The People Closest to You Will Fight Your Becoming — And Why You Go Anyway

When you finally decide to change, the resistance won't come from strangers It'll

come from the people who love you most.

All right, this is a really important message.

It's an uncomfortable one, but let me tell you, my friend, once you start on

the path of significant change in your life, I'm not judging what you're coming

from, I don't know your story, but if you wanna begin to make some significant

change in your life, if you want a change in your body, your health, your

relationships, your finance, your career, your spirituality, any of these things

that are significant to you, if you begin to make significant change, I want you

to understand what is likely to happen.

There is certain-- there are certain laws that drive the cosmos, and this

seems to be one of them, that when you begin to significantly change, you

are going to find that it unsettles the people that you thought would

be giving you a standing ovation.

It's like if you've got a bad habit or you change something and it's, you would

expect people to go, "This is amazing.

This is so great.

I can't believe you're doing this.

You're changing." Do you know what actually happens a lot of the time?

People lose their gosh darn mind, and I want you to understand exactly why,

and it's not because people are evil.

It's this reason.

It's because you're becoming, you're changing destabilizes the version

of you they're comfortable with.

Why does it matter?

Because every system seeks equilibrium and your rising, your changing

forces everyone to renegotiate.

Let me help you understand what this really means.

I was literally having this conversation with one of my older daughters, uh, today.

We were talking about some of her friends, and she's doing all, she's n- you know,

going through these challenges as she chooses new career paths and study

that she's doing, and I was telling her, I said, "You have to understand

that as a species, we have evolved for an absolute relentless commitment

to social cohesion and belonging."

I'm not gonna go deep on the rabbit hole with this.

I think I covered this last week, but I need you to understand that we are, as

advanced as we are, we're still primates.

So when you go, if you've ever been to the zoo and you see all those monkeys

doing stuff and hanging out and swinging on trees and all, doing stuff together,

we are r- distant ancestors, right?

Like, we have evolved as a species to maximize social belonging and cohesion.

And so as we evolved, we kind of did certain behaviors to keep ourselves

safe inside the group, and if you did something that the group didn't like,

the group was like, "This is not good.

You're doing something different." Imagine a whole group of primates

walking down a path every single day, same path, doing exactly the same

thing, and then one day, a different primate goes, "Ooh, I wonder what's

down this path," and starts heading off.

Do you think the other monkeys are like, "Hey, Jim, great choice, man"?

We have no idea what's down there.

You'll probably die, but we just wanna say you do you.

That is fantastic." No, the other monkeys lose their mind.

It's like, "What's he doing?" Because they don't like change and difference

because we s- really maximize this belonging and cohesion piece.

But the difference is our civilizations have shifted massively, and there's

this whole forms of new freedom.

We're not going to suddenly die of starvation or be s- you know,

attacked by other members of the tribe and suddenly executed

because we did something different.

It's a different world that we inhabit now So what I'm trying to get you

to understand is that there are deep reasons why this destabilizes people.

Systems, families, friendship groups, business colleagues,

everybody likes pretty much everybody to kinda stay the same.

Except, I'll give you an exception here.

Once you begin to significantly change, one of the things you're gonna

notice is that you start gravitating to spending more time with different

kinds of people, the kind of people who inspire you, and I can promise you.

What's that old saying?

You know, there's no traffic jam on the extra mile.

Like, once you really start to change, my experience has been that

you tend to end up surrounded by people who want you to win and are

not threatened by your success.

Because passionate, alive, successful people who are really chasing

their own dreams, when they see you doing that, my experience has been

they are like, "Yes, you do you.

Go get after it." Like, for me, when I see somebody really trying

to change and grow, I am all there.

Like, I'm like, my mindset is, like, so focused on the actual abundance

in the world, I f- I don't… Like, if I see somebody who's wanting to

be successful in a similar space to me, like, maybe years ago when I was

first starting out, I'd be like, "Ooh, better not let them know too much.

They might, they might become a competitor." Yeah, look, I get

that maybe in huge businesses, but I'm like, "No, I want you to win.

I want you to win.

What do you need?

How can I help you?" I have this deep belief that when somebody's

ready to change and grow, I'm all there to be a witness to

that and to empower it to happen.

But what you are going to experience is you start to make changes.

But what you'll probably notice, it'll start with the small comments.

It'll be like, let's say you're out of shape, and you, you, you're not

looking great and you know it and you feel terrible, but you start to train.

And let's say everybody in your family or all your friends are like, you know, not,

not, they're not in great shape either.

And you start working out, and you start getting in really good shape, and, like,

you're training a lot and you're running and you're doing different things.

What do we tend to notice?

I mean, sometimes people are like, "Oh, that's great." But

then what do we also notice?

People are like, "Oh, you do, you seem to be a bit obsessed.

Like, are, are you compensating for something?

Like, are you, uh… What's wrong with you?

Like, why, how come you don't come out anymore?

How come you don't party the same way?" Like, this is so central to so much

of personal development literature and the whole great big genre that's been

a part of my life for many years, is that the minute you start to stop doing

some of the things you used to do, people feel like it's a judgment, right?

People feel like you're judging them in some way, and they

don't particularly enjoy it.

So I'm just trying to prepare you now.

I want you to reframe what this means.

I want you to look at it as a cost that you do have to count.

You have to take this into account, but it's not a reason

to resent people or to stop.

You have to love the people that you're close to as you begin to change, and

you need to go anyway So people's discomfort is not like a permission slip.

Like, you don't need people's permission to grow.

You're responsible ultimately to God for the gifts and talents that

you've been given, and I'm not God.

I don't know exactly how God's gonna judge everybody, but I think He's gonna

be… I don't know, what's the word?

If you get to heaven and God's like, "You may have had all these abilities,

all this stuff you could have done, but you were so paralyzed by other

people's criticism, and you didn't wanna make people feel uncomfortable."

Friends, I just wanna say to you that if you really go after what you're capable

of, I think what actually happens is you become an inspiration to people.

You inspire people towards change.

So can I encourage you?

Can I at least be one voice that says, "Yeah, people are gonna

become uncomfortable as you change"?

And you don't need to be difficult about it.

Like, you don't need to be what we used to call, you know, that guy.

You don't need to be saying to people, "Well, I am mas- magically changing my

life, and you mortals have the privilege of watching it in real time. Tremble

in my presence." Don't say that, okay?

Just have the interior courage to know that you're accountable to

yourself, you're accountable to God, and yes, you're accountable to your

family and to some degree to friends.

But the highest level of accountability is to your own potential and

to who God's made you to be.

So you have to run the risk.

There is a cost to a life where you seek to become who you could really become.

All right, please make sure you've subscribed to the podcast.

If you wanna come and follow me on Instagram, you can find me @jdoylespeaks.

Everything else is on the website, jonathandoyle.co, and I'm on

YouTube at Jonathan Doyle Speaks.

Let's finish, my friends.

I want you to understand this final, final principle as you really

set out on this journey, and I just wanna encourage you so much.

Always remember that you can be loyal to people and still refuse

to be imprisoned by their fear