A New Way

It’s challenging to act how we’d like.

I walked and talked with someone who’d grown up in India, then moved to New York, Iowa, and Boston. They told me about how they realized they wanted to experience more and do things outside their routine a couple of years ago. They said that mindset shift powered them to live a more fulfilling life.

That’s awesome.

Then, they told me how they’d been wanting to join the walk we were on but struggled to get out of the house, leaving Netflix and the couch behind. Finally, they admitted the value of their life before their mindset shifted and how hard it was to change that routine.

Change is powerful, and a new direction or goal can alter our life path. Such a change feels radical and can motivate us to pursue these new goals. But changing our actions and reality takes much longer than deciding to change.

For example, I decided I wanted to change careers. I talked with people about leaving my job immediately and figuring it out after. I received wise counsel to plan first. Within six months, I decided I wanted to move into an entrepreneurial field. It took me three years to leave and pursue entrepreneurship full-time.

Another example, around the same time, I decided I wanted to communicate ideas to others to bring them together and help them find better answers. All this time later, I’m still working on dedicating time to my stories each day.

It’s hard to align our actions to our goals because our minds are great at learning what we do and doing it again. It’s why a basketball player can dribble without thinking about it. Their mind has learned how to dribble so the player can focus on other things. Likewise, if you gave a player a ball and asked them not to dribble once all day, they’d absentmindedly bounce the ball. We learn our habits so well that when we want to change them, we’re trying to override our subconscious.

James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, frames this habit loop as the cue, the craving, and the response. For basketball players, they hold a basketball, and that’s their cue to dribble. Their mind has a craving to dribble. It knows what to do in this situation and wants to run its program – to dribble. The response is their action; they bounce the ball. Our lives are a composition of all the routines we run. When we wake up, we go for a run. When we finish work, we drink alcohol. When our parents call, we sit in our favorite chair and talk to them.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to grow and change. On the contrary, what you want and value should shift as you evolve. But there’s a lag between deciding to do something and it reflecting in your life.

Be patient.