From ‘Want’ to ‘Will’

I am a firm believer that we often confuse wanting something with being willing to do what it takes to get that something.  This was often the case when I worked as a personal trainer at a gym.  I had potential clients come to me all the time with so much initial enthusiasm and a stated intent that they were ready to really put in the work.  But then the alarm goes off at 4:30 am on Monday morning.  They have to be at the gym by 6 am.  Often it was the case that people were late to appointment times if they showed up at all (lots of people paid for sessions they didn’t show up to).  Then with the remaining time left in a session people often put forward a lackluster effort.  

During my time as a fitness professional this phenomenon was confounding to me.  “How can people be so adamant on one hand but then fall so short of the mark on the other?”  As I got further into writing and speaking about self improvement, I began to see a similar pattern in other areas of people’s lives:

• I’ve had numerous conversations with people who want to get out of debt.  The desire to change is there but the will to actually follow through is weak.
• I’ve sat with multiple people who are either perpetually in bad relationships or on the verge of losing a marriage.  The desire to work on the beliefs and behaviors that led to the issues is there but the will to put in the effort is weak.
• I’ve had numerous conversations with people who want a shift in their work life because they’re overworked and stressed out, only to watch them continue in the same patterns for years…always complaining and wanting something different but never doing anything about it.

People seem to look for the moment of action to feel the way things did when they were talking about taking the action.  Big changes don’t work this way.  The path is the path and you must execute.  Feelings follow action.  Action is determined by the objective.

Over the years this has prompted me to ask myself a question, “How do you accelerate a person from wanting to do, to willing to do?”  A close friend of mine who owned the gym I worked at pointed out something to me that I have always thought was a profound observation.

There was a client at the gym who had a great story of weight loss, similar to myself.  My friend pointed out that it wasn’t the gym that caused this client to lose weight.  The client had already made up in their mind that they were going to lose weight and the gym just happened to be there.  Weight loss would have happened no matter what the environment was because the client had made up their mind that they were willing to do whatever it took.

This makes me think back to my own weight loss journey and something that I wrote about in my book.  When I was young there was a fury and rage I would feel inside when someone would talk trash to me about being fat, slow, or generally being physically inferior to others in our grade level.  But, I never talked back. That was in part due to being intimidated by other people.  The other part was the fact that they were right.  I was fat, slow, and athletically inferior in almost every way to everyone else to include some of the females I went to school with.  I guess I have never been one to hide from reality.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that part of the challenge with changing something about ourselves is the feeling that comes with talking about the change.  It seems like we get some sort of high off of talking about the changes we want to make that is almost similar to making the changes themselves.  I think this is why we confuse wanting to change with willing to change.  Talking about it gives us a high that actually doing the thing would also give us.  Right or wrong, talking about losing weight was never something I felt the freedom to do with anyone when I was young and struggling to do so.

I was so timid as a kid.  This timidity combined with a sincere conviction that my health was my own personal responsibility caused me to keep my mouth closed and focus on action.  Those actions at the time primarily involved working out and making many failed attempts to change the way I ate.  I said this in my TEDxTalk, I never complained about being bullied at school.  I never told anybody that I was trying to lose weight.  I just worked for 7 years, quietly, on my own.  Disappointing and frustrating as it was, I didn’t complain when I wasn’t seeing results.  I just put my head down and kept grinding.  

My suspicion now is that there is potentially some sort of internal tension that builds around our true desires when we don’t talk about them.  The combination of rage and not having an outlet to voice my frustration created in me a drive to push through whatever obstacle I had in my way:  lack of knowledge, perpetual disappointment associated with lack of results, lack of desire to workout at times, lack of role models for fitness, and a lack of encouragement.

As I continue to examine what made me successful in the monumental changes I have made in my own life there seems to consistently be a frustration whose energy is captured through a lack of communication with others.  When I made the decision that I was going to get out of debt, I can remember being so angry that I had this Engineering Degree that involved all this complex content and in my 17 years of school, no one mentioned the power of a budget and staying out of debt.  The sense that I was beholden to the people who held my debts was infuriating.  That frustration was definitely a component of the fuel to make the sacrifices necessary to pay off the debts.  I never talked about it.  I just put a plan together and began fighting my way forward.  

Real desire and real anger seem to be at least one recipe for accelerating between wanting to change and willing to change.  Harnessing the emotion of anger and making use of that energy is most definitely a skill I learned as a child.  Unchecked, anger can be incredibly antisocial and destructive.  But if examined and pointed at a real desire, it can be rocket fuel.  It’s not the only recipe for change but it’s a damn good one if you got it.

It’s wild to think about now and I say it often but I am so grateful for my childhood experience.  The bullying, the abuse, the sadness, the heartbreak, the anxiety, the fear… I hated the way I felt and I didn’t believe I could talk about it.  So I worked.  Eventually I got the result I was looking for.  This became the standard for how I approach every change I desire to make in my life.  While I wouldn’t wish those experiences on anyone, I am eternally grateful for the strength of will they created in me.

As Ryan Holiday might say, the obstacle is the way.

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