Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life… 5 Books That Will Change Both For Good
I know we all say that this year it’s going to be different. We are going to lose that weight, going to make a lot more money, get that dream job, and/or find our true loves. This is going to be the year… this will be a year like no other!
At least that’s what we tell ourselves on December 31st at 11:59 pm. But then January 1st is here, and you of course didn’t get out of bed till noon because… well and how could you since, you stayed up super late the night before, eating and drinking till you couldn’t anymore.
Ok, so January 2nd… that’s when it’s all gonna start. Now you are totally motivated and ready to do it! Remember, this is going to be YOUR year. But then… maybe a couple of weeks or even a month goes by, and life is right back to where it was on December 31st at 11:59 pm.
Hard Truths
I hate to be so pessimistic, but let’s be honest, we have all done this over and over again. The reality is, very little if nothing ever changes. Life gets complicated and goes right back into the same rhythm it did before and will most likely do again.
This is the vicious cycle of complacency. Or let’s make it more tangible… you are trying to achieve too much and therefore you give up.
I know… I know… How dare I crush your dreams! But Rome definitely wasn’t built overnight, and neither is your mind-blowing, life-changing, envious, Insta lifestyle that you want so badly.
So… maybe that was a little harsh. But sometimes reality bites and you have to change it. And I know you didn’t come here for a lecture. You came here to find out how to change your mindset and maybe some good books to read along the way.
Why We Don’t Change
As I mentioned earlier… we are trying to achieve too much, too quickly.
What happens is, we set these crazy goals, ones that we expect to happen fairly quickly, and then we get burnt out the minute they don’t happen. We then throw up our hands and say… ‘Ugh, screw it’, have a little pity party, and then go back to our comfort foods, or back to that 9-5 corporate job we hate so much.
Here’s the thing… cold turkey works when you eat cold turkey. It doesn’t work when it comes to your goals. Does it work when giving up smoking? Sure. Does it work when you give up sugar? Yeah, it can.
But not if you just wake up one day and say, ‘Hey I think I’m going to give up sugar today’. Because tomorrow I promise you, you are going to eat it again. That’s unless you realize Willpower Doesn’t Work. Which leads me to my first book.
1. Willpower Doesn’t Work
Crazy title, right?!
This goes against everything you’ve been taught. You have probably been taught that if you want anything to change or achieve any goal… you just have to work harder. You have to MAKE yourself do it, and then it will work.
Well, how did that work out for you in the past? Ever feel like a failure or that you are a weak person because your ‘willpower’ wasn’t as strong as IDK… Sally’s or John’s, or whoever’s? Talk to anyone who is overweight! They will say yes to all of the above.
Throw the whole concept of willpower out the window. It hasn’t worked, it doesn’t work, and it won’t work for you.
Changing Your Life by Changing Your Environment
In Benjamin Hardy’s book Willpower Doesn’t Work, his biggest argument is that it’s not your mindset and willpower, it’s your environment that shapes you. Put yourself in a different environment, you will be a different person (good or bad), stay in the same environment… nothing will change.
All the self-help advice out there is telling you, you need to change yourself instead of your environment. Think about the times you’ve told yourself… ok, I’m not going to eat junk food, and then everyone around you are all eating all the foods you told yourself you can’t have. UGH! Now how long is your willpower going to last?
You and your environment are two indivisible parts of the same whole.
Did you know that 20% of Vietnam Vets were addicted to heroin, but when they came home only 5% were still addicted? Why is that? Because they changed their environment! Crazy, right?!
Why You Won’t Change!
Ok… so you can’t just pack up and move to a different city. But you can change the things in your life that will automatically push you towards being better. We need to disrupt our environments, which then inevitably will lead to change.
Identity comes after behavior and to change your behavior is to change your life for good. As Benjamin Hardy says, ‘you need to acknowledge that you enjoy being where you are. If you didn’t, you would’ve changed your circumstances long ago. You’re comfortable where you are.’
Yikes… that’s a taste of reality right there! That’s being very honest and vulnerable with yourself. In Willpower Doesn’t Work you learn to reset your life and the skills to effectively change your environment now, so you can, as he mentions, ‘DO -> Be-> Have’… and not the other way around.
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2. Atomic Habits
A lot like Willpower Doesn’t Work, Atomic Habits is about being the identity you want to be. The whole DO-> Be-> Have motto. If you want to be a different person, have a different life, or weigh a different weight… then you have to do.
Yeah, I guess that’s easier said than done, and like we already talked about, you ‘do’ for a few weeks and then life goes back to the same old, same old. And from the first book mentioned, we know how willpower doesn’t work. So, what does work?
This is where Atomic Habits rocks! This book is all about changing your habits by 1% each day. Which is probably more on pace with how we might actually change verses going cold turkey.
Dip in Motivation
James Clear talks about how we lose our motivation and how the biggest threat to success isn’t failure but, boredom. What?!! Haven’t we always had that whole idea in our heads that we give up because we keep failing? Not because we get bored. Strange concept, right?!
James states, ‘as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty’. Studies have shown as soon as we experience the slightest dip in motivation, we begin seeking a new strategy. Probably why we jump from one diet to another or from one workout or business idea to the next.
It’s like when you are sitting at a slot machine… every time you pull on the arm, it’s a hit of dopamine. That’s your reward center of the brain going off and making you feel good.
Now think about when you first start something, like eating healthy, on day one of the diet, you feel great! But by day 7, 9, or 10… you’re bored and now looking for that hit of dopamine. Then you think one cookie isn’t going to kill me. Then BAM! You get a hit of dopamine. Then you want one more and then one more, and now you’ve killed your diet and your so-called ‘willpower’.
This is where you need to find that sweet spot between success and failure. You need enough winning to experience satisfaction and enough success to keep a desire alive. And that’s where the Atomic Habits teaches you about the 1% rule. Just remember… losers and winners all have the same goals and it’s not willpower that makes one successful and the other a failure.
3. Eat That Frog!
Ok so far, we have talked about how your willpower doesn’t work and how you get bored which derails your success. Then next is, how all you have to do… is eat a frog! What?!! Yep, the biggest juiciest, grossest frog and you’ll set yourself up for success!
So, what does eating a frog have to do with success?
Mark Twain once said, that if you have to eat a live frog, do it first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day. I don’t plan on eating frogs any time soon, especially first thing in the morning! But Mark Twain and Brian Tracy seem to think it’s a good idea. YUCK!
Eat the Biggest, Juiciest, Ugliest Frog!
Ok, I’m sure you have guessed that it’s not about eating a real frog, the concept is about prioritization, productivity, and how to stop procrastinating. Brain Tracey has taken Mark Twain’s productivity method and turned it into a vivid piece of advice, in his book Eat That Frog!
Think of the worst thing you have to do on your To Do List… the one thing you are dreading. Maybe it’s working out, or maybe it’s a project you really don’t want to do. I’m sure every day there is something you are dreading doing. Well, think of it as your frog… Your biggest, juiciest, grossest, ugliest frog! And you eat that one first!
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Setting Yourself Up for Success
This whole book is about getting more done in less time, about stacking your frogs from the ugliest to the cutest. Haha… ok, he didn’t say cutest, but you get the idea. This is how you form your days and how to get the most done in a shorter time period.
It sounds like a lot, but it really makes a lot of sense. Getting the hardest things done first not only clears your mind up, but it sets you up for success. You feel on top of the world when you actually finish the one thing you dread the most.
Confession time…
The one thing I have the hardest time doing is writing this blog. It’s not because I don’t want to do it, I love everything about I’m This Girl. But it’s because I have to sit down and do the one thing that’s really hard for me, which is writing. It’s my biggest frog.
Now it’s the first thing I do in the morning before anything else, even before eating breakfast… and that’s saying a lot! Doing this sets me up for success for the rest of the day and I feel like I have accomplished something huge! And therefore, I feel good about myself. Pretty cool concept for starting your day off right by Eating That Frog!
4. The Rhythm of Life
I honestly think before, Eating That Frog! and understanding why Will Power Doesn’t Work or even forming your 1% progression with Atomic Habits, you have to know what direction you are going in life. What is your Rhythm of Life that your drum beats to? Once you figure that out… maybe eating frogs and changing your environment for a 1% success might be more helpful.
The Rhythm of Life has been by far my favorite book I’ve read in a long time! Literally, every page has some great insight on life and how to be as Matthew Kelly states, the best-version-of-yourself. The more you read the more you get excited about actually living your life with purpose and meaning.
When we first meet people, generally the first question is, “What do you do for a living?”. We have become a culture of what you do and what you have that is the most important thing. We are then judged on what we have acquired in life and not who we are.
I know we all know this… but reading it and thinking about how we judge each other and ourselves becomes truly evident when you think about it.
How can you Eat That Frog! or practice your Atomic Habits and focus on how Willpower Doesn’t Work if you have no idea what your purpose and meaning in life are?
Having a Clear Purpose
Without a clear sense of purpose in your life, the emptiness becomes overwhelming. That emptiness is then filled by pleasures and possessions. So, how do you find a purpose, I guess is the next question.
I love what Matthew Kelly says in his book, ‘We all want to be happy. We all know what makes us happy. But we don’t do those things. Why? Simple. We are too busy. Too busy doing what? Too busy trying to be happy’. What a vicious cycle!
Deep down inside we all know, who you are is infinitely more important than what you do or what you have. Therefore, the meaning of life is becoming the best-version-of-yourself!
The Rhythm of Life makes you think, what do you truly want from life? How are your physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs and wants aligned to remove the illusion of your comfort zones and maximize your efficacy and effectiveness in everything you do?
I’m not gonna lie… this is a very heavy book, but it pushes you to really think about how short life is and what do you really want out of it. Remember you can’t take your job or your fancy new things with you after this life! I’m sure the answer for everyone is happiness. Whatever that happiness is for you… we all want it in some form or another.
4. The Gap and The Gain
I think we get so fixated on what we don’t have. We are told to push ourselves to our limits. If you want to be successful, you have to work harder. If you want to be stick thin… then have more willpower not to eat. If you want to have great relationships, sacrifice more and more.
Ugh… this all just sounds so exhausting. I know because I’ve been there!
But we all tell ourselves this every day. We are constantly trying to measure up to some non-existing higher bar that we will never reach because we are so focused on that gap. That gap is that space we need to clear to grab that bar, that space that always seems just a little too far out of reach.
We tell ourselves if we can just touch that bar, then we’ll be happy. If we can just do this or that… then we will be happy. But yet that happiness never comes. We become too focused on the Gap than we are on the Gains.
Always Go Backwards
The Gap and the Gain is another book by Dr Benjamin Hardy and is a collaboration with Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach. I loved this book! It gave me so much clarity and insight into who I am as a person and what I have accomplished.
When you stop focusing on everything you don’t have and start measuring yourself backwards, that’s when you can achieve more than you ever have.
So, what does it mean to measure backwards? Most of the time we are self-defeating, we don’t realize how far we have come and what we have accomplished in our lives. And if we pay attention, we might actually realize that we have accomplished a ton of stuff!
Redirecting Your Subconscious
As you begin to start training your brain to recognize all the growth you have had in your life rather than what you don’t have or accomplished, then your focus expands. You start measuring all your wins (or successes) you have had each day and therefore you kick in what psychology calls, selective attention.
Selective attention is when your brain starts to focus on what really matters to you personally. You notice all thing things you’ve accomplished in the day and in turn, you become even more committed and even excited about creating and achieving new wins for the next day. This is being in the Gain.
You no longer are paying attention to what others have and what you don’t. You refocus your life on how far you have come, and it opens up a new insight into how far you can go. By centering yourself on your gains, it gives you that boost of self-confidence to continue to push yourself further.
Did you know that happy people live 10+ years longer than unhappy people? Always being in the Gap creates a negative effect, whereas being in the Gain creates more positivity in your life. And who doesn’t want more positivity in their life?!
Creating Your Rhythm of Life
Just like The Rhythm of Life, we all want to live a life of fulfillment and happiness. Instead of being too busy, it’s about educating ourselves on how to Eat That Frog! to find time for what matters the most to us. And by making those small Atomic Habits, and realizing that our Willpower Doesn’t Work, we then begin to recognize how important The Gap and the Gains are to our ultimate happiness.
I promise you… if you want to make some huge changes in your life, or maybe even just tweak a few things, these 5 books will rise to the challenge. I know the year is already starting to tick away and your goals and ‘willpower’ are starting to go down the drain. So why not try something new this year?
These books are a fast and easy read.
Don’t like to read… that’s cool too. Get them on audio and listen to them while you are driving to that 9-5 job you dislike so much, or when getting ready for your day that already seems to have gotten away from you! Grrrr!
If you truly want to build your Rome… you know that mind-blowing, life-changing, envious, Insta lifestyle that you want so badly… It’s all about one foot in front of the other and being grateful you took that step. Making those changes in your life isn’t about willpower… it’s all about WHYPOWER!
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