It’s hard to believe that change is possible when all the evidence seems to point to the contrary. And this is why it is so important to collect evidence that a different choice is possible.
Takeaways:
- You can’t lie to yourself – you need evidence to convince your brain that this is true, possible and worth doing.
- Evidence can come internally or externally.
- It takes deliberate practice to collect enough evidence to make it stick. One success is unlikely to convince your inner skeptic.
- Habits that have good evidence behind them, gain momentum.
Lab Experiment:
Choose a behavior or habit that you have struggled with but failed to change in the past. Those past failed attempts could be considered evidence that change is, in fact, not possible.
Collect at least one piece of counter-evidence. This can be either an example of someone in a similar situation or (ideally) one time in which you actually succeeded in changing your long-standing behavior.
Think about how many pieces of counter-evidence you would need to collect in order to believe that you do, in fact, have the ability to change this pattern in a more lasting way.
Then, start collecting (and counting!) that evidence. You may even find that it doesn’t take as many pieces of evidence as you thought to begin believing something new about yourself.