Germany's Top Change Expert Ilja Grzeskowitz says passion is the secret to embrace change and improve yourself.

Can you avoid change? No, it's inevitable. However, passion can push you through and simplify the process.Ilja Grzeskowitz is the leading German authority in change. A best-selling author and keynote speaker, he gives a lot of credit to passion for his success. Ilja is passionate about the reasons behind people's choices and actions.'Change is everywhere' Ilja knows that most people are scared of change. So he works to help them understand and use its power to live their dreams.He thinks passion is very important in the process of adapting and succeeding when changing something in your life. 'It's important to have that passion to know why you want change.'His approach on change is 'decision-goal-habit'. Also, he declares that whatever you do, passion is mandatory to prevent yourself from going back to bad habits and quitting. It stimulates commitment and therefore, results.Do you want to handle change well?Learn more here and remember to share it with your friends and spread the passion.Live PassionatelyMoustafa HamwiPassionpreneur & Chief Energy OfficerAward Winning Author & Speaker

TRANSCRIPT:

Moustafa: Hello everyone and welcome back to Passion Sundays, the best way to end a week and start another. Our guest today is a best-selling author, speaker and coach who helps you dream big, act bold and get the results that you want – Ilja. Thank you very much for being with us today!Ilja: Hi, Moustafa! Thank you for having me on your show!Moustafa: I'm really excited about all these things that you're promising. So, first tell me what does passion mean to you?Ilja: Passion is the inner drive that lets you do the things you do. My topic is Change. This is what I do every single day and I'm not so much interested in what people are doing or how they are doing it. It's why they are doing it because that 'why' is so important, Maybe 'why' can be transferred to passion as well because that 'why', that passion is so important when things get tough. When things get tough and you are facing resistance, when you are making mistakes, then that passion helps you to move forward and to improve yourself.Moustafa: Amazing!Ilja: Yeah.Moustafa: So tell me more about your book and what you're promising people.Ilja: I help people to use the power of change, to use their attitude to get better results in life, to live their dreams and, of course, I work with a lot of organizations and I help organizations to adapt to the changing that goes on around us. Change has become a permanent condition. It has no longer a beginning and an end. Change is everywhere. And it's getting more intense, it's getting faster. So many people struggle with it because they don't know 'What should I do? How can I deal with it?' and there is so much uncertainty and I help people to get the tools they need to adjust their mindset to be pro-active about it.Moustafa: Beautiful! So how would somebody be able to adjust their mindset? It is easier said than done. You know, you tell somebody 'You have to adjust your mindset, you have to change your behavior'.Ilja: Of course! Of course, it's a long process and it's important to have that passion to know why you want change. Change is not something you do for change's sake because change needs to have a purpose. You need to know 'Why do I want to change?' and mostly it is 'cause you have some kind of goal, you want to solve a problem or you have that big dream or vision in your life. And then, in the condensed version my approach on change is that you have to start with the decision. You have to make the decision 'I am going to make a change!' which implies that commitment. The second one is that you have something like a goal. You need to know where you wanna go. And the third one is you have to build habits, strong habits, which means better change small but on a consistent daily basis than to do one big and one-time change and then forget about it. So decision-goal-habit! That's my basic approach on change.Moustafa: I like it! Decision-goal-habits. Now decision is great, we say that.Ilja: Ok.Moustafa: Set the target, which is the goal, which is beautiful. Habits – oh my God! There is something hard in life to break is habits and to get new habits.Ilja: Yeah!Moustafa: How do you deal with developing new habits and getting rid of bad habits?Ilja: Actually, the passion helps. Because building up habits is easy when you start. Let's say someone wants to lose weight and says 'I am going to jog every morning from now on'. In the first few days it is easy, you are motivated. You put your running shoes and you go out and everything. You are really pumped up. And then a week goes by, two weeks go by and then, it's Thursday morning, it rains outside, it is cold and you're lying in your bed and you say 'come on, let's make an exception'. And you make the first exception. Then you make the second exception. And before you know it, you don't do your new behavior but you get back to your old behavior. To prevent that from happening, that passion is so important! Because when you are lying in that bed that morning and you look outside 'Should I really go outside for a run?' and then that passion kicks in and I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and doing it anyway. So you overcome these resistances and you do it anyway and this is how I try to help people to build these habits to always know why you are doing it to let your passion helps you with that. This is so, so powerful! Science says it takes about 66 days to build a new habit. Sometimes it's less, sometimes it's more, but you have to overcome these initial barriers and this is where your passion kicks in.Moustafa: Beautiful! And how do you handle the doubt when it kicks in? Because in the journey of building habits there are points where you reach a plateau. And then you are suddenly trying hard, you're doing but you're not getting results. Result is one of the biggest motivators because the habit kicks in when you see the passion. But then there is a while when nothing is happening, you're still pounding at it, you're still doing it but it's not happening. And doubt start kicking in. 'Oh this is never gonna work out, what am I doing?' You're spiraling down and down. How do you handle that?Ilja: This is exactly… In my opinion, in my experience it's the biggest factor why change fails so often because it's about doubts, it's about uncertainty and it's about fear. The fear of not moving forward, the fear of failure and the first thing is to realize that it's completely normal to have doubts, to be uncertain, to have fear. Everyone has these feelings. Everyone does. But one of my favorite approaches is fear or doubts or uncertainty can either be your biggest enemy or it can be your best friend because when you acknowledge that this feeling is there and you use it to become productive, to generate innovative ideas and to action, then fear can make you be productive. It can help you to move forward instead of just doing nothing.Moustafa: I get it. Beautiful. Ilja, thank you very much! This has been a very awesome way of turning around what's not working into something to work for your benefit! Thank you very much, this has been amazing!Ilja: Thank you!Moustafa and Ilja: Passion!Moustafa: What do you think? I really hope you found this episode as useful and as exciting as I did. If so, please leave your comments on the blog below and share it with your friends or those who might benefit from it. And if you'd like more tools, tips, techniques and exclusive interviews that I only share on my website, go to Moustafa.com. Until next episode – live passionately!