Changing Human Behavior, Yours or Someone Else’s

If you’re human, there’s been a time when you’ve tried to change something about yourself or your team at work or in your family  and you’ve failed.

Welcome to the club!

If you’re a leader or manager, you can remember a time (or many times!) you wanted to pull your hair out trying to help someone change their behavior.

We’re told people hate change and that change is hard.

There’s enough truth in both of those statements to make it easy to believe them without question.

Today, I’m not only going to question those beliefs, I’m going to give you three ways to make changing behavior easier and faster.

“People hate change”:

Yet, people love the kind of change they want, don’t they?

That’s why we go on vacation, buy new cars, change jobs, buy new clothes and so on.

The best sales professionals find buyers who are ready to make a change and guide them through that change process.

“Change is hard”:

Yet, change isn’t always hard, and “hard” is relative.

Here are three reasons changing behavior (or mindset) can be hard for us at times:

  1. Our conscious mind wants one thing and our subconscious mind want’s something else. For instance, salespeople want to make more sales but they don’t want to prospect. Until you fix that, their sales results aren’t going to change. If you want to be happier and more fulfilled in life or at work but you have a  subconscious “Drill Sergeant” mentality, your conscious mind has one goal and your subconscious mind has something else in mind!
  2. We expect the change we want (a better relationship, “weight loss,” more confidence, to take place faster than it’s happening and we get discouraged, throw in the towel and quit. For change to happen we need to stay on course and give time for our new thinking and behavior to “set.”
  3. We don’t have adequate support. This is a big one. I can promise you that if you want to make something happen and it’s rough going, the right kind and the right amount of support will make what’s been hard easy in comparison. If there’s a change of behavior you’ve been struggling with (yours or someone else’s) is it time to get the support you need?

I would love to hear your thoughts so leave a comment and let’s have a conversation about how we can make changing behavior easier and more enjoyable. What’s worked for you? What are you struggling with?

P.S. I’m an expert in changing human behavior, call or email me if you want to talk about accelerating the change process. If you’re in sales, I can help. If you’re not in sales, I can help. Changing human behavior is changing human behavior. It doesn’t have to be so hard or take so long. Call me or text me at 678-778-9012, email me at alan@alanallard dot com or text me.

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