People Only Change When They Feel Like It
One of the most common questions that has been asked over the years is: “How do I motivate someone else to change?”
You can’t.
The reality is, people only change when they feel like changing. It doesn’t matter how much you want someone to change. It doesn’t matter how valid your reasons are. Or that you are right in your opinion that they should change. Or how big the consequences are if they don’t change. If someone doesn’t feel like changing, they won’t. And worse, when you pressure someone to change it just creates more tension, resentment, and distance in your relationships. I’ll prove it to you.
I want you to think about someone in your life whom you care about and you wish would change. It could be anyone: your mom, your niece, your roommate, your brother, your husband, your ex, your kids, your sister-in-law, your best friend, your partner. Anyone.
You wish they would get a better job, lose weight, be more motivated, wake up earlier, stick to a budget, pick up after themselves, stop dating losers, be more proactive, drink less, help take care of the dog, stop being so negative, change their views on politics, be more appreciative, stop smoking, be more involved with their kids, or stop leaving their dishes in the sink.
You may worry about them. You may not understand why they don’t see that this is an issue or why they aren’t motivated. You’ve probably thought, Why can’t they just do this thing I am asking of them?! I know exactly how you feel.
Here’s the truth: When you push someone, it only makes the person push back. You’re working against the fundamental law of human nature. People need to feel in control of their decisions. You want people in your life to change, but pressuring them creates resistance to it.
You may be acting with the best of intentions, but it is yielding the worst result. That’s because every time you fight against human nature you will lose.
Using the Let Them Theory, you’ll learn an entirely new approach to dealing with situations where you want someone else to change their behavior. It’s true: You can’t make someone else change. But I never said you couldn’t influence them.
As I share examples from my life and walk you step-by-step through how to use the Let Them Theory to influence someone else to change, I want you to keep your relationships and the people who are frustrating you in mind.
“I wish you would take better care of yourself.”
A good friend of mine is married to (and deeply in love with) a guy who needs to get healthier. Maybe you’re in this situation with someone you love too. Over the years, she’s tried everything to get her husband to take control of his health.
She’s asked, pleaded, hinted, and even occasionally broken down in tears about it in front of him. It worries her. . . a LOT.
She’s gotten angry with him and made passive-aggressive comments. She’s signed him up for gym memberships. She’s bought him new sneakers. She’s cooked the healthy dinners. And she even got them a Peloton to work out on at home.
Nothing’s worked. At this point, everything makes her mad. Whether it is his order off the menu, his resistance to working out, his post-dinner desserts, or the hours he spends watching television every night, it doesn’t matter what the poor guy does—it frustrates the hell out of her.
Now, to his credit, he’s tried. He’s started diets, he’s gone to the gym in spurts, and he’s even taken some Peloton classes—but nothing lasts, and so he and his wife remain in this deadlock with each other about his health.
She’s mad he won’t change, and he’s annoyed that she won’t stop nagging him. Sound familiar? It does to me.
And I’m sure it does to you as well, as you think about the person in your life you wish would change for the better.
I know you want the best for them. That’s why you want them to change. You love them. That’s why you’re stressed about this situation.
It’s why you want them to get healthier. Get a better job. Study harder. Go to therapy. To move on after a divorce and start dating again. Or just get out of the house and spend more time with their friends.
Wanting someone you love to change for the better, and to be happier and healthier, is normal. It’s a good thing to want someone to live a good life. It’s a beautiful thing to see a bigger possibility for someone you love. It’s an important thing to believe in someone’s ability to improve their life, reach their potential, and achieve their goals.
The issue isn’t wanting this for someone else. The issue is how you’ve been approaching this topic and how it’s impacting the dynamic between you and the person you care about.
Or maybe as you’re reading this, you’re realizing that someone has been pressuring YOU to change. They don’t even need to say something to you about your job, or your habits, or who you are dating, because their behavior makes it very clear that they don’t accept you as you are right now.
They want you to be living your life in a different way. It’s annoying. I know it is. And your natural inclination is to push back.
The Let Them Theory has challenged me to think a lot about this knee-jerk reaction to pressure people (and their innate reaction to resist), and why it’s hard for anyone to change.
I mean, when you want someone else to change, don’t you just kind of assume that it would be easy for them to. . . just do it?
I’ve definitely been there. All you have to do is just point out the obvious, right? Just tell the person how much better they will feel if they work out. Or constantly remind them of their ability to get a better job and how a better salary is going to solve all their current financial issues. Or the fact that they aren’t going to meet someone amazing sitting on the couch all weekend playing video games.
I mean, clearly they’ve never considered these options for themselves. Right?
Now, flip that around. How many times has someone pointed out the obvious to you? As if you didn’t already know that exercising would help you lose weight. Or crying alone in your bedroom won’t win your ex back. Or that applying to nursing school is a requirement to actually get into nursing school.
It’s almost offensive when someone else does this to you. You feel attacked. And it’s also annoying when somebody sits on their high horse and acts like it would be easy to just snap your fingers and suddenly change or find a higher paying job. How dare they think they know what’s best for you!
The fact is, change is hard for everyone, including you. No one wants to feel pressure from you, because they are already feeling it from themselves.
Just take my friend and her husband. Of course he wants to get in shape! He wants to lose weight. It’s not easy to carry around an extra 50 pounds. He hates the fact that he’s the biggest one in his friend group. It’s not good for his heart. He knows this. He’s not an idiot. And he also knows how hard it’s going to be, and how much work it’s going to take.
Waking up early, cutting down on the alcohol, feeling embarrassed at the gym, starting a new diet is going to be painful. It just is. Just like it’s hard for a smoker to quit smoking. It’s hard for someone who overspends to learn to stick to a budget. It’s hard to be single, which is why people stay with someone longer than they should. It’s hard to believe in yourself and land a great job if you’ve been fired.
Change is never a cakewalk. If it were fun and easy, the person you love would already be doing it.
The most loving thing you can do is to stop pressuring them and Let Them be. Right now, you have a completely unrealistic expectation and an approach that is backfiring. You have no other choice but to Let Them. Let adults be adults.
The Let Them Theory will force you to take a step back into reality, and approach your relationships with more compassion and humility and in a much more effective way. First, you need to understand the science of motivation and change so your approach is more effective.
Stop trying to motivate people. It doesn’t work. Based on the research, the motivation to change must come from within the other person.
Now, people love the word motivation—and maybe you do too. My friend complains about the fact that her spouse isn’t “motivated” to take better care of himself. And maybe you feel a little frustrated that the person you want to change isn’t motivated either.
However, it’s just not that simple. Let’s start with the definition of motivation: It means “you feel like doing something.” And, as you’re learning, adults only do what they feel like doing.
Your spouse doesn’t feel like exercising. That’s why they are not motivated! They don’t want to do it. You can’t motivate them, because the “feeling” of wanting to do it has to come from within them.
The problem with motivation is it’s never there when you need it. If motivation were automatic, everyone would have six-pack abs, a million dollars in the bank, and the world’s best side hustle. Plus, if you could magically make people “feel like doing” whatever you want them to do, you’d be practicing mind control. . . not motivation.
And look, even I mess this up.
For example, I spent years trying to “motivate” people to change the same way I got myself to change: by pushing them. I pushed my best friend to start dating again, I gifted my brother a personal trainer, I tried to force my mom to go to therapy. Giant. Fail.
Of course it failed because pushing someone just makes them push back.
Another reason why pressure doesn’t work? Humans are wired to move toward what feels good right now, and to move away from what feels hard in the moment.
This is neuroscience. In researching this book, I spoke to Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia, MD—also known as “Dr. K” to the millions of people who follow him online at the Healthy Gamer.
Dr. K is one of the leading voices on motivation and behavior change. He told me, point blank, that pressuring other people backfires because “you don’t understand the way people are wired.”
What you need to know, according to Dr. K, is simply that a human being will always feel like choosing what is pleasurable now, and avoiding what feels painful. In the moment, the work it takes to change is painful and hard. That’s why no one is motivated to change—even when they know it’s good for them in the long run.
My friend’s husband knows it’s going to take endless trips to the gym (and a whole other assortment of lifestyle changes) to improve his health. But the couch he’s sitting on? It’s comfy right NOW. The bag of chips he’s eating? It’s delicious right NOW. The game he’s watching? It’s entertaining him right NOW.
While he knows that the treadmill and the bench press will eventually create a good result, the gratification isn’t there right NOW. In fact, the immediate thing he will feel when he pushes himself off the couch and hops on the treadmill is. . . pain.
The treadmill and the bench press are going to be tiring. They’re going to make him sore. They’re going to require a lot of work. . . and what if he can’t stick to it? What if it’s not worth it? What if the weight doesn’t come off? What if he can’t do it? Isn’t it just a better and easier idea to finish the bag of chips and try again tomorrow?
Of course it is. And that is why he isn’t motivated to change! He doesn’t do it, because he doesn’t feel like it.
Dr. K told me that when we pressure other people to change, “We are spending our whole lives swimming upstream. Instead of understanding our motivational circuitry, we are trying to conquer it. Instead of utilizing it, we’re trying to fight against it and overcome it.” When you pressure someone, you’re fighting against the wiring of the human brain. People are wired toward what feels pleasurable now. Dr. K says that in order to make a change, a person must be able to separate themselves from the pain they will feel in the moment and the action that they need to take.
That means while he is sitting on the couch, he is going to have to say to himself, “This is going to suck to exercise, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
He has to do it. He has to separate himself from the pain. He has to decide to override his feelings and push himself to do it. You can’t do that for someone else. So Let Them sit on the couch.
And that’s not all. There are even more psychological reasons why pressuring is backfiring.
I also talked to Dr. Tali Sharot while researching this book. Dr. Sharot is a behavioral neuroscientist and the director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London and MIT. Her research integrates neuroscience, behavioral economics, and psychology to study how emotion and behavior influence people’s beliefs and decisions.
And one of her findings is groundbreaking: that people believe that warning labels, threats, and known risks do not apply to them.
That’s why my friend’s husband thinks he’s the only person on the planet who can be overweight and sedentary and never have a heart attack. It’s why he can convince himself that he can stay exactly the same, and nothing bad will happen.
That’s why your friend thinks she’s the only person on the planet who can vape several times a day and never see repercussions on her lungs. That’s why you think “quietly quitting” your job by coming in late, leaving early, and phoning it in on effort will go completely unnoticed. That’s why your significant other doesn’t believe you when you say, “If this doesn’t change, I am leaving.”
Everyone thinks they are the exception to bad outcomes happening to them. Which explains why your tears, pleading, and ultimatums will also backfire.
Our brains quite literally tune out the worst case scenarios—which is why the contempt-filled sighs aren’t doing anything.
They think they are the exception. (And by the way, so do you, when it comes to changes you are resisting in your own life.) By being passive-aggressive, constantly bringing it up, or using threats as a way of trying to pressure someone else to change, it will always backfire.
And, get this: Dr. Sharot explained that brain scans show that when someone is telling you something negative (“I’ll leave if you don’t stop drinking”) or something you don’t want to hear (“That dude you’re dating is a narcissist”), your brain literally tunes it out.
You can see on scans that the part of the brain that is listening to negative information turns off! So what does that mean?
It means that all those threats, worst-case scenarios, passive-aggressive comments, eye rolls, and scare tactics aren’t even registering in the other person’s brain. You are wasting your time, your words, and your breath. No wonder you are so frustrated and stressed out by the situation!
That’s why you need a different approach, and the Let Them Theory will help you put this science to work so you use your time and energy in a much more effective and compassionate manner.
And if you do it right, it may just inspire the person you love to want to change for themselves.
Let’s go back to the example of my friend and her husband. I want you to picture yourself in their situation.
Say you walk in the house after a long day at work, and your spouse is there happily lying on the couch watching his basketball game and shoving chips into his mouth.
He’s fine sitting there. In fact, he’s really happy to be sitting there. He says, “Hey honey!” with a massive smile across his face.
You, though. . . you take one look at him, the stress hits, and the amygdala turns on. You’re immediately annoyed. The anger starts to bubble up inside of you. You can’t help yourself from audibly sighing, “Oh, hi.”
You’re not thinking about anything you just learned about the human brain or the science of motivation or any of the things we’ve talked about so far. You’re just thinking about how easy it would be for him to get up and do something other than sit on his lazy ass.
Since you’re coming from a place of judgment, not acceptance, you’re not thinking about all those little moves he needs to make to go to the gym, and how painful it’s going to be.
You’re not thinking about him walking into the bedroom, changing into workout clothes, filling up a water bottle, finding his keys, driving to the gym, walking all the way inside the gym, finding a machine, and then actually having to do the work.
Instead, you jump over the reality, the science, and the truth about how hard change is for everyone—and you jump right into anger over the fact that they aren't doing what you want them to do right when you want them to do it.
In reality, what that situation requires is compassion, not contempt. . . and your audible sigh of disgust and bad mood isn’t going to launch them off the couch. In fact, those sighs of contempt are going to keep your spouse lying on the couch until they’ve lost the remote in the cushions.
No matter how loving your intentions are behind the audible sighs, your spouse is feeling like you’re trying to fix him—which feels more like pain, which means he’s now going to move away from you. It makes him feel defensive, and that’s just going to close him off from feeling like changing even more.
Pressure doesn’t create change—it creates resistance to it. When you try to exert control over someone else’s behavior, they instinctively resist your attempt to try to control them.
Instead of inspiring change, your pressure creates a battle over control.
When I spoke to Dr. Sharot, she reiterated that human beings have a hardwired need to be in control. It’s a survival instinct. Feeling like you’re in control of your life is what makes you feel safe. Feeling in control is what makes everyone else in your life feel safe too.
That means your spouse, your roommate, your mom, your boss, and your friends all have that same hardwired survival instinct to be in control, just like you do.
The people that you love only feel safe when they feel in control of their own life.
So when you start to push people around, pressure them, or tell them what to do, you are threatening their hardwired need for control over their own lives, decisions, and actions. You’re getting in the way of their agency, the feeling that they are in control of themselves, their life, and their own thoughts and behaviors.
By hinting to someone that “it’s a nice day for a run outside” when someone doesn’t feel like going for a run, you just threatened them. Your suggestion—no matter how helpful you may mean for it to be—feels like you’re trying to take away their right to be their own person who does what they want, when they want.
This is why you must let adults be adults. Let Them.
Acceptance of another person, as they are, is the foundation of a healthy and loving relationship. When someone feels that you accept them as they are, they feel safe with you.
The opposite happens when you pressure, change, criticize, push, or expect someone to behave differently than they are. This pressure puts you and your loved one in a battle for control, whether or not you realize it.
Remember Dr. K’s research about how the brain is wired to move toward pleasure and away from pain? Feeling your pressure is painful, which is why they are moving away from you. Which only makes you push harder, and that makes them resist more.
This will be a never-ending standoff between the two of you. You have the power to end it.
Let Them sit on the couch, because if you want to end the standoff, you have to.
If you think about my friend and her husband, who has the control? The husband. As long as he ignores his wife, he’s in control of his life, his decisions, and his behavior.
The second he does what she says, he loses his sense of agency and she “wins.” At this point, the argument is not about exercising anymore, but who holds the power.
It also explains why she can’t let it go. His health worries the hell out of her and makes her feel like she’s lost control of an important part of her life. . . So she keeps trying to control him, to make herself feel more in control of this part of her life.
That just makes him feel threatened, and push back for the sake of his own survival. And, the more stubborn he becomes, the harder she pushes.
Can you see how this dynamic creates a gridlock that just keeps escalating?
And maybe you can see this same gridlock between you and one of your kids, or an aging parent, or you and your partner. Or maybe you feel this gridlock because somebody else is pressuring you.
Here’s the truth: No one wants to feel pressured by their friends, family, or loved ones. What you want is unconditional love, acceptance, kindness, and compassion. You don’t want to be controlled; you want to feel deeply accepted for who you are, and where you are in your life.
That’s what allows you to truly be yourself and feel safe in your relationships.
You certainly don’t want your best friend telling you she doesn’t like your boyfriend, or your partner knocking you over the head with a gym membership, Peloton, and organic groceries.
That brings me to another truth.
Most of the time, the person probably does want to change, deep down. Dr. K talked a lot about this internal tension that people feel when they know their behavior isn’t good for them in the long run.
That’s exactly what my friend’s husband feels. That’s why he stops and starts. That’s why he keeps trying. That’s why he’s struggling.
Change is hard for everyone. And it’s even harder when you have someone breathing down your neck, and you not only have to deal with their pressure, but you’ll also have to admit that they were right when you finally end up doing the work.
Dr. K couldn’t emphasize enough that it needs to be THEIR idea to change, not yours. The husband needs to have a reason to push himself to do the hard work—other than just shutting his wife up. Otherwise, this change will never last, and the resentment between them will just grow.
People only change when they are ready to make that change for themselves. Stop punishing them for not changing on your timeline. Stop trying to “motivate” them into doing something they clearly don’t want to do.
It is a waste of your time. It is stressing you out. It is ruining your relationship. It is not working. And most importantly, it is driving a wedge between the two of you.
Loving people means that you have to meet them where they are. You must learn how to let adults be adults. This is why the Let Them Theory is so effective.
When you Let Them be, you’re accepting them for who they are right now. Let Them be on their own timeline. Let Them fail at their career. Let Them vape. Let Them give up. Let Them stay in that miserable relationship. Let Them make promises they don’t keep. Let Them be messy. Let Them wear the sweatpants to the dinner party. Let Them play video games all weekend. Let Them feel the consequences of their inaction. Let Them sit on the couch and never go to the gym. Let Them live their life.
It’s simple, but I didn’t say it was easy. I know that you may read this, thinking, Oh. So there’s nothing I can do? There’s always something you can do.
Because there’s always something within your control: it’s YOU. The only behavior change that you can control is your own. And this is where your power is.
The first change in your behavior is to stop pressuring and start accepting. Let Them be. When you accept them as they are, the frustrating and ineffective battle for control ends and you set yourself up to win the war for positive change.
It’s science.
But I’m sure you’re wondering. . . if pressure doesn’t work, what does? I said you couldn’t change their behavior. . . but I never said you couldn’t influence it. And this is where Let Me comes in and helps you unlock the power of your influence.
Decades of research from neuroscientists and psychologists say that you can’t motivate someone to change, but you can “inspire” them to change and even make them believe it was all their idea to do so.
I’ll show you in the next chapter how you can tap into someone’s innate desire to change by choosing NOT to pressure them: Let Them. And instead, use your influence by saying and doing the right thing at the right time, based on the research.