Ep106_Change
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So there have been some significant changes and milestones in my life recently and with my business recently. And all these changes have been hard. I've procrastinated on changing. I've been perfectionistic. I've drugged my feet. It's been hard. Some changes in my life [00:01:00] that they're chosen for me or they just happen naturally.

Like I I am 50 years old now. And I've been a therapist for 25 years. There's other changes that are things that I've chosen. This is the 100th episode of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. I have had 15, 000 downloads of the Decide Your Legacy podcast over three and a half years. And the last 50 of them though, have been over the last 12 months.

So it's gotten. done more of them more frequently. So I have a new full time employee for the first time in many years and haven't had a full time, another full time employee besides myself, but started in in December, beginning of December. Shatterproof Lite is complete. And that was a great experience to produce, and it's free content you can get and check out by subscribing below, hitting the link below.

So I have new community forming, legacy groups forming, so a lot of different change. I mean, personally, I've had a lot of self doubt, I've struggled, and so I want [00:02:00] to share with you the three big reasons that I feel like I struggle with change. So this is episode number 106, which is actually the 100th unique episode of the Decide Your Legacy podcast.

And I'm going to just share my struggle with change. And it's not something that's unique just to me. I mean, everybody struggles with change, I believe, in some way. So I'm, but I've, Maybe I struggle with it more, at least like to think that sometimes it's really a hard thing at times. So, and you know, I'm your host.

I'm Adam Gragg. I've been a coach, a content creator, speaker, a therapist for many years. My passion is helping people find the self confidence and clarity to Face their biggest fears and live their legacy. That's my passion. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. I don't have it all figured out. I am a fellow traveler.

Just like my clients, I can relate to the same stuff they struggle with. Produce these podcasts for me as well as you. And this is the podcast that you do not just listen to. So I want to share something uncomfortable and I'm going to challenge you to do something [00:03:00] uncomfortable. I share something uncomfortable I did recently because is a passion I have knowing that There's not much in your life that's more damaging to your mental health than just playing it safe and going and following the status quo, the default way of living.

And there's not much more helpful than facing your fears, especially the ones that are emotional, big fears that you keep putting off, which we often know what we keep putting off. It's right there in front of us, yet we betray ourselves and we don't follow through for ourselves. And so Let's talk about something that might make you a little bit uncomfortable.

So I want you to think about something you're putting off, a big change that you want to make, you know, at a gut heart level, you want to make this change, but you keep putting it off. What is that change? Is it that you want to engage people socially? Is it something that you want to do professionally or financially or health?

Wise or something spiritually that you want to change about yourself and the way you interact with other people. Or you want to engage people and help people and encourage people. But what's that big change? Maybe it's something you look at as [00:04:00] very, being very small, but it actually is a big change. Like you wanna go to bed earlier, or you wanna get up earlier, you want to get up on time, or you want to get more exercise.

What's a change that you wanna make? And as we go through this episode, I'm gonna talk about why I struggle so much with change and it's gonna inspire you to make the changes that you wanna make. I have. Looked at my struggles with change and I believe there's three major reasons I struggle so much. And the first major reason is comfort.

I like to be comfortable. I've been through some things in my life, just like many of you have been through that have been difficult, and I don't want to feel that discomfort again. Why would I? I mean, it's so uncomfortable to feel certain feelings in me. And at times I do whatever I can to escape them.

And if I recognize them at the moment, hey, I can step back and say, I'm trying to escape, but I don't always do that. And so that's the high cost of Going through difficult things in our lives is we don't want to experience discomfort again. So we get [00:05:00] defensive. I mean, I do. I can't get defensive. I can get self protective.

I can get guarded and I don't like feeling negative emotions. That's my one big struggle in life that I would say consistently repeats itself is I don't like these strong negative emotions and I don't believe they're going to go away. So if that change requires me to do something uncomfortable, it can be hard for me.

And I don't like it and I'll avoid and procrastinate. And so it leads me to avoiding the whole change process, these strong emotions. So it's hard because I have believed, you know, personally that I have developed some escape mechanisms in my life because they've worked for me. And so if I feel something that's uncomfortable that's helped me survive in the past.

So why would I want to do it again? I mean, just recently, I. was saying goodbye to my daughter who was going to school. And when she was on the way, no, actually she was going over to her mom. So when on the way out to her mom's, I started to feel an [00:06:00] extreme amount of sadness, you know, cause I'm like, it shouldn't be this way for my daughter.

You know, I, I wish that she wasn't growing up in a situation where she was. spending half the time at one parent's and half the time at another parent's house. And I wanted to escape that emotion so badly. And that, and those emotional situations have caused me at times to do things that are not healthy, that are destructive for me.

So I have. I'm on day 23 without using Zen nicotine pouches, which I've used for almost two years, and I'm ashamed of that. It's the truth, and I've used it at times to medicate my own emotions, because I don't want to feel these strong emotions. So I They're just not good for you. I know nicotine is not good for you.

And I'll justify it and say, well, it's not tobacco or whatever, but it's, it's nicotine. It's bad. I have used caffeine at times to escape my emotions. I probably still do some of that. [00:07:00] Sugar. I've used work to escape my emotions. I have wanted to be comfortable rather than to want to make positive changes in my life.

And. You can think that we all have this emotional level of comfortable emotional places in our life where we like to go and it's stuff that keeps us stuck in areas where we're not progressing. Think about people who their homes are destroyed and they rebuild in the same place where their home was actually destroyed.

It was destroyed by a tornado or a hurricane or even building in floodplains in the New Orleans area. You think people go back to what's comfortable for them. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a bad thing because people that go when they stay in toxic relationships because they're comfortable rather than making changes, even though they know in their heart that this is not a healthy place for them to be.

Or they continue to interact with people in a conflictual way, not in a very guarded way, in a [00:08:00] defensive way, when they know in their heart they don't need to be that way anymore, but it's comfortable for them. It creates this habitual way of relating or somebody that. It is continually staying in a job they don't like because they feel comfortable in that job even though they don't like that job and believe they're utilizing their gifting in that specific job.

So the comfort becomes our enemy and it's just this horrible thing. I call it resistance. I mean, and I'm not the only person that's called it that. So one of my favorite authors is, a nonfiction author, is Steven Pressfield. The War of Art is one of his books. Turning Pro is one of his books that I like. I mean, no one wants to, a number of his books.

I try to read everything that he writes. It's nonfiction. I've read a number of his fiction books as well. But he talks about this resistance is when we're going to make big positive change in our life. We're going to feel this overwhelming negative resistance. And that can be a sign that we're heading in the right direction.

And I found that to be true with my clients. I know that's true in me. I know that's true in my clients lives. So that's something we can recognize. And that's an action you can actually take, is you [00:09:00] can, you can recognize when you're feeling overwhelmed emotionally, and when you're feeling really tempted to do something that you know is destructive, like for me using this chemical nicotine, or for me utilizing work to hide, or for me when it's just not.

believing in myself and using negativity as a coping mechanism that it won't work. So why try? I can do that. And then I recognize that I'm doing it. And in the moment I can step and apply a positive coping mechanism. And I have a list of positive coping mechanisms, but even though I have a list and I sent A friend that list recently, I don't necessarily always apply them.

I still have that resistance to applying them. So I know that calling a friend can be helpful to me when I'm really struggling, but then I'll tell myself, well, they won't respond or they're too busy or I'm a burden on them and it won't be helpful. I know that at times when I feel emotionally overwhelmed, that journaling can be helpful.[00:10:00]

And even if I, if I can't reach a friend to talk about it, I can just journal about it yet. I'll still just fixate in my own head. So that's the one big thing that keeps me from changing, is my own discomfort. And, of course, I mean, I feel like a hypocrite talking about it, but it's true. I feel like I am taking steps, I mean, it's kind of a risk to even talk about it right now, but I want to change, I want to grow, I want to decide your legacy to impact more people.

I want to see people face their fears. I'm passionate about what I do. The second thing that keeps me from changing personally is fear. So, I get defensive because of my own fear. And so I look at it as something a little bit different than comfort. It's fear that I'm going to get hurt again, fear that people are judging me, fear that people are going to reject me, people pleasing tendencies.

I want people to like me. And that leads to me. being afraid to try something new, [00:11:00] afraid to change and fail, afraid to launch a new product, afraid to launch new content, afraid to hire people, afraid to address things with people, afraid to do anything that can be challenging for me, because it's going to cause a level of discomfort.

And that fear means that I If I listen to it and I lean into it and follow it, you know, I don't do those things that I want to actually do. So I don't make those changes. And it leads to me isolating from people because I know that when I listen to fear, when I get stuck in people pleasing and when I get stuck in just my own head, then all of a sudden I have this confirmation bias that becomes extremely powerful.

So everything that I think and feel, I find evidence that it's I'm just going to confirm that this is going to happen, so I won't go well. I won't be successful. I will be rejected. I will get hurt. It won't help anybody. Why try? You know, it's going to be too painful, or you're not ready, and I end up having that negative [00:12:00] Feedback loop in my head and then I don't have people around me that can challenge the fear because that's how I really get out of it is I have other people that say, Hey, this is not something you need to be afraid of, or you can handle this, or you can actually make it through this, or you've done this in the past, or why would you actually get stuck in that?

Cause you've been through this before. And here's the truth about the situation. So I became very truth oriented and focused on truth because of people around me. But the fear is what I have to fight in those situations. And I feel often like, Okay. I'm going to let people down. I mean, that's the one big fear that I have.

It's I'm going to be abandoned. I mean, that's a huge fear for me is abandonment fear. And I know that it's not true, but I still feel it. And I'm much better than I used to be because I do a lot of different things that I risk and I risk being rejected. And I know I'm going to get through it a much higher level, but it's still there.

I just lies to me a lot. So, but I'll do things. I won't want to say things to people. I won't want to make changes because I think it'll lead to somebody rejecting. And if that's you, you know, we have actions we can take [00:13:00] that can help us with that, to deal with the fear. I haven't found much better than, for me personally, than doing some journaling on my fear and talking about it with other people and having people in my life that I consistently meet with to where I tell them about the struggles that I have.

And for me, it's a group of guys I meet with every week and I have been for years and we talk about our fears openly and we talk about our struggles openly. For me, it's been the journaling practices that I've had in my life where I get to talk about fear and journal about my fear. And for me, it's been doing even a podcast where I can be open about it.

I feel this level of shame that I have this struggle because I feel like I shouldn't have this struggle, but I am. struggling with that, and I do struggle with it greatly. So why not admit it? I mean, then I can face it. It's dealing with the truth in my situation. And so if you have a group that you meet with consistently can be tremendously helpful in making change.

That's why [00:14:00] I have If you get opportunities to meet new people, that I would encourage you to engage. So if you get to go to a, I hate to say it, but it's like a funeral or a wedding, or you get invited to some kind of an event where you can meet new people, some church event or some event professionally, try and have a chance to meet new people every week.

That's one of the actions you can take. Have a group of people you start building friendships with and meeting with consistently, try to meet new people consistently. And when you do meet new people consistently, you open up at some level. And what I found is that for me, in my life, it helps me to start changing because I'm getting a new perspective and one that's even surprising.

to me. I didn't expect to hear that from somebody and they're challenging my perspective. And then all of a sudden this courage starts rising up in me that I can actually face something in my life, or I'm realizing in the moment that I've been believing something that's not actually true, that I'm really not letting people down, or that I really am doing some things that are positive in my life, or I am being a good father when I don't feel like it, or I am being a good friend, or I [00:15:00] am professionally impacting people when I don't feel like it.

So I get some feedback from people. And those actions will help. So I would encourage you to consider, you know, I am building this legacy community right now of people and its primary focus is making changes in your life. And that means involving, making significant, facing significant fears. So one of the questions I'm asking people who are joining and expressing an interest in the legacy group, which if you have an interest, please reach out is, you know, what big change do you want to make over the next six months in your life?

And so that's going to be a clue to the fear they need to face because they're struggling in that area to make that change. As I asked you at the beginning of this podcast, what change do you want to make? So that accountability and the group and the support and just having that at the forefront is going to help you start to make that change.

So if you found this podcast helpful at any point, you know, please hit the link to Shatterproof yourself. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. I talk about vision. I [00:16:00] talk about facing your past, your self concept, your perspective, your emotions, emotional health, self care strategies, and building friendships.

So you won't want to miss that. You want to watch the 20 minute video and worksheet that goes along with that. It'd be extremely helpful for you. You can go through that with your friends or your co workers. It's going to help you to make changes, positive changes. in your life to improve your mental health.

So the third thing that has kept me from making changes in my life is my identity, having a flawed identity about myself. And one of the flawed identity or flawed things I tell myself about myself is that I'm not worthy of success. I'm not worthy of good things in my life. It's not going to go well. And it's an identity, like something that I wear at times that I have to take off.

So I look through that lens and I'll see that. And believe that people are looking at me that way and that the future is oriented that way. I'm not saying I struggle with that all the time, but when I do struggle with change, that is really what the main, that's often at least [00:17:00] what the main thought process is, is that if I make the change, it's not going to go well because other things haven't gone well in my life.

So this is not going to go well for me. And so that identity is, is totally flawed because It's not true. And a lot of things have gone really well in my life. There are things I have in my life that I would say I should be and can be at times extraordinarily grateful for. Yet, I can still have this moment of believing my identity is one where I'm going to fail.

It's not going to work out. If I change that identity and I wake up in the morning and I say that, you know, I am a person who does deserve good things, who has had success, who is a good father, who is a good person, and I tell myself the truth, it can start to shift my identity. I've struggled with getting up on time for the last six months, and I'm [00:18:00] trying to, and not just trying, but shift my identity from I'm a person who wakes up late after hitting the snooze button three times, to I am a person who wakes up on time.

And I've noticed that it's really hard to get up still, it's not what I want to do, but I'm able to actually do it, and I've done it the last few days in a row, two days in a row, not Sunday, I did it Monday and Tuesday in a row without hitting the snooze button, I got up on time, so I feel good about that, those little small steps, changes that I've made, it's similar if you say, to somebody about smoking.

And I heard James Clear talk about this in his excellent book, The Power No, I'm sorry. His excellent book on building habits. I was thinking of Charles Duhigg's book on The Power of Habit. His book is called Atomic Habits, James Clear. And so we'll link in the show notes. to both of those books, the one by Charles Duhigg and the one by James Clear on Building Habits, because I think they're both [00:19:00] excellent reads.

And James Clear talks about how somebody can say that they are a smoker, or they can say they're not somebody who smokes, or they're not going to smoke today. It's a different, very subtle. So I don't smoke, or I'm not a smoker. A very subtle difference in the way you're expressing. One is somebody who is just saying that they're not going to do it now.

It's like a short term type thing. And one is somebody who's just an identify as being a smoker anymore. I've had a client that's lost over, that's lost over 50 pounds, and I asked her recently if she ever felt like she would be at the weight she was at previously, and her answer was no. And she said, I said, why? You know, what's going on?

And she says, well, I don't identify anymore as being somebody who overeats or who's overweight. I don't identify like that. I don't even look in the mirror and say that's me anymore. So it's not a daily choice. It's actually. Not who she actually is. So she is somebody who's friendly or somebody can change their identity.

You can work on this. Like I'm somebody who's friendly. I mean, I'm trying to make some changes in my life. One [00:20:00] is to be somebody who is consistently seeing not who's being encouraging consistently, who's seeing the potential and giving back, you know, and that's a big change. And it's one that I'm working on that I often don't look at myself as saying like, yeah, I'm somebody who encourages people consistently.

I don't look and identify that way a lot, but I want to become that kind of person. And the other thing is I want to identify as somebody who is taking risks. Consistently, not afraid, and to change from somebody who's just willfully choosing to take risks and do things that are uncomfortable to being somebody who identifies as a person who has a lifestyle of taking risks and doing uncomfortable things.

That's just my lifestyle. It's not a willful act. It's not an act of the will. It's just the lifestyle that I live. So you can hold me accountable on some of those changes. So some [00:21:00] ways people identify that is flawed. So some people will say they're, they're not a morning person like I'd have, you know, or they say that they're a procrastinator, they're a failure.

They don't have friends. They don't build friendships well. They're not going to be successful. They're not successful. And, or, I can identify as saying, I don't change. I don't deal with change very well. Or rather shifting my identity to being, I can handle change. Change can be good. It can be something that changes other people's lives.

It becomes a different way of focusing in my own life. Parents oftentimes damage their kids by sharing things with their kids that are creating an identity that isn't really true. So they may. do this unintentionally or without malice, but they call and describe their child as an introverted child or the rebellious child.

It could be something negative like that, or they could call them the adventurous child, [00:22:00] you know, or the somebody that is worrying a lot. Or I know I used to be with, my parents would call me the serious child, and I really wasn't a serious child, but I had taken on that identity from people interacting with me that way.

And then it took me a while to shake that off because the reality is I'm not a serious child. I mean, I'm pretty much a crazy spontaneous type person naturally. And I like to have. I'm the middle child, even that, let's stick with me in some ways. So we have to look at these and say, is it true? Is it completely true?

I mean, how can I break this? And something that I like to use with clients is a worksheet called Be Truth Oriented that I've been using with clients. And they identify something that's a negative identity or a negative mindset they have about themselves. And I walk them through this process. It's a worksheet there.

They answer specific questions to walk them through. And I'm going to share a video with you [00:23:00] eventually of me walking through this as some bonus content for only for my listeners. It's going to describe and show people how I go through this worksheet, this Be Truth oriented worksheet. I love it. It's so cool.

I fill it out. A lot in my own life, personally. I mean, it's one of the things that I fill out in the morning when I'm struggling. And it's something I try to start my day off with right after I do the daily five and five is a version of this worksheet that I've memorized, but the worksheet form I love as well.

And it's really helpful. I still fill out the worksheet form as well. So Two clients recently have told me they identify or they give me the impression they identify as procrastinators. And so I've walked them through a discussion about why this is a challenge for them. And so I'll ask them some coaching questions to help them challenging them on this identity because For example, I'll ask them, well, how long have they been doing this?

And some of them have one guy identified as, it's been my whole life I've been a procrastinator. And another person it's just been recent since some trauma has occurred that she's been a procrastinator. [00:24:00] And so we unpacked it some. And I'm going to share this just because I think this can help you as far as thinking about an action you can take in your own life.

So you ask yourself some questions specifically on whatever that negative identity is. And so one of those questions would be, what benefit does it have for you to identify that way? So if you're a procrastinator, for example, how does it benefit you to think of yourself that way? And it's going to probably have some like faulty sense of motivation and some level of.

potentially keeping you safe. So I don't do things. I don't get stuff out. I see this as my identity. So, or even like, Hey, I know people will tell me that if I wait to the last minute, I create better work. So if I procrastinate and put it off, then I'm going to do better work. So you're going to identify really what's the thinking process going on.

And then some other questions are, well, what do you want it to be? If you're really being true to yourself and have the life you want. Then what do you want it to be? And the next one is, well, what change would that make in your life if you weren't a procrastinator? What difference would it make in your life?[00:25:00]

How would it impact you positively? And then even to list those out, what would be the positive changes that would occur if you stopped being a procrastinator? And list those out very specifically, you know, and it could be example could be like, well, I wouldn't be stressing as much, and I'd enjoy the process.

I would enjoy the creative process by getting things done. I'd be a better boss. I'd enjoy my family more. I'd be happier. I wouldn't die early. I wouldn't die young, you know, and it would be even refuting that thought that it is making you more creative. So I would be more creative because I'm not procrastinating and I have a relaxed mentality and I can get.

more of my creative energy targeted towards that project because I'm not procrastinating. And then I'll ask them too, like, what would you do if you had 10 times more confidence? And they may say, well, I'd get it done right away. I would actually say the thing or do the thing right away. I would stay focused.

I would be hyper focused or I would time block and ask them, Well, what ideas do you have to apply that? And then they would be, well, here's some things that have worked in the past for me when I've wanted to not procrastinate. Or maybe they say nothing has worked in the past, but they can start [00:26:00] identifying and thinking that this could help me if I applied it because I've seen other people apply it and it's helped them as well.

So those are the three things that have really kept me from changing. And I challenge you to work on them. So the first one is Comfort keeps me from changing. I want to be comfortable. I don't want to feel those negative feelings. They're so incredibly uncomfortable. And that place and that emotional safety net or that emotional location that I can stay in where I'm comfortable is where I want to stay.

But to get out of that is. How I grow. And that is how you build confidence, by the way. You get out of that comfort level and that's how you grow is because you're doing new things that are making you uncomfortable. And the next one is fear. How is fear keeping you stuck in your life? That's going to keep you stuck and keep you from changing.

So how can we face it and move forward and lean into the fear rather than get sucked into it and consumed by it and deal with that resistance? And the last one is a flawed identity. I told you I'm having to work. on that good things aren't ahead for me or that I don't deserve good things, that it's going to go bad, that glass half empty [00:27:00] mentality and replace it, which I'm feel good about the progress I'm making because I am making some changes.

I'm just saying there's resistance in there hard and I'm not making them always easy for myself because of this identity challenge. But how can we work on that to let go of it and to say to ourselves that we can handle, it's going to go right. I am. A morning person, you know, I am somebody that gets things done in advance, days in advance.

I am somebody that opens up about my fears. I am somebody that takes good care of my physical health. I am confident. I am a confident person who faces emotionally challenging situations. I am not an introvert. I am actually an extrovert, which is true about me. I've just been told that. I am somebody Who believes in himself or herself, figure that out.

It'll change your life, but you got to work on it day in and day out. It's one of those things. It'll never change. It'll always be there, but you can always work on it. That's the cool, encouraging thing. [00:28:00] So what resonated with you most from today? Take a positive risk. based on what resonated with you. It's going to be an emotional risk.

You know, I saw a quote recently. There are people who make no mistakes because they never try anything worth doing. That's Johan Wolfgang Goethe. There are people who make no mistakes because they never try anything worth doing. You're going to make mistakes. That's why it's a risk. You're going to make, going to have errors.

You're not going to like how some things end up going. So it's okay though. You've done it. You've tried and you're going to grow. In the process, change is going to help you grow. And if you just keep that in mind, because I am putting one foot in front of the other, I am making some progress, it's going to make a huge difference in your life.

Make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. You decide your legacy, nobody else. When [00:29:00] people are sitting around a campfire talking about you, what do you want them to say? You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly, and I'll see you next time.