John Ryan, The Life Change NetworkChange expert, John Ryan shares more perspectives about change in this two-part interview. In Part 1, John talked with me about many things including successfully navigating and choosing the meaning of change. The conversation continues as he shares more insights with us. Before we begin, here’s some background about John.

John Ryan, MBA, MSW, PhD is the co-founder of The Life Change Network and creator of The 7% Solution.  He is a professional speaker who provides consulting and coaching to individuals and organizations throughout the world. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook or his website.

Linda: What has been your biggest personal challenge around change?

John: The biggest challenge for me in relation to change also happens to be a challenge that I believe most of us struggle with and that is identifying what we need to change, when we should change it, and how should we change it.

When we do anything in life, we do the best we can with what we have.  And so if we’re not producing the results we want, what we’re doing is not good enough. But how do you know what to change, when to change it, and how to change it? 

Those questions are huge.  And if we don’t know the answers to those questions, we don’t change.  We simply keep doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result, which of course, never comes.

And this is why it is so crucial to have a coach.  All top performers have coaches and mentors, someone to give them feedback. It is hard to give yourself feedback because we can’t see things the same way an outside observer does because we’re too close. 

With all the education and training that I’ve been through, I can tell you that the biggest return on investment has always been from my coaches.  I can look at success in different areas of my life and attribute it to the coaches that I’ve worked with because the results from coaching are that immediate and profound. 

And the reason coaching is so effective is because coaches help you identify what to change, when to change it, and how to change it.  And those three issues relate back to what we talked about in Part 1: strategy, desire, and resources.  The strategy is the what, the desire affects when, and the resources are the how.

If you start a business and you’ve never started a business before, it makes sense to find someone who has been through that process successfully.  What was their blueprint?   What was their strategy?  Learn from their experience and you can accelerate your results. 

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”                

- Eleanor Roosevelt

This really is the core of The 7% Solution which is what I teach through my training and coaching.  What is it that the top 7% of performers do that the bottom 93% don’t?  What is the difference that makes the difference?

When to change is really controlled by our desire.  As you mentioned, people can either embrace change or fear it.  And to some degree, we all have a little of both inside of us. 

And this conflict creates hesitation.  So we put off following our dreams, we put off going for it 100%.  A good coach will assist you in resolving that conflict so that we get out of our own way and start laying the foundation for success.

How to make a change is largely impacted by your resources too.  I’m not just referring to money, although that certainly can help.  A resource is anything that can assist you in accomplishing a goal. 

Having someone to bounce ideas off of can be a resource.  Experience is a resource.  Coaches are a resource.  And coaches assist you not only in making changes but also hold you accountable for those changes so that you stay the course and don’t get sucked back into the old habits that were not producing the results.

So the biggest challenge around change is knowing what to change, when to change it, and how to change it.  And although I’m constantly working on developing my own awareness of what’s working and what’s not working, I typically use coaches, and I have a few in several areas of my life, to give me the feedback that I need.

Linda: What is the most surprising discovery about change?

John: The most surprising discovery about change is that it doesn’t have to be hard.  We make it hard.  We hold onto our beliefs, we hold onto our behaviors because they have worked for us in the past.   And since they worked in the past, we’re confident that they’ll work for us in the future.

Unfortunately, the present and the future are different from the past. So what worked then is not necessarily going to work now.  Again, why we resist the change is because of the security issue.  We do XYZ to be successful, it works, and we think to ourselves, “Yes, I’ve got it figured out.” And then we hold onto that pattern for as long as we can.

If we can begin to let go of the safety of the past and understand that the only safety is the ability to adapt to the present, then we truly can find safety and security in the notion that we can adapt to and overcome anything.

Linda: Is there anything you’d like to share about change that I haven’t asked?

John: One thing that I always want the people I work with to know is that we have two choices in life.  We can either be at cause or we can be at effect.

Being at cause means that you are responsible for your life.  Being at effect means that you are not responsible for your life and that everything that happens to you is out of your control.  That’s it.  Those are the two choices we have.

And where we choose to fall has a big impact on the results we produce and our overall quality of life.  Let’s say you are planning a big company outing that is going to be outdoors to celebrate your employees.  The forecast is calling for rain.  What do you do?

Well, you could shake your fists at the heavens and cancel the event which is being at effect or you could get a large tent, buy a bunch of ponchos, or move it indoors which are examples of being at cause.  We can’t control the weather but we can control our response to it. 

Or if we really want to have some fun, perhaps you could get a really big slip-n-slide!  Think about it, when was the last time you jumped into a puddle?  Did you ever do that when you were little?  Back then rain was fun.  But now, rain makes you wet and cold, messes up your hair, etc.

And that’s really what we get to do in life.  We have two choices. We can run from the rain or we can jump in the puddle and splash around. 

Thank you, John for your invaluable thoughts about change. I invite all of you to join us as we continue the conversation about change. What are your thoughts or questions about change?

John Ryan, The Life Change NetworkIn line with our February theme about, change, I’ve launched a new monthly feature called, “Ask the Expert.” I’ll be interviewing industry leaders who will share their insights and wisdom with you. You’ll have the opportunity to learn from and interact with the best of the best.

My gratitude and thanks goes to John Ryan, change expert extraordinaire, for being my first guest. He was so generous with his answers that I’m sharing the interview as a two-part series. Part 2 will post tomorrow. Come back to learn more because the wisdom he shares is too good to miss. Before we begin, here’s some background about John.

John Ryan, MBA, MSW, PhD is the co-founder of The Life Change Network and creator of The 7% Solution.  He is a professional speaker who provides consulting and coaching to individuals and organizations throughout the world. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook or his website.

Linda: You’re an expert on helping others successfully navigate change. What are the key ingredients for success?

John: Great question.  As we all know, change is guaranteed, success is not.  So what can we do to make sure that we create the change that we desire?  While there certainly are a lot of factors that impact our ability to navigate change, the three most important are what I refer to as the 3 Building Blocks of Success. 

1. The first building block is Strategy.  If you decide that you want to build a house, one of the first things you need is a blueprint, your plan for getting it done.  So, you have to have the right strategy. 

In life, part of that is figuring out where it is you want to go.  What is your outcome?  That must be the first question we ask ourselves when faced with change.  Either we have a plan, or someone else has a plan for us.  It is clearly much more empowering when we are in control because we’ve formulated our strategy.

2. While knowing what to do is important, it’s not enough.  You must also have the second building block of Desire. We have to have desire.  We have to want things to be different.  Otherwise, nothing will change. 

We may know exactly what we need to do to create the success that we want but if we don’t have enough desire, we hold ourselves back, we never get off the couch, and we never really go for what we want.  So we have to have desire.

3. The third piece is Resources.  Even if we have the right strategy and we have a strong desire, you can’t build a house if you don’t have the tools, the lumber, or the lot!

Those are the building blocks: Strategy, Desire, and Resources.  But the piece that binds them together is the mortar, which is Action.  Even if we have the right Strategy, Desire, and Resources, none of those matters unless you take action.

Those really are the keys to success in change and in life.  In fact, life is change and the greater our ability to identify our goals, connect to our desire, and use and acquire the tools we need to accomplish our goals, the better able we are to accomplish any goal.

Linda: What are some of the reasons we are challenged with making the changes that we desire?

John: One of the main reasons that we don’t make the changes we desire, even if we know the change will be good for us, is fear.  We are hardwired to resist change.  One of our core needs is consistency.  Consistency gives us safety.  When we start making changes, it messes up the status quo and it is not our conscious mind that has the problem, it is our unconscious.

If you’ve ever tried to “get healthy” you know exactly what I’m talking about.  Consciously, we know we should eat healthy, drink more water, and exercise.  And so we start on a new diet or workout routine and we actually start to feel better.  We say to ourselves, “Hey, this isn’t so bad, I can do this.”  We say that consciously, but our unconscious mind isn’t excited about these changes at all.

One of the main functions of the unconscious mind is to protect the body.  Well, then why would it resist being healthy?  The answer is that it doesn’t know any better.  The unconscious mind thinks that everything you’ve done in your life thus far has kept you alive so it wants you to keep doing that since it is what has worked so far.  But, this new “healthy” stuff, that’ll kill ya!

So what happens is we have conflict.  We consciously want one thing and our unconscious wants another.  Guess who’s going to win?  That’s right….our unconscious mind because it is a lot more powerful than our conscious mind.  You’ve heard that we only use 10% of our brain’s power. That is referring to our conscious mind.  The other 90% is our unconscious mind.

So until we change our unconscious mind, we will struggle with change, even if we know it is good for us.

Linda: Why do some of us embrace change while others fear it?

John: The “why” of anything usually goes back to childhood.  Most of our mental programs are established by the time we are seven years old.  That is the imprint phase where we absorb thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs from our environment without question.  It isn’t until we hit our teenage years that we begin to question our environment and think for ourselves. The problem is, the patterns are already well established. 

Our attitudes toward change really come from those patterns that were created early on in life.  But that doesn’t mean that we can’t change our attitude.

While the patterns we learn early in life affect our baseline attitude toward change, we can decide for ourselves what a particular change means to us. And there lies the power.

Change is neither good nor bad, it just is.  It is the judgment that we make about the change that determines whether it is good or bad.  What does the change mean to us?  How is this going to impact me and those I care about?

While all change involves loss, if only a loss of the way things used to be, some losses are more emotionally significant than others.  Loss of a job has huge repercussions.  Loss of a loved one has even more.

And certainly there is pain there but what you do after that is a choice that we have.  If you lose your job, you are forced into a choice about what to do next. Do you take the first job you can find or do you take the opportunity to start the business that you’ve always dreamed of doing?  Or perhaps you can use it to find the job you’ve always wanted. 

Understand, the loss of a job threatens the consistency and safety that we talked about earlier.  So there is going to be some fear there but we can choose what we want to focus on.  By focusing on what you want, you can turn that loss into a meaningful event that makes us stronger. 

We’ve all been through things in life that we didn’t know how we were going to make it but we did. And we can draw on that experience to keep us forging through life’s greatest challenges.

Now, on the extreme end of change is loss of a loved one.  And nothing is more difficult than this type of change.  And it is very hard finding meaning, especially when it is untimely.  And many people never find meaning in that loss and that is okay.  Sometimes we carry around that pain and it never makes sense.  That is our choice.

Other times, people take that loss and they turn it into something else.  We’ve all heard of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which is the breast cancer foundation.  Susan Komen’s untimely death at age 36 due to breast cancer inspired her sister to start the foundation so that other patients wouldn’t have the same result.  That is creating meaning from loss.

Part of our inspiration for creating The Life Change Network was the loss of my mom, Diana Ryan.  She also died of cancer and out of that loss, my wife, Deana, and I decided to create the community so that others going through change wouldn’t be alone and could get the help they need. 

Whether you’ve lost a loved one, lost a job, are getting married, or starting a new business, these changes cause stress and it helps to connect with professionals and like-minded individuals who can guide you through it.

So whether we embrace change or fear it depends on the meaning we associate to it.  The power comes in realizing that we can choose what the change means to us.  And that makes all the difference in the world.

Come join the conversation. Share your thoughts or questions about change. I invite you to stop back tomorrow for Part 2 of John’s interview when he shares more ideas about change.