What’s Really Keeping You from Making the Change You Need to Make

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Imagine being told that unless you make significant lifestyle changes—quit smoking, start exercising, overhaul your diet—you will die. Well Dr. Edward Miller, a former dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, led a study that observed that even when heart patients were told they needed to make major lifestyle changes—such as improving their diet, exercising more, or quitting smoking—or else they would die, only about one in seven actually followed through and made the necessary changes.

It wasn’t that the other six didn’t want to live—they undoubtedly did. But something prevented them from closing the gap between the knowledge of what they needed to do and the actions required to do it.

The study underscores how difficult it is to implement lasting behavioral changes, even when the stakes are extremely high. It highlights the power of entrenched habits and the need for more than just fear or logic to motivate meaningful transformation. Effective approaches often involve emotional engagement, support systems, and deeper psychological shifts.

Inspiration Isn’t Enough

We’ve all heard motivational speakers or read quotes that stress the importance of change. Take a quote I’ve heard in many variations over the years, like: “Are the habits you have today aligned with the dreams you have for tomorrow?” These words often highlight the misalignment between our behaviors and our goals. Now along with this quote if I were to tell an inspiring story, say of Kobe Bryant working relentlessly hard, you might start to feel motivated. But here’s the problem—motivation alone fails to address the deeper issue: why haven’t I made the changes needed to achieve the goals I genuinely want?

We all want better results. We want to be healthier, more effective at work, better athletes, better leaders, and better parents. We are motivated to improve, yet something holds us back. We read books, listen to podcasts, and attend workshops, searching for new strategies, skills, or tools to create change. But if lasting change were as simple as adopting a new strategy or changing our behavior, we’d all have made those changes by now.

Mindset vs. Behavior

True, lasting change is not just about tweaking behaviors or adding a new technique—it’s about transforming both our behavior and our mindset. We often forget that our mindsets, or mental models, are the invisible drivers of the things we do.

• Our mindsets drive our thinking.
• Our thinking drives our feelings.
• Our feelings drive our behaviors.
• Our behaviors drive our results.

https://corentus.com/blog/the-thinking-path

If we don’t address the mindset that shapes our behaviors, we’re stuck in the same patterns, no matter how many strategies we learn.

As James Clear wisely points out: “We do not rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems.” You can set lofty goals, but without the right systems, you’ll struggle to reach them. Your internal system includes your mindsets, and if that system is faulty, no amount of effort or external change will make a difference.

In their work on immunity to change, developmental psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey highlight this crucial point: “Many books try to identify the most important elements of leadership and help leaders acquire these abilities. Meanwhile, we ignore the most powerful source of ability: our capacity, and the capacity of the people who work for us, to overcome, at any age, the limitations and blind spots of our current ways of making meaning. True development is about transforming the operating system itself, not just increasing our fund of knowledge or your behavioral repertoire.”

Real transformation isn’t just about acquiring more information; it’s about shifting the underlying mindsets—our “operating system”—that govern our behaviors. To close the gap between what we want and what we can achieve, we must address these fundamental beliefs. We must start by understanding the mindsets driving those behaviors and then work to shift those mindsets. If we truly want our habits to align with our dreams, we need to begin from within.

Should We Work Together?

I’m a certified executive coach and facilitator, specializing in team culture, leadership, and character development in sports since 2017. I consult with teams, athletic departments, clubs, and NGBs committed to improving their coaches and developing team culture. My consulting packages include online courses for coaches, on-site facilitation, and 1:1 coaching for leaders. Also, I often speak at conferences for coaches and administrators. If you’re interested, reach out to see if you’re a good fit for TOC.

Notes

Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery, 2018.

Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. Harvard Business Review Press, 2009.

Miller, Edward L., et al. "Failure of Lifestyle Intervention in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease: The Johns Hopkins Study." American Journal of Cardiology, vol. 88, no. 7, 2001, pp. 1-8.