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Are You Falling Into One of These Six Change Traps?
Episode 82 • 1st July 2024 • Own Your Calendar: Aligning Your Business & Life Goals • Stephen Box
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Have you ever felt frustrated knowing exactly what steps you need to take to reach your goals, yet you can't seem to follow through consistently? You're not alone. Many of us fall into the same traps over and over again, sabotaging our own efforts without even realizing it.

In today's episode of Unshakable Habits, I'm here to guide you through these pitfalls and help you pave a smoother path to lasting change.

By the time you finish listening, you'll discover:

  • The six common change traps that sabotage your success and how to avoid them.
  • Why having a clear and specific goal is only part of the solution.
  • How to set a realistic baseline and timelines to ensure consistent progress.

Get ready to break free from these traps and transform your habits from unsustainable to unshakable. Let's dive in!

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Transcripts

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If you know what to do, but struggle to consistently do

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it, then today's episode is going to be a great one because I'm going

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to show you the six change traps that we all fall into that prevents

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us from creating consistent change.

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And it's coming up next right here on Unshakable Habits.

Intro:

The right habits can help you have it all.

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More time, better health, improved relationships, and less stress.

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But most people lack the tools to stick with those habits

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long enough to see results.

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That is about to change.

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Welcome to Unshakable Habits with your host, Stephen Box.

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It's time to take your habits from unsustainable to unshakable.

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Welcome back.

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This is episode number 82 of Unshakable Habits.

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I am your host, Habit Change Specialist Stephen Box, and today we are talking all

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about what to do when you know what to do.

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But you're not able to consistently do it.

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And more specifically, we're going to dive into six change traps that pretty

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much all of us at some point or another going to experience, but before we

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jump into that, let me put a little context around this subject today.

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Knowing what to do is different than actually doing it, especially when we're

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talking about doing it sustainably, no matter what life might throw at you.

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So here's what I mean by this.

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You might have a goal of getting into the gym, prioritizing your fitness.

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it sounds pretty good.

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Like you come up with a plan, you set a time to do it, all that good stuff.

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Sounds good.

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But then, you know what?

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Your boss dangles a promotion in front of you and tells you that this

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big project really needs to get done.

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Bye bye, gym time.

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Or you say, Hey, you know what?

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I know that I need to improve my sleep so I can have more

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energy and be more productive.

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And that sounds really good until your favorite movie comes on and your spouse

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wants to stay up late, or you get invited out to a party with some friends

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that you haven't seen in five years.

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all these little things tend to happen in our life on a pretty consistent basis and

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it throws off all of our best laid plans.

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But, even outside of the external factors like that, there are six

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other things that actually can come up that can cause us problems.

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So let's run through these right now.

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So number one.

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Is setting really vague goals.

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Now, a lot of people will talk about smart goals, and I will tell you, I'm

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not really a huge fan of smart goals, but the general idea of what they're

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trying to accomplish is on point here, because when our goals are too vague,

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it's, it's going to be problematic.

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We're not going to really have a lot of clarity there, and I'm going to come

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back and go through these individually here in a few minutes, but I just

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want Give you the list real quick.

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The second common change trap is we go too narrow, right?

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So now we've gone from being too vague to too narrow.

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The third one is We don't establish a baseline.

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The fourth one is we get a little too ambitious.

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The fifth one is we don't have a clear time frame.

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And the sixth one is we create a cliffhanger for ourselves.

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So let me break these down for you a little bit more and help you understand

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why these six change traps are preventing you from creating that consistent change

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that you want to make in your life.

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So number one, let's talk about the vague goals.

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So usually this is something like, I want to eat healthier, or I should be less

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stressed, or I'm trying to sleep better.

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And the problem with these is, Yes, they are talking about something different.

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They are talking about making a change, but no one really knows

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what that change is, right?

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If I say I want to eat healthier, what does healthier look like?

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If I say I should be less stressed, what does that look like?

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First of all, what does less stress look like?

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And second of all, what is should, right?

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should is not a, an outcome that we can judge.

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I'm trying to sleep better.

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I could go on a whole thing about the word trying.

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Okay.

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it's just, it is mentally setting us up for failure from the beginning.

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But the idea here is that without the clarity, we don't even

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know if we're making progress.

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And even if we were making progress, we don't actually know what it looks like.

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So we don't know if we're making it.

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We don't know why we're working toward a goal, and we don't even know if

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we've even completed the goal at all.

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So again, I go back to this idea of if you're saying, I want to be less stressed.

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But you don't know what less stressed looks like.

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If we don't know how to measure the progress for that.

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If we don't know what outcome we want out of it.

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Then what are we going to accomplish?

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Probably not anything, right?

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So that's the first one.

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The second one is going too narrow.

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Or what might be called your goal only lens.

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maybe we've got really specific.

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we've taken, I want to sleep better and we've turned it into, I like to sleep

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on average 30 minutes more per night.

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That's a much more specific goal.

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And I told you a second ago, I'm not really a fan of smart goals.

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And this is exactly why, because smart goals, a lot of times lead us

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into the goal only lens trap, because here's what happens, give you some

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examples of this earlier, actually.

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So let's say you tell yourself, you know what, in order to accomplish this,

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I'm going to set an alarm on my phone.

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It's going to go off an hour.

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Before my bedtime and I'm going to start winding down and

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getting myself ready for bed.

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I'm going to follow a pre sleep routine, everything.

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Awesome.

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Great plan, right?

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Except you forgot that movie that your spouse and you love

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so much is about to come on and they want to watch it with you.

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Or you forgot that the kids don't have to go to school tomorrow and

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you promised them that they could stay up late and hang out with you.

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Or that big work project is now due tomorrow, right?

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You forgot about those things and now that's thrown you off.

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So if you don't have a plane for those things in place.

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Is going to throw you off track.

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And that is my biggest problem with smart goals.

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Track number three, we don't have a baseline.

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We don't know where we're starting from.

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I use the analogy all the time of a GPS.

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You can put in any address you want to go to a destination, but

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if that GPS doesn't have a signal from the satellite to tell it where

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you are right now, It doesn't know.

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And if it doesn't know where you are, it can't get you to where you want to go.

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And it's the exact same thing for you.

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If you don't know where you are, then you don't know how to get

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yourself where you want to go.

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the big questions that we really want to know here are , where are we starting?

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And what does our current life actually look like?

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we maybe have some data already, We have an idea of how we eat,

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how we sleep, how we work.

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We have those ideas in our head.

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They're just based on memory.

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They're not really written down.

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We're not tracking them.

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So we don't know how real those numbers are.

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We might think we're doing really good, but if we started tracking

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it, all of a sudden we'd be like, I guess I wasn't doing quite as well

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as I thought I was doing with that.

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Other times we might have data available to us that if we look at it objectively,

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we'll see that it's not really accurate.

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So for example, I have a smart ring.

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And I have the orory, which is probably, last time I checked anyways,

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the most accurate one on the market.

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But even then we're talking like 79 percent accuracy.

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So it's more accurate than all the smart watches and all that stuff.

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But still, and yet there's like a 20 percent inaccuracy rate on it.

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And this week I'm telling you that I'm seeing it because ever since we

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got back from out of town, my sleep has been a little inconsistent.

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Where I've been waking up a few times during the night and it's

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throwing me off a little bit.

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So according to my reading, I'm sleeping great.

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I'm getting the exact right amount of sleep.

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Everything is awesome.

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My sleep scores are all good.

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But I don't feel well rested every day.

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So I know that my sleep isn't quite what it needs to be.

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So therefore that data, when I look at it objectively, I know this isn't

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necessarily a hundred percent, right?

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So it's something that I have to be aware of.

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So if you don't have that clarity on where you're starting, that's what can happen.

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You can end up being off.

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The fourth one we're going to talk about here is the ambition trap.

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And this is a common one, right?

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we all, I think, do this one at some point or another.

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Because the reality is when we want to make a change, it's

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usually because there's a pain.

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Pain motivates change.

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And we want that pain to go away as quickly as possible.

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And a lot of times there, and there's a lot of reasons behind it.

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I won't go into all the science of it, but there's a lot of reasons why

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we tend to overestimate our ability to handle things in the future.

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We start putting all this stuff on our plate.

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Oh, I'm going to start waking up at 6 a.

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m.

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I'm going to work out for an hour and I'm going to.

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Get up and I'm going to cook a healthy breakfast and I'm going to

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spend five minutes in prayer and I'm going to get the kids off and

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I'm going to take them to school.

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I'm going to go to work.

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No, you're not.

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You're not going to do all that.

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I'm sorry.

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It's just, it's not realistic.

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Okay.

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And if you've honestly ever tried that, tell me the truth.

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Did it work?

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Did you stick with it?

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Or did it lead to failure, right?

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I'm going to guess most likely led to failure.

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So that's okay.

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It's normal.

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Most of us, when we try to change four or five, six different things

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at a time, we crash and burn.

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It is not abnormal.

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There's nothing wrong with you if you are crashing and burning in that situation.

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And if you are able to change all those things at once and you don't crash and

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burn, Congratulations, you're superhuman.

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come host the show with me.

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seriously, it's, that's absolutely amazing.

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The fifth trap is we don't set a timeline.

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And this is always an interesting one to me because I like to compare it to

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running a race without a finish line.

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Imagine for a second that you made a commitment that you're going to get

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up and walk every single morning and you want to see, does it actually

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help your energy just getting up doing a little walk outside?

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Does that help your energy at all?

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And we're going to have two different situations here.

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So situation A, you've committed to do this for the next two

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weeks and then you'll reevaluate.

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Situation B, you don't pick a time.

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You just.

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You just start doing it and you just see what happens.

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So in situation B, you get up super early.

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You don't really want to be up.

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You don't want to be out.

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You really are dreading this walk, but you gotta do it anyways.

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To day three, and you're not really noticing much of a difference.

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If anything, you might even be more tired.

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And You've just given up, right?

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It's not giving you that energy boost.

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It's not helping your productivity the way she thought it might.

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And so you just give up, but situation a, you actually stick with it the

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entire two weeks and you keep going in around day seven, all of a sudden,

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like a light switch flips and you start actually having more energy and you start

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looking forward to these walks and you start noticing throughout the day, you

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have more energy and everything else.

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in situation A, the one where you committed to doing the

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two weeks, you stuck with it and you saw this great change.

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But in situation B, where you didn't have that time frame, you get to day three

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and you're like, this isn't working.

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And you never found out the truth that it was going to work because

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you didn't give it enough time.

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Because you didn't have a time frame to reevaluate the process with.

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And then that brings me to the final trap, which is what we lovingly call

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the cliffhanger and think about this as imagine you're watching a movie and

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every movie has the scene where the hero of the movie goes through some

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trial or tribulation and then they come back and they go through the training

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montage or whatever the case is.

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Yeah.

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And then they go into the final game.

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So we'll just it's a sports movie, right?

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So they go into the final game or the big fight or whatever, but

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then imagine the movie just ends.

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you never find out if they won the fight.

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you'd be like, what happened?

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Like, where's the movie at?

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Like, how crazy is this?

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But if someone made a movie of our lives, Yeah.

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It might actually end that way sometimes, right?

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Because a lot of the goals that we set when somebody comes to you and says,

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Hey, what were you trying to accomplish?

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Did it work out for you?

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You're like, I don't know.

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Not really.

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I didn't make the change.

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I guess it didn't really work.

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And then the person says, Oh, did you do the desired, actions consistently?

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Those things that you said you were going to do?

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Did you do that walk every day?

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Did you get up that little bit earlier?

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Did you do that workout?

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Did you put that time management system in place?

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Did you do those things we were talking about with your calendar?

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Did you do any of that stuff consistently?

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You don't know.

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And if you did them, how did they feel?

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were they hard?

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Were they easy?

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Do we need to make some adjustments there?

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Was there, could you see the relationship between the behavior and the outcome?

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Does the behavior need to be adjusted, changed, or completely abandoned?

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If we're not careful, if we don't put all the steps in place, we'll get to the end.

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And we don't really know what the outcome really was, because we weren't consistent.

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We didn't track things.

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We didn't look at things.

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There was no process in place to be able to go back and reflect and

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evaluate on what actually happened.

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And so we're just left to wonder.

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What could have been, and that is the situation.

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I do not want you to find yourself in today.

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And so that's why I wanted to do this episode.

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I wanted to give you these six change traps that people often fall into.

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So that you can be thinking about them and be aware of them the next

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time you're trying to set a goal and you can work your way around them.

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Now, if you need more help with this is something you want to discuss inside

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of my program, Unshakable Routines.

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This is something that I go over with all of my clients.

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We actually walk through this entire process with every goal

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that you're trying to achieve and I make sure that you are not falling.

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into these six traps and I help you get the systems in place if

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that's something you're interested in, go to unshakablehabits.

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com or use the link below in the show notes and book a free

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roadmap call with me today.

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And if you found this episode valuable, I would really appreciate if you could

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actually share it with a friend today, that way they can also get this value

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out of today's episode and with that guys, I'm going to remind you that

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as always, while none of us are born unshakable, we can all become unshakable.

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