process.
I'm going to repeat that again, because I came out with that sentence just before I started this podcast. And I thought that is brilliant. Let me say it again. It is not your skillset that stops you, it's your beliefs about how you'll feel in the process.
So what happens here is your nervous system has imprints. It remembers what it feels like to change. And it goes, remember what happened last time? That person laughed at you. Remember what happened? You had that hater on social media. Remember what happened? You ended up getting scammed by that person. Remember what happened? You were not capable that time.
And so it goes, Nup and puts the brakes on. And it's like, no change is too hard. No, no, no, no, no. We're not going to do it. [00:10:00] But here's the thing. If you take action toward fear, figure out where your trigger is, figure out what you're fearing and you go, that's an interesting fear, that's showing me the way to go.
Cause guess what? Fear equals growth zone. Repeat it. Fear equals growth zone. So this is in the context of somebody who does have a regulated nervous system, by the way. So if you're somebody who is feeling super dysregulated, super chaotic, you're probably in fear anyway. So this doesn't apply to you. To the people who have a regulated nervous system, to the people who have a clear yes and no answer inside their body, this is you.
Move toward the fear, move toward the trigger. That is where your growth is, that is your growth zone, that is what is going to pay dividends time and time and time again. Life is not here just to be kind to you and just give you everything that you want. Could you imagine how boring it would be if it was like, I want to go to Tahiti, and then you're there.
Like, really? [00:11:00] If you want to go to Tahiti, first of all, you've got to dream that up. You've got to get the picture on your vision board. You've got to look at flights. You've got to look at when that's going to fit into your calendar in the next year. You're going to be like, if I've got to go by myself, who am I going to take with me?
You're going to invite the people. You're going to book the flights. You've got to actually take action toward your dream, right? And even then, even then, if you're not meant to go to Tahiti, it certainly will not happen. If you're meant to go, it will all work out for you. And it doesn't mean if that time doesn't work out that it'll never work out for you. It just means that when it's time, it's time.
Really simple example, but I really want this to land for you guys. And of course, like every other episode, I want to give you some really tangible ways of how you can bring in change into your life so that you can make things easier for yourself. So here are a few ways that you can make change easier.
Now I've said this before, and I'll never stop saying it actually. Start small, [00:12:00] keep it simple. So at the start of the day, you're going to write down a couple of things that you really have as a priority to get done. Guess what? This podcast, top priority for me today. Guess what I'm doing? The podcast. I am very much late luteal.
So you, if you're seeing me in real life, you're going to get spicy Amy. I say that to my people. I'm just like, keen to hang out with spicy? I give them the pre warning. But the beauty of it is when you get to know yourself, you get to give people preframes. You get to communicate where you're up to, and you also get the freedom to choose every single time.
So I knew this podcast top priority, super simple, one step, I'm going to tick that off my list and I am going to feel so great for it. So what you're actually doing is giving yourself positive dopamine. Why is this important? Because there are so many sources of cheap dopamine out there. And when you give yourself the long form [00:13:00] dopamine, it can stay in your system for days, if not weeks.
When you tick off the most important things off your list, you are keeping your long term dopamine, which means you're more likely to complete more tasks, which takes me to the second point for you guys. Complete your tasks and actually notice when you do complete them. It's how many times do you start something and then you never go back to it?
How many times do you start multiple things and then you end up with a mess instead of completing things? Close some tabs, complete things. Fill out the form, send the email, do the podcast episode, contact the person, then let yourself notice that you did it. Sometimes like I get people to literally have a checkbox next to their things. To visually see it is really helpful. Again, the dopamine. You're giving yourself a gold star for doing it..
It's going to be then feeding that dopamine cycle, which is a reward, which [00:14:00] is internally, it's keeping you internally motivated. You don't need any external validation because you're completing your own tasks. So that's number two. Number three is build a support system around you. Now this can be in the form of friends, family, people who are more like colleagues, certain practitioners. You think about who feels really good for you to be around, but I want you to do it through the lens of this.
Listen to this, particularly those of you who are in business, listen to this one. I think it was Jim Rohn said, you're the product of the top five people that you hang around with. And he would say, your network is your net worth. And I'm like, yeah, plausible. And that was going for years. But then I saw Hormozi, who's a super successful gym entrepreneur.
I saw him on a video the other day and I thought, that's really clever. So what he's done is he's take that Jim Rohn quote, and he [00:15:00] says this, You're not the product of the five people you spend the most time with. You're the product of the five people you compare yourself with. And that landed for me because I was like, Oh, think about the people who you've been hanging out with.
Are you the big fish in the small pond or are you the small fish in the big pond? Do you hang around people who you go, Oh, wow, they really inspire me. Or do you hang around people who you're like, Yeah, I've kind of got to always like motivate these people who are around me. I kind of need to look after them all the time.
Think about that. Naturally, we are raising our standards and raising to the level of those top five people we're comparing ourselves to. So if it's time to, maybe it's time for you to find your new support network. How do you do this? Reach out to me on social media. We can have a chat about it because there are multiple ways that you can bring this into your life. And it's beyond this podcast. [00:16:00]
Next I want you to think about how you keep yourself accountable. Now, some people are internally motivated. I would put myself in that category, but we are tiny unicorms. There aren't that many people who are internally motivated, not such a bad thing. If somebody's externally motivated, it's totally fine.
But what it means is you normally need somebody who's going to help keep you accountable. Somebody who's going to check in on you, somebody who's going to be like, Hey, how'd you go with that thing? And my suggestion is don't make your brother or sister or wife or cousin or husband, the person who this is.
It's best to have one of those top five people who you compare yourself to. You're inspired people, inspirational people. It's better to have one of those as an accountability buddy, which leads me into the next one.
Think about who you are going to have as a coach or mentor. Think about how much you're actually making or how much your future self is [00:17:00] making. And roughly around 10 to 20 percent of what you're making in your gross income really should be going towards coach or mentor. And why, because the coach or mentor keeps you accountable is your supporter, is a source of inspiration, is a source of helping you get to where you want to go faster.
Not that being fast is the be all and end all, but it's actually really, really helpful to bounce ideas off, to interact with. And if it's not just about the coach or mentor, it's about the community that you join in that's part of that coach or mentors community. If you want to know more about this, I do have a mastermind called Woman of Value. I'll pop the link inside the show notes or reach out to me on social media.
Lastly, last point, practice self compassion. Because I'll remind you what I said on that last one. It's not your skillset that stops you, it's your beliefs about how you'll feel in the process. So if you are practicing self compassion at all stages, think about the version of you [00:18:00] who in the past would be overreactive. Or would feel like absolute crap if didn't make a sale or didn't make the team or didn't this or didn't that, would feel like a failure, versus the version of you that practices self compassion that went, you know what, I was actually doing my best at the time, that was actually my best. And the version of me who is now, actually has a few more resources.
So next time, if I'm put into that situation, I'll be able to use this resource and this resource and this resource. I'll be able to lean on this person for support. I will be able to express myself in particular ways. All of a sudden, you have just grown up your nervous system. All of a sudden you have transformed that imprint of how you used to be into the person you are becoming.
You have brought yourself into the now as opposed to acting from the past version of you. And that is a super powerful and transformative process. Now, this particular process and also the connection to why you do things like, [00:19:00] how are you doing them? Why are you doing them? What is your work in the world? What is your big vision? I ran a workshop the other day. It's called Vision 25. It is phenomenal. It is you being able to show self awareness of all those different parts of you that showed up in the past that did their absolute best. And now you have so many more resources. And you're able to integrate all of those parts so that you can become who you are becoming, create your new vision for 2025 and step into that version of yourself.
So if you want to create more abundance, if you want to attract love, if you want to travel more, if you want to make renovations on your house or have a baby or whatever the thing is that you really, really want and desire, you get to have it. But you only rise to the standards of your current breaking point.
And what does that mean? That means that if you still have the imprints that are playing out from that previous version of you, then you're not going to break through to the next [00:20:00] version. So come to Vision 25, it is $22. I'm popping the link down below in the show notes so that you can join it. It will change your life. It will change your life. If you want the direct link and you're on my social media, just send me a message.
And I've absolutely loved this episode today. It is seriously one of my favorite topics. I love helping people transform. I love helping people change. Please, if this has helped you today, can you share it with a friend?
Can you share it with someone who you know, just needs this next level, who wants this next level and who's ready for it. Because we get to actually love change, love that unfamiliarity, to love the unknown. And keep showing up as our best selves. So have the best day today. Thank you so much for having me in your ears.
I appreciate it so much. And I will speak to you on the next episode.
