Strategic Discipline Blog

You’ve decided to change something in your life.

Maybe you want to exercise more, stop reacting the same way in stressful moments, or get up earlier each morning.

Self-awarenessis the starting point. But awareness alone doesn’t create lasting change.

To truly change, you must rewire your brain—so the new behavior becomes automatic, familiar, and eventually who you are.

Why Repetition Matters

Our brains are designed to change. This ability is called neuroplasticity.

Neuroscientist Eric Kandel demonstrated that when we learn something new and consistently review it, the neural connections associated with that information strengthen. When we don’t revisit or rehearse it, those connections weaken and eventually disappear.

In simple terms:

Nerve cells that fire together, wire together.
Nerve cells that no longer fire together, no longer wire together.

You experience this every day. Hear a song once, and it fades. Hear it repeatedly, and it plays on loop in your mind. That’s neuroplasticity at work.

A Lesson from Sales Training

Early in my sales career, I watched experienced sales managers handle objections with confidence and ease—situations where I would have completely folded.

Determined to improve, I studied structured sales methods and scripts from a seasoned sales trainer. One breakthrough came through focused role-play and repetition.

Instead of rehearsing every possible objection at once, we practiced one objection at a time, using a precise script. For example, the familiar stall: “I want to think it over.”

Before practice, I would thank the customer and leave.

Through repetition, I learned to respond calmly and confidently:

“I’m sure you would—it’s an important decision. Just so I understand, what specifically would you like to think over: the number of ads, the message, or the investment?”

That response didn’t come naturally. It required discomfort, courage, and practice. But repetition made it familiar—and familiarity made it automatic.

Eventually, my old habit disappeared. A new one replaced it.

Why Change Feels Uncomfortable

When we feel stuck, it’s because we’ve repeated the same thoughts, made the same choices, and reinforced the same emotional responses—over and over.

Change feels uncomfortable because you’re interrupting a neurologically conditioned pattern.

That’s why willpower alone doesn’t work.

As we teach in Change Your Mind. Create New Results:

Most people don’t struggle because of capability—they struggle because their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are conditioned to repeat the same results.

Rehearsal Creates New Results

Change follows a sequence:

• Awareness of what you want to change
• Desire and commitment to change
• New behavior, practiced repeatedly—especially when it feels uncomfortable

The key is learning to associate change with elevated emotions.

When you mentally rehearse the outcome—how grateful you’ll feel, who you’ll become, what results you’ll experience—you give your brain a reason to persist through discomfort.

As Joe DispenSa teaches:

“No one changes until they change their energy.”

Discomfort isn’t a sign you’re failing.
It’s a signal that growth is happening.

Stay with the Process

If you’re working to change, and it feels awkward, uncertain, or slow—don’t stop.

Repetition is how habits are built.
Rehearsal is how identity changes.

See yourself as you will feel once the change is complete. Feel that elevated emotion now. That emotional state is what teaches the brain to reorganize itself.

Creating Change That Scales

Unbelievable Coach helps leaders and teams break free from the familiar past and intentionally create envisioned futures.

Change starts with individuals.
Scales through leadership.
Transforms culture.

If you’re ready to rewire your thinking, elevate your emotions, and create new results:

• Challenge yourself
• Challenge your team
• Challenge your business

Let’s create your envisioned future—together.

👉 Contact us for a free exploratory conversation—and begin becoming the hero of your own story.

What Really Causes Stress?

Stress isn’t just “too much to do.” It’s a biological response triggered by how we experience our world.

Three primary stressors activate the stress response. Physical stress comes from injury, trauma, or illness. Chemical stress comes from toxins, pollutants, viruses, and environmental exposure. And emotional stress comes from daily life—traffic, finances, family responsibilities, uncertainty, and loss.

At the core, stress intensifies when three things occur:

1. We feel life is getting worse,

2. We lose a sense of control, and

3. We can’t predict what comes next.

Next blog, we’ll explore how these stressors shape our nervous system—and how understanding them is the first step toward changing our results.

Growth DemandsStrategic Discipline. 

Building an enduring great organization requires disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, superior results, producing a distinctive impact on the world.

Discipline sustains momentum over a long period of time, laying the foundations for lasting endurance.

A winning habit starts with 3 Strategic Disciplines:  Priority,  Metrics, and Meeting Rhythms. Forecasting, accountability, individual, and team performance improve dramatically.

Meeting Rhythms achieve a disciplined focus on performance metrics to drive growth.

Let Positioning Systems help your business achieve these outcomes on the Four mostImportant Decisions your business faces:

Positioning Systems helps mid-sized ($5M - $500M+) businesses Scale-UP. We align your business to focus on  Your One Thing! Contact dwick@positioningsystems.com to Scale Up your business! Take our Four Decisions Needs Assessment to discover how your business measures against other Scaled Up companies. We’ll contact you.

NEXT BLOG – WHAT CAUSES STRESS?