A shockingly small number of people who set personal development goals actually achieve them. Often what follows is self-recrimination and despondency. If you too struggle with changing your behavior, cultivate a bit of compassionate perseverance to keep you focused on your goal.

Behavior Change Is Hard

A recent Insider survey is a case in point. They polled 1,000 people who took a personal development course or seminar and subsequently committed to pursuing their goals for 90 days. A whopping 96 percent of the participants failed within the 90-day period.

Our modern culture elevates and emphasizes speed and instantaneous gratification, but we are experiential and adaptive beings.

Understanding and Encouragement Help Stay the Course

Undoubtedly, numerous reasons account for the abysmal failure rate. However, in my experience as a spiritual life coach, a life-long learner, and a soul searcher the one key to changing your behavior is compassionate perseverance.

It definitely helps to learn some self-development tools along the way through reading and workshops. However, there comes a time when praxis supersedes the acquisition of yet one more skill.

In other words, ultimately, success requires that you put into practice what you’ve learned.

The Magic of Successful Sustainable Behavior Change:

I’ve taken my fair share of personal growth, introspective, and energy-healing workshops. I’ve accumulated certifications and continue to read vociferously.

And, through my explorations, I’ve met and practiced with many like-minded soul seekers. Yet, what struck me one day was how we all keep looking for more – for that additional method that’ll make all the difference. We keep learning rather than doing to ultimately succeed at or become that change.

Consequently, I’m now convinced that the magic of successful behavior change is a taste of realism and persistence galvanized by compassion and gratitude. What I call compassionate perseverance.

A Taste of Realism

Realism is the ability to take a big goal – even an improbable goal – and break it down into bite-size pieces or baby steps. Knowing what you can handle right now is the key to defining that first morsel or step.

Even though a small step may appear too small to make a notable dent in your goal, keep in mind these tiny steps steadily add up. Together they can account for big change and often faster than an overly optimistic and effortful leap.

Perseverance

Perseverance is not giving up. If you’ve adequately embraced realism you’ll know that not every effort results in perfect success. And, you just have to honestly and non-judgementally assess what happened and keep trying.

You’ll also realize that any behavior change journey reveals new insights and ideas along the way. So, your plans may change. This is not defeat.

In other words, the key to persevering through challenges and setbacks is to keep applying your knowledge and skills through the dynamic process of change and to follow through all the way to your end goal.

Remember change is not a single instance in time. It’s about holding your attention to your goals and staying the course – straight line, zigzag, or loopy it doesn’t matter. Consider it your personal signature.

For a light-hearted illustration of the importance of persistent practice and perseverance, see this short Seinfeld clip about what’s the true touchstone of a reservation.

Perseverance is like holding a car reservation

The Power of Compassion

Too many people meet setbacks, even minor ones, with stifling judgment, criticism, stress, fatigue, shame, and resignation. No wonder behavior change is so painful and unsuccessful for them.

But, there’s another way to view these challenges. These days, we hear a lot about the power of compassion as the panacea. Increasingly, studies support this view. They find that self-compassion encourages resilience, innovation, and learning in the face of defeat (Forbes, Harvard Business Review, University of Chicago’s Center For Practical Wisdom, S. Shapiro in Greater Good Magazine).

In fact, without compassion, it’s hard to see the small successes and shifts toward your goals.

In turn, without the recognition, you’re less apt to be grateful to yourself for your efforts and the outcome of those efforts.

And, without gratitude, the change process is very taxing. It can even be impossible to keep going along a challenging behavior change journey.

In this way, compassionate perseverance is the key to your behavior change.

For Help Changing Your Behavior or Cultivating Compassionate Perseverance:

• See my Energy Healing (especially IET) Sessions
• Explore my Mind-Body-Spirit blog post, especially:
  • my blog posts titled Broken Resolutions: Break Old Patterns With IET and
  • Going Beyond the Vision Board: Fulfilling Intentions.

Updated August 13, 2023