From Resolutions to Reality: Navigating the New Year Itch

Cristina Amigoni: And it can be used as an excuse to not provide clarity. Like, "Well, that's just ambiguity and you need to get used to it." And I'm like, "No, that's just not clear. That has nothing to do with ambiguity.

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

Both: Let’s dive in.

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, it's a host episode, Cristina and I, and we are here to talk about – actually, this is, I believe, going to be our New Year's years episode. Welcome to 2025. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that's the plan. 

Alex Cullimore: I mean, we're not in 2025, but you are. 

Cristina Amigoni: We've invented time machine. Time travel. 

Alex Cullimore: You're welcome. This is a message from the past. But also in your present. And if that's not relativity, I definitely don't know what it – I actually spent a little while on a rabbit hole yesterday trying to look up general relativity and a bunch of like explain it to me like I'm five posts, and I couldn't get it. Okay. Okay. 

Cristina Amigoni: Does that mean that you haven't quite reached five-year-old maturity or that the explanation was not actually what it claimed to be? 

Alex Cullimore: Well, it turns out that because the speed of light is constant, no matter how fast you're moving, that changes time. And I have yet to figure out how those connect. And having not studied physics for several, several years, and only gotten to a very nominal level. I think there might just be a gap in amount of ability to understand that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that makes sense. Yes. Yeah. 

Alex Cullimore: And that's the topic we wanted to talk about today, general relativity and our poor interpretations of it. 

Cristina Amigoni: And what we don't understand about it. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: The vastness of things we don't know. It's a long episode about quantum physics. Very interesting stuff though. Basically, I'm not going to go into that. I could come into a rabbit hole of that because I went down in a rabbit hole last night. 

Cristina Amigoni: It feels like you kind of have to. 

Alex Cullimore: Well, we can talk about how Einstein proved, basically, the idea that the past, present, and future all exist kind of all at the same time in its own dimension. And space time being continually connected implies that, while there are many conceptions of the present, it essentially means that given that my now might be different than somebody else's now depending on where they are and how they're traveling through space time. That their now might be 1950s now for us. Or their now might be 2050 for us. And so, those do technically exist on the same timeline and at a different timeline at the same time. Anyway, that's exactly what I'm sure everybody tuned into our podcast for. I think everybody was like, "What if they discuss general relativity today? I should check-in. 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, talking time relativity and past, present, and future all thing at once, yes, we wanted to talk about the new year itch, the January 1st itch people get. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. The craze for change and the idea that there's turning of the calendar and one of the bigger numbers on the three numbers that we tend to track day, month, and year, the change of a year kind of implies this kind of change and a new start. And a lot of people have commented on the fact that it is generally disappointing. It's hard to get new year resolutions that stick. We do want some amount of change. We kind of create this pressure around this first-of-the-year date that some of you might be listening to this on if you're all hungover. 

Cristina Amigoni: And some may be in 1950 on January 10th listening to this. We don't know. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I mean, they aren't definitely listening. Well, if that's their now, we don't exist yet. None of us have been born yet. But, also, we're here. We're also unborn, dead, and alive all at the same time. And if that doesn't inspire you to reach your goals, I don't know what will. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, the fact that we're all born, dead, and alive at the same, yes, let me get my pad and start making my list of goals. 

Alex Cullimore: I know I, for one, am about to drop to the floor and start those push-ups I swear I would do. But in a way, I've already done them. And if that's not – 

Cristina Amigoni: You bet. Yes. I know. And you've already lost the muscle mass from not doing them consistently. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. The circle of life and relativity. 

Cristina Amigoni: Why bother doing them to begin with? 

Alex Cullimore: Oh, this would be a fun theme to confuse people. Your confusion right now as the listener is my confusion. Looking up, explain to me like I'm five relativity posts. 

Cristina Amigoni: Back to January 1st. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Or fast forward to January 1st, or present January 1st, if you're listening to this on January 1st. 

Alex Cullimore: Or think back on your January 1st and pass the clouds of hangovers from your New Year's party, ready for the day, thinking about the new year that will be the bright future that is a little too bright. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: we wanted to talk a little bit about things that we discussed. We discussed these things in organizational change, but they are really just macro versions of what happens for personal change. Either way, you can map these to trying to create change in life. And since January 1st tends to create that itch, maybe it's that we've all had the holidays and relax and now something we feel like we have to jump back in or maybe we just have energy from having rested up a little bit and we're ready to go create those changes that have felt stagnant by the end of the year where we're ready to jump in. 

Let's talk about some of the things that can come up that make change difficult or make change maybe the wrong change to embark on. There's a lot of different angles we can start with. Where would you like to start? 

Cristina Amigoni: There are different angles. Maybe we should start with the should trap since there is that January 1st itch comes with a should of like things should change. We should reorganize. We should start doing push-ups. We should eat healthy. We should – whatever the shoulding. That there's a lot of shoulding because of the January 1st itch. 

Alex Cullimore: “Should all over yourself,” as they say. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yes. There's somehow that pressure of there's a magic wand. And so, if we don't do anything drastic to make a big change on the day that we're probably least likely to actually make anything stick, then there's whatever shame and guilt goes along with that. We are going to feel as a company. We are going to be behind the market. We are going to never be healthy again. We will – whatever. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. We discussed should trap. We said the should trap and there are several traps that we've kind of defined here that are easy things to fall into when you're trying to change. Should is a great one because we do feel like, "Oh, I should make some resolutions. I should change something about myself this year." And the real question to get to you is why? Why that's important to you? Why something needs to happen in companies, definitely, like you mentioned. It can be like an industry trend. We feel like we should do this because I heard it on a podcast, or because I feel like other companies are doing it, or whatever. It seems like the industry is doing this. We should be part of that. AI is a big one. 

Cristina Amigoni: Just to note, if you're hearing our podcast, you definitely should do it. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: All of these things are absolutely accurate and you should absolutely fall for every trend. That's what we're trying to say. Shoulds are musts. When you listen to us. When you listen to other people, maybe not. 

Alex Cullimore: Only our advice is correct. But in a relativistic sense, it's both correct and incorrect. That and unset. Known and unknown. 

Cristina Amigoni: True and untrue. 

Alex Cullimore: True and untrue. And it's for you to decide where in your space time should continuum. This is actually a decent metaphor for it. There are some objects with large mass in the industry continuum. And we feel like those become shoulds. There's a lot of people following Amazon for what they're doing, following Google for what they're doing. And do those necessarily apply? No. No, those don't blanket apply to everybody, nor are they necessarily correct at Amazon. Nor will they be correct all the time even if it does work for now. 

Let's think about what should really means. Is it that external should that you just feel like you should do this? People say being healthy is important, so I should do this. Are you trying to tell other people they should do something without being direct enough? There's a different ways you can fall into a should trap. You're stuck on something that may not actually resonate with you personally. And so, it's worth some investigation as you look at your list of potential resolutions or as you think about creating resolutions. Which, again, not a necessity. But since it's so common this time of year, it's worth talking about. 

What are you really saying when you have resolutions? I'm going to be healthier this year. It's not a bad goal. It's not bad to be healthy. But what is it that you really want from that? Why as being healthy important to you? 

Cristina Amigoni: And why is it a change? If we're making it as a new year thing, then it's a change. Have you been unhealthy this whole time? Is that the change? What are you comparing it to? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That's a great one. What is the level of "health" that you want to get to? Is this throwing that against the wall of like, "Oh, well, I saw somebody on Instagram or in a magazine that drinks exclusively green juice and works out seven times a day." If that's your definition of healthy, I guess it really depends on your starting place as to how achievable that's going to be in the near term. Or whether that's worth it again. Why do you want to do that? Is it that you want to be healthier because you want the longevity of that? Is it important just to have the mobility? And this is definitely something that has come up a lot as I've watched some people close to me aging, it becomes important to think about just, "Hey, you're putting a lot of in now.' Means that when you're 70, when you're 75, you still have things like mobility. And you have samples around the world. 

I remember watching that Blue Zone documentary and there's plenty of people who have lived over 90 and maybe over 100 and they're moving on their own. They don't have a lot of medications. And there's a bunch of reasons for that. And part of that is just continual bits of mobility that they practice throughout their entire lives. And so, maybe that's a goal. That's going to be something that can help you center on why this is actually important, not just the vague feeling that like, "Oh, I feel like I should be more healthy." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Well, and a big part of that is also really going back to if a should comes up internally or externally, we should change because this is not working. Well, first define what this is and what's not working about it before going to like, "Let's just change," which brings us second change trap. But should just change because this is not working. But have you actually analyzed what this is? Why is it not working? What was your expectation that's not being met? 

And then if a change is necessary, what degree of a change? What's the realistic point of that change? And just as personal changes on January 1st, that is a really tough time to actually make a change. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It's dark. We're all recovering. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. We're still in the middle of the holidays. People are off. They're trying to relax. And when they know that a change is looming, how relaxed are you gonna be during the holidays? How are you actually gonna be able to be present in the end of the year, in the holiday season and being with your loved ones in relaxing, and resting, and in doing whatever you need to reset to start to then get to a new month, a new day, or whatever it's needed. 

But with the pressure of that it's January 1st, let's revolutionize our lives in one way or another, or let's revolutionize our organization in one way or another. It's like why January 1st? Out of all the dates and all the months of the year, I can't think of possibly a worse time to decide to revolutionize. 

Alex Cullimore: I don't know. For me, in August, there's a lot of general lethargy and it's, "You know what, it's summer. It's nice. How am I going to do change everything right now?" 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. I mean, there's never a great time to create revolutionized changes. And when you know it's looming and you don't even get to enjoy the time that you need to rest and reset, I would say that's probably a really bad time. 

Alex Cullimore: That is a nice transition. First, we talk about shoulds where we really want to get to the root of what we want to change. What kind of scale we want to change and why we want to change it? So we can really ground ourselves in why this is important to us. It's really important to ask what we tend to go-to questions. Things like, "What am I trying to accomplish?" "How would I know I'm successful?" "Why is that important to me? And what can get in the way?" Those are the ones that we can really dig into and really understand what is important about this change, which also allows us to change the goals instead of just being like, "Well, I definitely need to work out for 30 minutes a day." That's very arbitrary. Maybe it helps you set something. It's not that it can't help you set a pattern, but that doesn't answer the why of what you're really getting to. And if you know the why, that allows you to flex around the things that you're talking about where, "Hey, the life circumstances are coming up around." This is also the holidays. Oh, they're changing something at work. Now that's going to take more of my time there than I thought was going to happen. 

Life's always going to happen. How can you keep yourself on that North Star? And half of that begins at defining the North Star beyond that external should. And that moves us into the just trap. It's a good transition to that because just is what we really fall into where we're like, "Oh, I'm just changing this portion." Yes, but it's always connected to everything else. And we often talk about understanding the web of a change, the ripples of a change with asking web questions. What else belongs? Who else belongs? What am I not considering to speak the real question? What do I need to do? 

If I want to – I'm just going to keep using the get healthier example. If you want to add working out to your routine, great. What does that mean for your routine? Do you have to wake up much earlier so that you still have the time to get kids ready before school? Do you have to change your schedule? And what will you do when there are inevitable conflicts? How will you be able to get yourself up if you've been somebody who doesn't get up at 5am? What is the likelihood that suddenly, January 1st, you're getting up at 5am every day? And how likely is that to be a sustainable? And what does that mean for the rest of your day? 

You now have this like, "Okay, are you going to take an hour off of the evening time so you sleep earlier so you still get the amount of sleep?" That this one change isn't just change. It's everything that will be impacted by that. Who else will be impacted by that? What else will you have to change? And these aren't bad that other things have to change. But if we can consider those, we might be less blindsided by the eventual ripple effects that always happen with change. Since change is always happening all the time, we can guarantee there are ripple effects that are already coming for your change and your change will cause ripple effects. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. And then you have – especially if you think about the healthy, there are so many consequences. How does your nutrition need to change? Which means how does your grocery shopping need to change? How you preserve your food? How you prepare your food? How much time you'd use to prepare your food? How does that impact the meals that you have with other people in your household? I mean, you could infinitely look at the ripple effects of something. Using the just, it feels like it's a way to minimize the amount of change that's going to be impacted. And it's a way to make it digestible, which is not a bad thing if we're not blind to the impacts of the ripples. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It is sometimes helpful in small steps getting a habit started kind of way, where it's like, "Well, I told myself I'm just going to run five minutes today. It's just five minutes. I'll get to that." Maybe that helps us mentally frame that as well as give ourselves the time to do it. It's when we minimize the overall change and we say, "This is just this portion of my life that we might end up being blindsided by a bunch of things that will make it more difficult to make that change." 

Both for the should and the just, there are questions you can ask yourself to kind of get to the bottom of what's happening, as well as the conscious awareness of when the words should and just appear in your resolutions, appear in your mind, appear in the thoughts that you have about the change. Being conscious of those why I should just do this, those are very big triggers for I haven't figured out why this is important to me if I'm trying to force myself to do this. Or I haven't figured out what else is being impacted if I can't seem to get to this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, and if we don't create that foundation and that true understanding of all the ripple effects, it's the ripple effects that are gonna throw us back into the past and make it easier to give up. Even from an organizational point of view, even something – you know what I'm saying? Like, "Oh, we're just switching from Slack to Microsoft Teams." I would say that's not a just by a lot. The consequences of that are way bigger than just click on a new icon and use that. 

Alex Cullimore: You could so much TeamMates. Yes, but this is also a document storage. This is also tied to a bunch of automations. This is also tied to people's calendars. This is also tied to a bunch of meeting invites that are already on a calendar. If you don't have Teams anymore, you can't use a Teams' link or vice versa. What happens when you change that? And that's one thing to think about, especially in higher levels of leadership, where you're like, "Well, we're just changing this process." And what are all the other thousands of processes that have to change for that? How many people are affected by that? What will they have to do? 

And I'm not saying that any of these are insurmountable. But if you're thinking of it as, "Oh, it's just a small change," it might be just a small change for you. And that there's a huge change down the line. And we often think of that as kind of a pendulum. You might make a small or like a swinging stopwatch or something from somebody's hand. You might make a small adjustment. But that wristwatch is flying back and forth when you get down the chain and down the chain. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. Yeah. Our next one, I would say it's putting the cart before the horse. 

Alex Cullimore: A good one. Yes. Jumping straight from idea to action, we think, "I'm going to be healthier." And then we slap on our running shoes and try and run five miles. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Or sign up for a marathon. 

Alex Cullimore: We figure out whether we could do that. 

Cristina Amigoni: Or I'm going to wake up on January 1st and go hike my first 14-er. It's possible. You may want to consider all the other things that are impacted by that and what you need for that. 

Alex Cullimore: I'm going to start a book club. I'm going to do this. The first week, are you going to get everybody to have accepted, read the book and invite? There's just so much that has to happen between idea and action. And then we might not communicate enough of that to ourselves, to everybody else that's going to be impacted and jumping straight from like, "Oh, I think I want to do this too." It's happening. We might miss all of those. First of all, the questions we just asked, like, what is important about this? Why are we doing it? And what else is going to be impacted? Have we communicated that to people? Is everybody else on board? 

And it's not that they have to be 100 % on board, but know where your points of resistance are. Know what the resistance is. If you say I'm going to go train for a triathlon. Well, how does that impact your entire household? You being out an hour a day trying to do something or train. Well, okay. So what happens to whatever needs to be done at home for that hour? These aren't insurmountable. But if you have no dialogue up front, it's going to be much more disruptive to yourself and to everyone else impacted. 

Cristina Amigoni: I mean, my family and I just spent this year five months in Italy. And if I had gone from – we're going to go to Italy for five months to, "Oh, and our plane is tomorrow. Pack your bags," I'm pretty sure I would have been the only one at the airport. 

Alex Cullimore: That's if you could even convince yourself of it, like, "Yeah, I'm doing this." 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. That is if I got my own bags packed by then. 

Alex Cullimore: It's exciting. And when we have an idea, sometimes we're just so excited about the idea that we don't even want to pause to investigate all these things. Or we had the idea. It seems like a great idea. I can't believe everybody wouldn't be on board or that we wouldn't just jump into this. And so, we forget that there is kind of the buy-in for both ourselves as well as the investigation for what else is going to be part of this. Is this the right decision? And what can we do to support this? Those are all things can easily be skipped if we go right to the cart before the horse and jump straight into the action. 

Cristina Amigoni: It doesn't help that we now live in a society of immediate satisfaction, immediate resolution of anything we can think of. If I think of like, "Oh, I would love to have a unicorn singing Christmas carols for Christmas," I could probably go on Amazon, look it up, order it and it'll be at my doorstep tonight. Living in this type of reality doesn't help. And when we think about what it actually takes to go from idea to implementation of the idea, it's worth pausing and actually going through the steps. 

Alex Cullimore: That goes back to getting to that why it's important to do it, because there are things that tend to be important. Obviously, something that you want to just get off Amazon, either it's a matter of like saving up to be able to get it, or it's just a matter of clicking a button. And so, there are definitely lots of changes that can be immediate. 

And I think our brain gets used to that. It feels like things can just happen quickly. Waiting is almost like – well, it's an inconvenience. I could probably find this faster somewhere else. But the things that we tend to care about relationships, being healthy, whatever other aspects. Those are long-term investments. Those are things that take a while. And so, knowing that and getting to the real root, why, of why we're doing that in the first place keeps us going and understanding, and keeps us on track and gets us, again, a North Star to focus ourselves on so that we can continue to go when they're going eventually inevitably gets more tough than just the exciting initial idea. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Well, and also doing all the discerning. What happens between idea and implementation and action is the discerning. Getting buy-in from anybody that is involved, and it's going to be impacted, but also the discerning. Do I need a Christmas carol-singing unicorn for my living room? No. What would I do with it? Why do I want it? What's going to happen when I have it? And it's annoying. And it's too big for the living room.

Alex Cullimore: And the unicorn gets hauled out behind the shed, sadly. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. And it doesn't fit in my trash can. And now I can't even get rid of it. 

Alex Cullimore: And now I have a recycling issue to go with on top of this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Maybe before I press buy on Amazon, I should probably think about it and evaluate the idea. 

Alex Cullimore: Really getting into discerning. What about the idea is doable as well as necessary? Why now? What are the benefits of this? But change is always difficult. Our brains are there to work on as low-calorie mode as possible, which is as default as possible, whether that's effective for us. If we're going to make the change and do the calorically expensive, mentally-taxing change, what makes that worth it? What would be the reason that other people would want to jump in so that they would spend that effort to be able to do this? 

Cristina Amigoni: Which takes us to the lack of clarity versus ambiguity. We hear a lot, the whole get comfortable with ambiguity, get comfortable with change, change is never ending. And yes, it's true. And as humans, we're all wired for patterns, but we're all wired to be comfortable with ambiguity because we live in ambiguity more times than not during the day. It could be anything from we wake up and it snowed and the roads are icy. And now there's a whole ambiguity around is school going to be delayed? Is it not going to be delayed? Do we want to keep the kids at home? Do I want to drive in this? If I drive in it, do I leave earlier? What's going to happen? Where's the traffic? We're navigating ambiguity all day long, even for the small things. 

I feel that it's a little condescending to assume that people can handle ambiguity. Because humans actually can. They do all the time. And so, and it can be used as an excuse to not provide clarity. I'm like, "Well, that's just ambiguity and you need to get used to it." And like, "No, that's just not clear. That has nothing to do with ambiguity." 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I think people tend to switch to the micro or macro and skip all of the in-between. Like, well, we've told people that they should climb that mountain. What? Do they want us to tell them every single step along the way? Nobody wants or expects that. That doesn't mean that they might not want some guidance on which route is good to take. Whether they can go into this valley. Whether they need to be expert rock climbers by the end of it. What pieces need to happen? And what are you being unclear about? Versus, "And what is the actual goal?" Do people know that? People are willing to flex. 

Cristina Amigoni: Why am I climbing the mountain?

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: What am I going to do when I'm on top of the mountain? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: When do you expect me to be on the top of the mountain? Can I choose when I climb it? Or are you going to tell me when to climb it? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Do I have a choice in this mountain? Can I tell you that I don't think this is the right mountain? 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. Is it clear what we're all going to get when we're all on top of the mountain? 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Or are we going to realize we just climbed the wrong one because we never discerned the idea before we told everybody to climb the mountain? 

Alex Cullimore: Super easy thing to follow into your organization, because there's an idea. You're trying to still it to a form that can be communicated. You send that out, and then you kind of assume people have all of the background that was boiled into the more succinct statements that you've given them. And largely, generally, as leadership teams, you've had so much time to sit and digest a change. But you're now more comfortable with the ins and outs of it. And then you announce it, it can be naturally a bit difficult if we don't continually put ourselves into the more empathetic position to forget that other people haven't had that time. It might have taken us six months to come together with that plan. This person's now had 15 minutes to understand what is going to drastically change about their lives? This is something they're going to need some time for as well as understand more details of. No matter how much you fleshed out or tried to answer as many questions ahead of time, there'll be things you've missed. And that's not actually a bad thing. You just have to be ready to listen to them. Be ready to hear the things that are coming in. 

And you'd have to be ready to recalibrate when you're like, "Yeah, this is the idea." And then somebody's like, "Actually, there's a huge roadblock you didn't consider." Well, maybe that's true. Maybe you didn't consider that. Maybe you do have to recalibrate. That's not a bad thing. That's actually way better to know that than to go ram your car into a roadblock. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. And those are the pieces. It's really about providing the clarity of what is the experience that I'm expecting? What is the experience that you're going to have, which in turn is going to impact the experience that I have? What are my expectations of your behaviors? What are my expectations of the outcomes? If we can't have a clear understanding of that, if we cannot paint a clear picture that is valid for like a five-year-old to understand time relativity, then we're not being clear enough. Then that's not discomfort with ambiguity. That's just lack of clarity. So be clear. 

Alex Cullimore: And it's a very delicate kind of balance. And the best way is to kind of get through that are to be able to hear what people are asking. You can definitely have people who just because they already had a bunch of change or they're currently having something going on in their personal lives you might not even know about. They might seem like they are resisting even harder. And that's when it falls into those more condescending patterns of like, "Well, just get used to change." 

I'm tired of hearing that people aren't ready for change. Change happens all the time. You're not wrong. And there's probably a reason that it's there. And maybe it's valid. Maybe the person just needs some time. But either way, it's not going to be helped by just forcing that. You have to get to the root cause of like, "Is this person just going to resist this no matter what? Are they pretending like they're okay with it but they're not?" Do they just need a little time to get used to it or they have a concern that just hasn't been addressed? They don't feel heard on it? Any of those things are much easier to resolve than we think. They just require a little of that time curiosity and listening. 

And that is just as true with personal change. You've got to listen to yourself a little bit for when you just have a goal that you're starting to realize you're unclear on. It's okay to continue to recalibrate that. It's okay to continue to refine that. You might not have gotten it right. Even if you wrote it down, even if you put out a whole plan, if it doesn't make sense, you might have to change the plan. What's the point of continuing on one that you now know to be wrong, but you'd rather just stick with the plan because it took you a while to come up with that plan? I understand the impulse. It's natural to want to stick with that. It doesn't mean that it's helpful. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. This is when Adam Grant's approach of think again comes in. Because, okay, you had the idea. You communicated the idea. You've figured out new things along the way on why the idea as stated may not work and it needs tweaking. Or it needs to be tossed out completely. That's okay. You're not incompetent. You will not lose your identity.

Alex Cullimore: You should be gathering all of that information. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's okay to rethink. Not only it's okay. It's absolutely necessary to rethink. Otherwise, we're all going to climb the wrong mountain, be exhausted, lose half the people, and then realize we're not even in the right mountain chain. And we should have gone and crossed the sea. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yes. It's easy to fall into patterns, and we can even get sometimes accused of not doing enough planning, not thinking of things through. Like, "I can't believe we didn't see that roadblock coming." And maybe there's times where we could have seen something. Maybe not. But either way, we've now hit that roadblock or we now see the roadblock and we have to adjust. And going back into blame is a bit of a human reaction and an understandable first knee-jerk reaction, but it doesn't make it helpful or useful. It's just something that happens. 

Cristina Amigoni: And you touched on change resistance a little bit. That's our last strap, underestimating change resistance. People are resisting a change. Figure out why. As opposed to you resisting their resistance to change. Now, who's resisting change? It becomes a meta-resistance. 

Alex Cullimore: We have a nice diagram that has a lot of just different examples of what it might sound like. And these are just obviously a little bit high level. But there's things like, "Oh, I'm totally on board. But, I mean, I don't need to change." Right? Or, "I don't know how this applies to me." Or, "I don't know what this new reality is. I don't have a place in this. This isn't who I want it to be. This is now an identity challenge. Here we go again. I don't think this change is going to stick." 

And you can hear these things echo both organizationally and likely if you've listened to your own minds trying to push resolutions or changes in your own life that have not felt quite right. These are also things that come up. We also guilt ourselves or shame ourselves for like, "Am I just lazy? Why am I not making this change? How can I not do this? Don't I care?" Just as much as we can look around in a company, or a group, or an organization and be like, "Don't they care? Why aren't they doing this? They're not doing this correctly." It's much easier to externalize those generally, but it doesn't mean they're not the same tones and same reasoning we bring out against ourselves and we use against ourselves when we're also resisting change. 

And so, this is a time to really get into that curious space. Understand why that resistance is happening. Maybe that person never will be on board. And it's a conversation of this is the way this is going. If you're not on board, unfortunately, maybe there's the door. Maybe that's what it is. Or what is it that is particularly frustrating about this? And trying to keep yourself the patients and the space enough to listen to that. 

And making a judgment call on when it's too many cycles of the same conversation, we're like, "I don't think they're telling me the truth. I think they're just resisting this." And we need to have either a more frank conversation and get to that or we won't be able to push this going forward. 

Cristina Amigoni: A lot of that is providing that clarity. One of my favorite quotes is, "Humans don't resist change. They don't resist evolution. They resist revolutions." And revolutions include a radical shift of things. And so, if they don't understand the why, this is actually a better way, or a better idea, or the idea of possibly a better approach to do things as opposed to the current state. If they don't understand what their place is, if they can't picture their future state and understand what their experience is going to be, and if they're not actually clearly told what the expectations for them personally are, that's when change resistance is going to go up. It's like an idea is an idea is an idea is an idea. An idea is not going to do anything. 

And so, an idea may make sense for people that are paid to have ideas. I've done my job. Had the idea. Done. Now everybody else has to figure it out. But the people that actually have to make it happen, they need to understand what the expectations of their new behavior is. What am I doing today that I need to stop? What do I need to continue and what do I need to start? If we can't provide the clarity, then the idea we have is not clear. It's just an idea. 

Alex Cullimore: And that doesn't mean you can't talk to the people about that to help fill in those gaps. It just means that it's not quite there yet. And once you fill in the gaps, then you can be more there. And the other exercise that we – I believe this came out [inaudible 0:32:49] Choney book about another exercise to help you flesh that out is thinking about dilemmas. Dilemmas you're going to face. 

You want to make this change. Now you're in this very common situation of you have a conflict between two choices that both might seem valid in the new world, with the new change, with the new idea that you want to implement. And what is the right decision at this point? Now we have a budget versus priority issue. Or we have two competing priorities. How do we decide which one's more important? Or we realized we underestimated or overestimated something. What do we do now? These are the dilemmas. These are the points, the decision points that we can elaborate on to help give people an idea of exactly what we mean when we say this is the change. These are the behaviors we're expecting. These are the choices we would expect to see. And it doesn't mean that it's easy. It doesn't mean it's what was done before. Usually it's because it's not what was done before that we need to identify these things and be really clear. And, again, provide that clarity that helps people understand this is what we're really going for. And that gives you a chance to have that honest conversation of is this something you're on board with? Is this something you're going to do? Or are you resisting for some other reason? 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. When you get that January 1st itch before January 1st and you're looking at big or small personal and professional changes, think like what shoulds are you asking, are you using? What justs are you using? What are you not considering? Do you actually have a clear understanding of how you're going to get from idea to implementation? Or is it just an idea? What clarity is needed to understand what the experience in the future is going to be and what you expect others to do if they're involved? And then figure out the change resistance piece. Who's resisting change? Why are they resisting it? Are you providing the clarity? Is there something else underneath that you haven't considered? 

Alex Cullimore: I think that if you want to practice on a small scale, you can also consider change resistance personally. There's so many little things that you can get better at listening to. I remember just – I mean, there's things like I went and did a lot of triathlon training last year. You can get into these ruts where you're like, "Why am I just not – I'm not quite getting up to what I thought I'd be doing. I'm not doing as much as I thought I would be doing." And sometimes it's as simple as like you find out I haven't been biking as much because I get frustrated because I don't have enough athletic socks. And so, I've been resisting. Because I have to go up there and then find out if I have any socks or not. And if I don't have any socks and we have to go start some laundry. And that goes down the path. Whereas you could spend $10 on a few more athletic socks and suddenly that's resolved. 

Just because there is resistance and because it is creating stoppage doesn't mean it's a massive resistance. It might just be something small. And we can get better at listening internally, which gives us a foothold towards what might be happening for other people? And what questions can we ask to see what's happening for other people? Because sometimes it's the smallest of things that end up making a big impact. 

I think my favorite story is from a business book I read at some point about a company that was trying to fix its culture and make morale better. And they redid their office. Tried to have like more happy hours, and parties, and tried to get people together, and tried to have fun events. And it turns out the thing that ended up making a huge difference like two months later, they spent $300 on a new printer and people were so frustrated with the printer because everyone used it. This new printer just did the job. And, suddenly, morale was up. People were less frustrated. It was just something. And it's not like people would necessarily even bring that up on a survey. Maybe people have a complaint about it. 

But this is why you can totally go on the wrong rabbit hole. But there might be something that's actually pretty straightforward that helps a lot, that helps people a lot to get on board with this, or just helps yourself. Give yourself some of that grace, and space, and curiosity when you're in the middle of a change that doesn't feel like it's sticking or you feel like you're hitting some roadblock. What are the things that could be small tweaks that may make this way easier? And how can we get better in touch with that? 

Cristina Amigoni: That is a great one. So, happy new year. 

Alex Cullimore: Happy new year. Enjoy the new you, or the same you, or whatever you want to be. 

Cristina Amigoni: Or whatever you. Your past, present, and future you. 

Alex Cullimore: They all exist at the same time. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Time is an illusion. 

Alex Cullimore: You can relatively enjoy this. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you. 

[OUTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Rachel Sherwood who helped produce our theme. And, of course, our production assistants, Carlee and Niki, for whom we could not do this or could not publish this. We get to do basically the fun parts. And thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts. 

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. Follow us. And We Are Siamo is wearesiamo.com. 

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you, everybody, for listening. 

[END]