Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we are going to discuss how we should approach change and make it the least disruptive. Now there are going to be times where you have to make a sudden change, but it’s best to make the changes slowly and to give people time to adjust. People are creatures of habit. Like 60% of our day is down habitually, and 95% of our day is down unconsciously. This is why I like to reflect in my journal about what I did and what caused me to make these decisions. I don’t think many people do these things so they are going to be shocked when they hear what is going to change.
When I was in the military and the Federal government, people did not like change, but it was forced upon ourselves and sometimes it was for good, and sometimes it was for the worse. At my last firm, we had a lot of older advisors, and when the company made changes, there was going to be a lot of complaining. So if you’re the leader, then expect this. Depending on who you’re leading, some will embrace the change, and others will figure out ways to stay the same. So I think making slow changes is better so people think it’s their idea.
This reminds me of a prank joke I heard where an employee slowly changed the coffee from caffeinated to decaffeinated for an April Fools Joke, and then once people were used to the decaffeinated, he switched it up to full force caffeinated again, and everyone was jolted. So this is how change feels, after not being used to caffeine and then given caffeine, then after a while, people will build up a tolerance.
To plan out a change, it’s going to take time. It requires seeing how is on the team and working with them. I would recommend that slow changes are made so that people can react to the changes and it can give us the ability to see if we need to make any changes. When it comes to financial planning, I don’t expect my clients to change their habits overnight. If someone is not used to saving money, I’m not going to tell them to start saving 20 percent of their income, I’ll start them out at a lower number like 5 percent over even one percent. Then we will focus on any debt, and I will lay the foundation to say that once we reach this goal in terms of paying down debt, then we can take half of that money and apply it to another bill, some to savings and some to their standard of living. I will give them the choice of what is best for them to do.
I can offer guidance, but I want to make sure that the person is not overwhelmed. Sometimes it requires telling people not to do something really fast. Plus when you’re making changes, don’t overwhelm people by trying to make too many changes at once. Just focus on thing at a time. There is something called analysis paralysis and when people have too many choices, they end up making no choices. This all takes planning and trying to figure out what is the one thing that will make everything else easier to do. Doing one task that can provide the most benefit is the task that we should focus on the most. Complete that task and then move on to the next one.
Then we start to do that task, then we build up a new identity and after a while, we will do that activity because we say we are a person that does that. When it comes to working out and you haven’t exercised in a while, don’t say you’re going to run a marathon to back in shape. Start with the walk, then a light jog with intervals of walking, and just focus on getting one percent better every day. Then in a couple of months, then we will be where we want to be. People tend to overestimate what they can do in a month, but underestimate what they can accomplish in a year. Just follow the process and realize that you can’t speed things up, but you also can’t slow things down either if you want to accomplish your goals.
When it comes to starting a business, don’t buy everything you can, start with what you have, and get customers first. Don’t spend time playing office looking for the perfect logo or the right business card to give out. And business cards are pretty useless. Buying all the stuff without customers is a quick way to go bankrupt. If you can handle it then fine, just be real for yourself.
When it comes to relationships and ending one, it might be best to end it as fast as possible. Depends on how long you’ve been together. An okay relationship is not okay. It will be for the good, but it will definitely be disruptive. And the key thing is that you can grow from it and learn how to do better.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, sudden change, even it is for the good, is disruptive. So it’s best to plan things out slowly and give people the ability to adapt. Sometimes you do need to make a sudden change and just realize that things will be chaotic for a while, but things will eventually settle down. Just have your heart in the right place and be helpful when you can and things will get better. Not always going to be comfortable, but nothing grows in the comfort zone. I also recommend that people are given small milestones to reach so that their habits have time to adjust. Slow and steady tend to win a lot of races, so don’t get discouraged when things are not going as fast as you want. Just keep going with the change because that means you’re growing as a person.
If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
The greatest way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
