Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

The 16 Voices in Your Head Stopping You From Reaching Your Dreams

Jessica Stillman

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Over the years as a writer I’ve explored dozens of tips and tricks to finally make lasting change in your life.

There’s the Stanford study that recommends swapping your metaphor for change, the simple (but apparently effective) trick of copying friends’ good habits, the even more appealing suggestion of preparing for big changes by doing a whole lot of nothing, and the classic technique of just bribing yourself.

I could go on. There is a lot of advice out there about how to make lasting change in your life. Which tells you two things. One, a lot of people are pretty desperate to change, and two, actually making significant alterations to your life is really, really hard. Why is that, exactly?

That is the million-dollar question that armies of psychologists are busily studying. There is no simple answer. But the closest I’ve come to finding one recently popped up in my inbox in the form of an edition of the newsletter Every by executive coach Steve Schlafman. The piece is an extremely deep dive into the subject of personal transformation but it offers a simple explanation of why it can be so incredibly hard to change.

Driving forces > resisting forces = change

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