TIP 68
MAKE A RADICAL CHANGE
Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
Sometimes my clients don’t seem to be making any progress toward a particular goal and feel completely stuck. They come to me for advice on what to do. The first thing we look at is why they aren’t making progress. Is there something preventing them from taking action other than pure procrastination? Maybe they don’t have the knowledge or skill to do a particular task and need to delegate it to someone else (Tip 62). One of my clients was procrastinating about creating a website for her speaking company. After a brief discussion, she realized that she was not interested in learning all that it takes to put up a website. She hired someone to do it, and that was that—project complete!
Sometimes fear is stopping people. We take a look at the source of the fear (Tip 97) and alleviate that. Rob hired me because he wanted to quit his job and start his own business. He was frustrated because he just couldn’t make the leap. He felt that he was acting cowardly and indecisively. He had good reason to be afraid. He had over $8,000 in credit card debt and nothing saved to fund his new business. We set up an aggressive debt repayment plan and a savings plan (Tip 24) and worked on ways he could start his new business in the evenings until its success made his old job unnecessary. It was a tough wake-up call for Rob, but in the end, he made the transition successfully. Many people quit out of frustration before they have the savings and the clients they need. This creates unnecessary stress.
Once we’ve removed any blocks and fears, if the clients still can’t progress, it may be that the goal is wrong. I usually recommend that they ditch the goal and get a new one that they don’t need motivation to tackle (Tip 4). Another reason clients don’t reach goals is that they are doing one goal to get something else—the thing they really want. For example, you may be going to the gym to lose weight so that you can attract a man. Losing weight isn’t your real goal—your real goal is to get a man. In this case, I’d recommend that the client go for what she wants directly and buy the book, How Not to Stay Single by Nita Tucker and my book, The Secret Laws of Attraction, and start attracting a man. Go directly for what you want; don’t waste time mucking around with other stuff. If you go directly for what you want and it doesn’t work, then you might want to go back and try plan B.
What if none of the above applies, and the client is still stuck? It is time to make a radical change. Do something completely different; even go in the opposite direction. But whatever you do, don’t do the same old thing because that has been getting you nowhere. It is crazy to do the same thing and expect a different result. If you want the same result, do the same thing; if you want a different result, try something different.
There is an exception to this, as with all things. Sometimes you can take action and do all the right things, but feel that you are getting nowhere—or so it seems. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t progressing; it may just look like you aren’t progressing. George Leonard describes this phenomenon in his book Mastery and says that it is all part of the process of reaching excellence in any field. If you want to attain mastery of anything, you are bound to hit a plateau at some point. Most people give up, but the masters continue, and eventually they break through to the next level. Leonard is a black-belt martial artist and used his training experiences to illustrate his point. He would train and go through all the motions but not make it to the next level, and then one day he would be there. Some days you will even backslide. This is a normal part of the process and should be expected.
For example, my client Joshua was frustrated because his business just didn’t seem to be going to the next level. He had taken all the right actions, was speaking publicly to become known in the community, and had great relationships with local papers that would list his business events whenever he asked. He had an excellent track record. There didn’t seem to be anything missing, so I asked Joshua to continue taking all of these actions. In two months, things started to kick in, and now his business is thriving. He just needed to stick with it longer than he thought.
Sometimes a radical change is needed. If you aren’t making progress, you may want to do the opposite of what you have been doing. One of my clients was obese and wasn’t happy about it. She had tried every diet known to humanity, and nothing seemed to work for her. I suggested that the only thing that seems to work in such extreme cases is something equally extreme. She needed to radically change her lifestyle if she really wanted to become fit—become an aerobics instructor or a lumberjack or something. This got her thinking, and she realized that small changes just weren’t going to do it for her. She found someone to coach her through the process and evaluate every aspect of her exercise and eating until she could find a plan that worked for her. She has lost 63 pounds and has decided to join a runners’ club and enter a marathon to burn off the rest.
Let me give you another example. Marsha is one of the sweetest human beings around. It is nice to be nice, but for Marsha, she felt she had to be nice all the time. As a result, if someone asked her to do something, she found it very difficult to say no. If someone said something unkind to her, she didn’t know what to say in response. Everybody, even her own friends, seemed to be taking advantage of her. She went out of her way to help a friend after surgery, but when she was sick, her friend was nowhere in sight. She made plans to spend Thanksgiving with a fellow she had been seeing, and at the last minute he decided to go off with his friends instead. Marsha was a doormat, and everybody was walking all over her.
I told Marsha that she would need to take radical action to break out of the mold. She was willing to try anything. I asked her to be bad for a whole week to break her of the need to be nice. She balked at this assignment. At first Marsha couldn’t even think of something bad to do. I suggested she start with little things, like not answering the phone and letting the machine pick up the messages, or not returning a call if she didn’t feel like it. The next week Marsha reported back with all the bad things she had done. She got out of some work she had volunteered to do by saying, “It turns out I can’t do this after all.” She ate an entire angel food cake all by herself. She bought a totally impractical pair of sexy, high-heeled, shoes. She showed up 10 minutes late for an appointment when she had always been on time.
Marsha discovered that she didn’t always have to be good and that if she said no, the world wouldn’t end and people wouldn’t hate her. Instead, Marsha noticed an interesting thing: people weren’t teasing her or taking advantage of her anymore. They respected her.
Try being bad for 24 hours and see what happens. Then try it for a week. Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, and you can always go back to being good. Shake people up a bit.
Obviously, you must be prepared to live with the consequences of your actions. Of course, I’m not talking about breaking the law or endangering yourself or others. Most women have been raised to be nice. This is all very well and good, but our behavior is no longer our own—we end up having to be good. This stifles our creativity to the point that we don’t know how to be any other way, limiting our growth and development. The point of this tip is to break out of your normal routine, break a pattern or an old way of being that you are stuck with, and see what happens. What radical action are you ready to take?