Same Shit, Different Decade: How to Finally Change That One Thing You Can Never Seem to Change

Sometime in my late 20’s I was at a high school friend’s wedding on Martha’s Vineyard. In addition to the scenic views and heartfelt vows, we were treated to a flowing bar and some late-night shenanigans involving, if memory serves, tequila shots and a flying golf cart (and memory might not serve, thanks to those tequila shots, but you get the point). It was like instead of hopping on a ferry to the island we all got into a DeLorean and floored it to 88 miles per hour, sending us back to the late 90’s, where our antics were at least age-appropriate. Crawling out from under our hangovers the next day to retell the night’s adventures to another high school friend who wasn’t there, she simply shook her head and stated, “Same shit, different decade”.

Now’s the part where I connect high school hijinx at a wedding reception to life coaching, so buckle up golf-cart-cruisers…Same Shit Different Decade is pretty much the theme of many, many a client struggle when they come to me for help. A lot of people have been wrestling with one (or a ton) of challenges for, well, decades. Weight woes, money management struggles, relationship regrets, career conundrums….Pretty much every person who comes to coaching comes with at least one tent pole issue that has been there for as long as they can recall. Often, that issue is the one thing that’s keeping them from the illusive “having it all”. In fact, its incredibly common to get to your 30s or 40s (the artist otherwise known as “Adulthood”) and still be pushing a boulder up a mountain that you’re entirely sure you should have reached the other side of by now. And that fact alone - the amount of time we’ve spent on one area of challenge - is usually the reason we eventually stop trying. It’s not that we don’t want to lose the weight, or pay off the debt, or stop running up the credit cards, or figure out how to stop fighting with our partner/kids/parents, or finally launch the business so we can quit the soul-sucking 9-to-5 we’re in. It’s that we’ve tried for so long, and failed so many times, at reaching that goal, making that pivot, creating that change, that we eventually decide, “It’s never going to happen”, and we give up altogether. We accept our lot in life, no matter how badly we wish we could change it.

Same shit, different decade.

And the reality is, in some ways, this “same shit, different decade” thinking is true. If you keep doing the same thing, if you keep trying to solve the same problem by pushing that same boulder up a hill and taking the same action without doing anything different, you probably will get the same results. Your job then is to look at what you can do differently this time, and try that route instead. And the fastest and most effective thing to do differently, no matter what your goal is, is to change your mindset first. If you’ve been trying to solve the same problem with the same mindset, you’re not going to get different results. Change your thinking first, and the rest follows.

This seems pretty obvious, right? If you’re thinking, “I suck, I’ll never get there,” whenever you think about your goal, then the likelihood of you getting there is…small. So why then is it so hard for so many of us to actually DO this? The reason is more involved than just, “changing your thinking is hard,” (which isn’t entirely true anyways). The reason is that we’ve spent so long trying to change this one thing, that often it becomes part of our identity….Who would we be without this hurdle to overcome? If we can’t answer that question, or if we don’t like the answer, than what are the odds that we’re actually going to do the real work (the mindset + the actions) to make it happen for ourselves?

Here’s a few examples of how this works:

1) Money: Clients will come to me wishing they could make more/save more/have more money, and they struggle with doing so. They don’t earn “enough” or can’t find the time to get the side hustle off the ground or spend as quickly as they earn or can’t stop overusing the credit card….While they want to have more money and be “rich”, their actions lead to different - opposing - results. For many, if they dig a little into this they see why: many clients have thoughts/beliefs about “rich people” that are really negative. Rich people are snobs, they’re selfish, they’re out of touch, they’re uncaring, they got rich by luck and not skill…and the subtext here is “I don’t want to be like that”. The problem is it’s really hard to become someone when you also hold beliefs that you don’t want to be that person.

2) Weight: Many times (actually, every time in my experience) clients looking for help with weight loss are coming to a coach because they’ve tried again and again (and again) to lose weight on their own, with limited and unsustaining success. For these clients we often start sessions by looking at “Who would you be if you lost this weight for good? How would your life be different?” What’s surpising is that for many clients, they don’t like the answer they come up with. If you’ve been struggling with weight loss for decadaes, it becomes a part of your identity, a part of your routine, and probably a part of your banter and bonding with other peple. How many girlfriends get togeter and talk about how fat they feel, or how they want to lose weight by X event, or how its so much harder to lose weight now, etc etc….If you solve the “problem” of weight by losing the weight you want to lose, what remains? For a lot of clients, they’re left with time, energy, conversation, even money that they don’t know what to do with, and that feels scary….so the weight stays on.

3) Career success: Another example is in professional success. For many people, seeking success at work or in their business is a driving force in their lives, and a massive use of their daily energy. And yet, somehow the struggle to get to the top, or reach the income goal, or get the title, seems like it never ends. One of the reasons is that for many people, they aren’t comfortable with, or aren’t sure what to do with, the idea that the “struggle” will come to an end once they get to that C-suite, or 7-figure business, or whatever the goal is. You reach the top and then….it’s all easy? It’s just smooth sailing? Whether or not that is true doesn’t matter; when you aren’t comfortoable with the idea of what happens after you achieve success, you create a whole bunch of ways for that success to remain illusive!

So what’s a gal to do here? Hop in a golf cart and spin in circles forever? Of course not. The way you move forward, instead of continuing the repeat the same shit just in a different decade, is to actually start asking and answering this possibly-scary-but-really-essential question: “Who am I once I finally reach this goal?”, and then start living into that future now, before you get there.

When we’re not comfortable or familiar with a thought or an emotion, we avoid it. That’s part of our brain’s way of trying to keep us safe - by keeping us in the space of what’s “known”. So they way to move past this is to start deliberatlty getting comfortable with the thoughts and feelings that you want to have, in order to normalize them from your brain. And once you do this, you’ll start taking the actions, and getting the results, you have been after.

Back to our examples:

1) If you want to reach your money goal, start thinking like the person who you want to be when you have the financial life that you want. What would that version of you do? How would they spend their money, time and energy right now? Would they pay off the credit card or run it up? Would they invest in a course or a coach or a program to advance your earning potential, or would they go at it solo? Would they be kind or be an asshole? You get to choose how you will be once this money is a reality - so why not just start choosing to be that way right now?

2) If you want the weight loss achievement, you have to start thinking and feeling like a person who has the body you want. How do they feel when they put on clothes in the morning, when they finish a workout, or when they go out to eat with friends? What do they think and feel when they step on a scale and see it went up a bit? Can you start thinking and feeling that way now?

3) If you want the professional success, you have to start thinking and feeling like the person who has that success now. So if your business was making your dream amount each month, or you got that promotion, what would you think? How would you feel? What do you need to do to start feeling that was right now, in this moment, when your business is making much less, or your job title hasn’t changed?

Revisiting the past is fun now and then but living in it is not. Staying focused on what’s ahead by thinking, feeling, and acting like the person you want to be is the only way to actually ensure you’re not doing the same shit in a different decade.

Not that the occasional flying golf cart isn’t fun…