Why people won't change and how to actually help them

We know we should skip the drink, go to the gym, stop snapping at the kids. We know better and still do not do better. On the Mel Robbins podcast, NYU Stern professor Dr. Dolly Chugh explains why that gap exists and what actually helps when the person you want to change is someone else, or yourself.

The mind's two bodyguards

The first bodyguard protects your energy by keeping life on autopilot. In a single snap of the fingers you have roughly 11 million small thoughts and maybe 40 conscious ones. It is why you can drive home and remember nothing about the trip. That is your brain working correctly, but the same habits and reflexes keep the knowing and the doing apart.

The second bodyguard protects your ego and identity. One study found people value affirmation of an identity they care about more than their favorite food, time with a friend or their favorite sex act. Agency, the sense that I am my own person and no one tells me what to do, is a core human need. Telling someone to lift weights or eat better can threaten that agency even when the advice is right, and you can rebel against your own plans for the same reason.

Change feels like the Stroop test

Naming the ink color of a word that spells a different color creates friction, because you have to unlearn reading. That internal resistance is what change and growth feel like. Unlearning is two steps: let go of what you know, then learn the new thing. We give ourselves grace for our learning curve and demand instant accountability from everyone else.

Prove versus improve

You cannot learn from a mistake you are still defending. Chugh draws a line between being a good person, which is static and defensive, and being a goodish person, who is always trying to get better. Goodish is the stronger position because you keep improving and you leave room for the days you blow it, paired with ownership. At the end of the day she asks what did I learn and did I try my best, rather than what did I get right or wrong. Feeling like a failure is exhausting and leads to learned helplessness.

How to actually help someone change

You can model change, invite it and reward it. You cannot make anyone change. To model it, Chugh tells the fable of Gandhi and the boy who would only eat sugar. Gandhi sent the family away for two weeks, then told the boy to stop, explaining that two weeks earlier he was still eating sugar himself. Make your own struggles visible. To invite change, create conditions where someone can try without feeling self conscious, and recognize tiny awkward attempts instead of correcting them while the unlearning works through. To reward change, tell the person you noticed, in their love language, publicly or privately.

Push and pull both have a place. A push directs, tells and forces. A pull asks questions and lets the person build their own plan and purpose. Pull almost always takes longer, and it lasts longer.

Tools for hard conversations

The WAIT rule stands for why am I talking, popularized in Michael Bungay Stanier's book The Coaching Habit. First check whether the person even asked for advice, then ask whether they want to be heard, hugged, helped or high fived. Chugh estimates about 90 percent of the time the answer is heard, and the common mistake is rushing to lift someone up when they only want a hug.

For the person who jabs at family gatherings, do not feed the argument. Take the oxygen out with a flat ouch or whoa, or the line Chugh borrows from Jefferson Fisher, did you actually mean to say that out loud. It signals to the room without endorsing what was said.

For defensive people, the problem is often the feedback. Adjectives like not polished enough are easy to argue with. Describe the specific behavior, state the expectation and name the impact. Mel's example was a text to her son and his friends with a photo of the messy bunk room, the expectation she had set, and how it felt to come home to it after eight days away, with no adjective needed.

The 1 to 10 rule asks how important this really is, to you and to the other person. If everything is a 10, nothing is. Often the real 10 is feeling heard or not being expected to do it for them, not the task. In the Robbins house, if both people rate it 1 to 7 the higher number wins and they move on, and an 8, 9 or 10 is worth a real conversation.

Support versus enabling

Watching someone you love suffer and being unable to help can feel like hell, and sometimes what looks like support is you managing that feeling. The soft cushion keeps the person from hitting the edge of their experience and facing consequences. The hard recognition is that this person is not ready to change and you are now propping up the dynamic, and the only move left is to step out of it. Sometimes the difficult part is letting others grow.

Bottom line

Be a lifelong learner and a lifelong unlearner, and trade proving for improving. The frustration you feel toward other people is often energy you are spending on an impossible standard you set for yourself first.