If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

While it’s a pithy and seemingly obvious statement, the fact remains that: if nothing changes, nothing changes. In other words, if we want things to be different, we have to start doing things differently. This counts for dating, career change, healthy habits, sobriety – any time we want things to be better, easier, or more awesome, it’s pretty unlikely to just happen on its own.

So this episode is a pep talk for change and an opportunity for self-compassion around all the ways and reasons that change is hard!

I also give you the rundown on the six stages of change – which is really just a cycle of change that we move through over and over again. If you need a refresher, here they are:

• Precontemplation 
• Contemplation 
• Preparation
• Action
• Maintenance
• Relapse
• (and then back to precontemplation!)

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Resources, References, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Stages of Change: here’s a great little graphic and presentation about the six stages of change.

Step Zero – a concept I originally learned about from Ron Chapman of Progressive Recovery. 

Deeper Dating by Ken Page. He also has a podcast, and the episode on “Chemistry” is great! (Episode 108).

Bullet Journaling. A tool for organizing your life that is endlessly adaptable. 

Episode #03 with Dr. Sarah Roth: Using Movement to Shift Perspective.

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

Cate Blouke (00:00.237)

It’s so painful to be aware of the problem and not yet ready to take action around the problem. And regardless of how active or driven or decisive any of us are, I imagine that there’s some area of your life where you can relate to this of being like, I see this and I don’t like it and I know I should probably do something about it, but like, fuck, that’s gonna be so much work and maybe it won’t be that bad.

Maybe it’ll fix itself?!

[podcast intro]

Hey buddy. Today’s episode is gonna be about one of the most obvious and seemingly dumb statements that I picked up in 12 Step Recovery, but that is actually very deep and profound, right? This concept of if nothing changes, nothing changes. It’s such a like, duh, okay, right, obviously.

Cate Blouke (01:38.382)

If I don’t make any changes, nothing’s gonna change. like, is it something that we really pay attention to? I know that it’s not for me all the time because I think so often we want things to be different, but then how willing are we to actually do things differently? So I wanna explore that with you today. 

And this really applies to alcoholism and addiction to start. Although I don’t know that a lot of folks who aren’t yet sober listen to this. But it applies equally to our health, our daily habits, our career, dating. Like in any area of our lives where there’s dissatisfaction, where there’s a sense of settling, right? Because this is about settling is bullshit.

Any area of our lives where we notice, that’s the first step, is noticing that something is not going how we want it to. If nothing changes, nothing changes. It’s not going to just fix itself generally. But so often I know for me, for people I know, for, I don’t want to call my clients out, but for my clients, you know, like it’s like, oftentimes we have these things that we want for ourselves.

and we just want them to happen on their own. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just be like, man, I just want a different, better job. And then it appeared. Like, that’d be cute. I would like that. Well, not right now. I like my job right now. But wouldn’t it be nice if I could just be in a fitness routine already? Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just have vegetables show up in my life?

on their own more often. And yes, there are services for that, right? So there are avenues for that particular thing. But the point is more that in order for things to be different, I have to do something differently. And something that I know isn’t always in my kind of field of awareness is that there are stages to change.

Cate Blouke (03:52.91)

And I think a lot of us want to just skip to the like, I had the idea and then the changes have been implemented, right? That’s kind of what I’m talking about here. But there’s something really valuable in being in and with the various stages that happen. So if you’re not already familiar, or if you just need a refresher, the stages of change, it starts with.

Pre-contemplation like that’s just when you have like a little baby little inkling of something Maybe should be different, but you don’t actually have any intention to change the behavior So like in in a drinking trajectory for example, it’s the like, know the little niggling voice That’s like maybe my drinking is the problem or the little niggling voice. That’s like maybe I should become a little more flexible to

support my body in old age, right? Like, oh man, but there isn’t any like set intention of doing anything about it. But it’s just that it’s just a little hinty voice in the back of your head. So that’s pre-contemplation. Then we get to contemplation, which is when we’re aware of a problem, but we’re not really ready to commit.

take action on that problem. That’s the sort catastrophic event that brings our alcoholism and addiction to the surface and makes us very aware of it, but we’re not really ready to make that change. Or maybe it’s the, man, I just had another terrible interaction with my boss and like this job sucks and I hate it, but I’m not ready to actually start looking for another job. Right? That’s the contemplation.

And the shitty thing is like the contemplation period can last a long time and part of my hope in this episode and in this podcast in general is to help accelerate that contemplation period into the preparation period because the contemplation period can be so painful. It’s so painful to be like aware of the problem and not yet ready to take action around the problem. And regardless of how

Cate Blouke (06:06.064)

or driven or decisive any of us are, I imagine that there’s some area of your life where you can relate to this of being like, I see this and I don’t like it and I know I should probably do something about it, but like, fuck, that’s gonna be so much work and maybe it won’t be that bad. You know, I think in the contemplation period is also where we get into the sort of self bargaining of like, maybe it’ll fix itself or if I just wait it out or.

I can think my way into it being okay. This period can last a really long time. But once we get to the point of no return where we’re like, okay, I am tired of this being a problem, I’m ready to take some action. In 12-Step Recovery, I like to call this period step zero of this shit has got to stop. But again, just to offer a lot of compassion, because I know I have been in that.

space for long periods because change is hard. If nothing changes, nothing changes. like also if nothing changes, nothing changes. And sometimes like there is comfort in the discomfort of like, well, this isn’t so bad. I don’t know if I’m ready to like do the thing to make this different. Right. So just to offer a lot of love and grace and compassion around that. But once, once we get to the, the jumping off point, the shit has got to stop point, then we move into the phase of

preparation. And this is also a phase that many of us can skip over, especially if we are impulsive, potentially ADHD, potentially just like action oriented people. There can be this moment of, all right, this shit has got to stop. I’m immediately going to jump into doing something about it. Like, I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to end my relationship. I’m going to…

sign up for a gym membership and start going five days a week starting tomorrow, you know, like we can we can jump right into it and skip the preparation phase. But if we’re being like really conscious and intentional about making changes in our life, we move from contemplation into preparation. And that is when we’re setting the intention to take the action to address the problem. And ideally the preparation phase

Cate Blouke (08:27.308)

is where we like play the tape forward. We think it through a bit of like, okay, where do I want to be a month from now, two months from now, four years from now? And what are the ways in which I can set myself up well for that? So just to provide a like real world example of this in my own life, if you’ve been listening lately, you

know that I have decided to go back to school in the fall to eventually get my master’s in counseling and become a therapist. And that was a decision that, if I’m looking at this sort of like stages of change, has been happening for me over quite some time. The trajectory from teacher to coach to therapist, in the broad sense of that, has been a long trajectory.

And I think the little seed of being a therapist, the sort of pre-contemplation seed has been there for quite some time. And then it came into my awareness over the late spring and summer of this year of 2025. And that decision kind of happened for me pretty quickly. Thankfully, the universe was like, oh, you decided you want to go back to graduate school in June? Too bad you got to wait a year. Because that’s how the application process works, which

very fortunately means that I have a year of preparation available to me. And then there are actions that I can take to set myself up well for a fall of 2026 start to a master’s program. Namely, I’m going back to school to get a bunch of prereqs to get into the program I want to get into. Right? But I was so frustrated because I was like, oh, I made the decision, I want to do it now. Right? And ultimately, the more we can

remember to be in that phase of preparation, the better we set future us up. A tool that has been incredibly helpful for me is really taking time to think about future Kate, present Kate, and past Kate sometimes, right? Splitting things out of like, how can I support future me today? Because present me never wants to do the dishes. Like, today Kate doesn’t want

Cate Blouke (10:52.804)

to necessarily to call back to the earlier example, like I don’t stretch enough. And I’m very aware of that. Like I want to be someone who’s like really good at yoga, but I don’t actually do the yoga in the present. And so, you know, as of right now, I’m not really setting future Kate up for being really flexible. But hey, maybe saying this means I’m moving into the contemplation phase of change. I don’t know. But the point is,

I really want to set future therapist Kate up well by doing what present Kate can right now to set that up well. And so the action phase, we’ve got pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action. I have taken the actions that I can, I’ve gotten myself enrolled in…

classes in the fall to take the pre-reqs so that then when it comes time to submit my application, I have an even better application so that I can get into the graduate program that I want to get into. Now that is again like a little bit off in the future, so if we’re thinking a little bit more around something perhaps a little more relatable to you, like if you’re thinking about changing your job, this would look like, okay, I’m gonna set myself up, I’m gonna update my resume, I’m gonna…

really get intentional and think about what I want in my next situation. Because if we skip the preparation phase, then we’re skipping a really important opportunity for information gathering. If we go from, hate my job, I’m just gonna get a new job, then we’re not setting ourselves up well to get a job that is actually going to address the challenges in a useful and helpful way in the current job.

So preparation phase for making any big changes is really about getting clear on, okay, this thing isn’t working. What about it isn’t working? What’s important about that? And what are my needs that I need to make sure are getting met in the new situation? And y’all, like, this super duper applies to dating. Let’s be clear. That, like, if we jump from

Cate Blouke (13:15.952)

fuck this relationship, I’m out. And then like right into another relationship. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, but usually then we end up dating basically the same person. You know, that, that really like, if nothing changes, nothing changes in our dating and relationships. And that could honestly be a whole separate episode, but really thinking about that, like if we want to have a different experience, we have to do things differently.

if we want to get out of whatever relationship pattern that we’re in, then we really need to be attentive in the preparation phase of what didn’t work for me? What doesn’t work? What really doesn’t work for me? And what do need to do differently? There’s a book called Deeper Dating by Ken Page that I gotta tell you I had a really fraught relationship with because it’s really annoying. It’s an excellent book, but the advice that he gives is really that

that if you’re struggling to find partnership, then you need to stop dating the same person. Right? Like not literally the same person, but you have to notice your own patterns and do something differently. And often that means going out with people who seem boring initially, that our bodies can oftentimes have trouble distinguishing between excitement and fear. And

we will chase the excitement in dating and end up in these patterns of heartache. And if we want to break those, then we have to just like notice, like how activated is my nervous system getting right now? And recognizing that as a fear response. And then going out with the person who like maybe doesn’t seem so exciting at first, but

your nervous system actually feels safe and okay around. And as it turns out, that then will develop into a better relationship. And I have been trying this in my own dating experience, and I was like really annoyed about how true this ended up being. I had a fairly recent experience of this, having some dates lined up. One of them was like very exciting and seemed like a whole lot of fun. And also like the

Cate Blouke (15:38.352)

type of person that I have historically dated that has broken my poor little heart into a thousand pieces. And then someone who just like seemed nice and chill and didn’t cultivate that whole like, I’m so excited, this is gonna be so fun. My little ADHD, my little addict, my little dopamine chasing sort of energy didn’t get activated. And then I went out with that person and had some like really lovely time.

and got to have a new experience of dating. And that’s part of what has brought this forward for me is this sense that if I want things to be different, I have to do things differently. So I know that was a bit of a tangent, but I am hoping any and all of you can relate. And so that’s the action phase of doing things differently, of like making the change.

So we’ve got pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and then we move into maintenance. So this is, this is the part of making changes in our life that really helps to have support. I would not be sober right now if I didn’t have support around the like of the ongoing maintenance of continuing to not pick up a drink or a drug.

I go to meetings pretty consistently for that reason because we can get into action and we get into this place where like new behavior replaces old. And then we’re like in the groove and it’s great. And so that’s stage five of change. And then stage six is relapse. I don’t particularly like that term specifically because it doesn’t have to happen. Like specifically in sobriety, it doesn’t have to happen. the way

it’s described in discussions of stages of change is that relapse is like falling back into old patterns of behavior. And this is somewhat inevitable. What I like about this model of the stages of change is awareness that like it’s likely that our sweet little brains who have worn these grooves and are accustomed to doing things in a particular way, it’s easy to fall back into those grooves. It’s easy to fall back into that rut or that track, you know.

Cate Blouke (17:55.523)

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of getting into a pretty good workout routine and then you get sick and you don’t go to the gym for two weeks and then maybe it’s two months later when you are like, shit, I need to get back to that. I have used bullet journaling for a long time, but it really ends up being hit or miss for me. I can have a good seven or eight month run and then something will get off track. And then I’m in that period right now where I haven’t been doing it for three months because

Like at the end of May, beginning of June, like I just got off track. And it’s so helpful to me to normalize that, that looking at this stages of change model helps me not beat up on myself so much. It helps me not get quite so frustrated of just understanding that like, this is pretty normal. And then I get to just sort of like repeat the circle again, that I go from, you know,

little inkling in the back of my brain that I needed to make a change. I like consciously think about making that change. I prepare to make the change. I make the change. I maintain it for a while. And then I slip back into some old behaviors and start the circle all over again. And to be clear, like that doesn’t have to happen. I like to think of this as sort of like an upward spiral.

And if I think about like my own dating history, my own career history, to a certain extent my own recovery history, I can really like see this happening. But it’s always an upward spiral of growth that from one relationship to the next, I’ve been

moving upward, like I learned, that doesn’t work for me, and then make a slightly better choice, and then make a slightly better choice, and then make a slightly better choice. And I do think at the moment I’m sort of shifting to maybe a different set of spirals. I don’t really know. But similarly, like with jobs, it’s like, like this works better. And then I get into a situation and I’m like, here’s a pattern.

Cate Blouke (20:07.341)

Here’s a component that doesn’t actually work that well for me. How do I tweak that gear? And then I get into a similar job or situation. It’s like, actually, like, here’s this other thing I need to attend to. With recovery, I have been fortunate enough not to have an actual relapse. I committed to staying sober for like 90 days just to see how it goes. And then that was over 15 years ago. And I haven’t actually had to drink or do drugs again. But then

will happen with most of us who are sober is like you take the alcohol and drugs away and then we just sort of fill in the blank with something else whether it’s shopping or eating or dating and so that pattern will play out again and again as we spiral upwards. I like to think of it as kind of a hierarchy of harmful or challenging behaviors. At the top of the pyramid is drugs and alcohol for me.

The next thing on that is smoking cigarettes. The next thing is like acting out around food. Then it’s probably shopping and then it gets a little watery because I’m just like, at this point I’m doing pretty okay. But it’s really hard to like rewire our brains out of habitual patterns. I mean, that’s what a habit is. It is something that we do without thinking about.

and it’s totally possible to change habits, to really make shifts from particular behaviors, but it is very effortful and it requires kind of an ongoing commitment from us that can be hard to maintain. Which again is why like having support, having community is so important when it comes to making changes in our life. Whether it’s sobriety, whether it’s

career stuff, whether it’s relationship stuff. That’s why having a therapist is super great. That’s why having a friend group where you’re kind of committing to similar things is really great. Having a work group to kind of hash things out and mutually support each other is so important. That’s why having a coach is really great.

Cate Blouke (22:23.837)

I absolutely deeply believe that we need support, that making changes all by ourselves is so fucking hard. For addicts and alcoholics, like, the fundamental premise of 12 Step Recovery is that we can’t do it by ourselves. And I genuinely think that that applies to most of the things that we want for ourselves in our life. And so I’m hoping that this episode served as a bit of a pep talk and a reassurance that change is hard, that you, but you can do it.

And if there is a little area in your life where either in the pre-contemplation or the contemplation phase, that my invitation is to like really kind of pull that out and look at it. Get some support. Talk it over with someone in your life that you trust, whether it’s a coach, whether it’s a therapist, whether it’s your best friend. Pick somebody who’s like genuinely supportive.

and will listen in a non-judgmental way and help you kind of maybe map out that contemplation preparation area. Or just do it on a big piece of paper. Do something. Because more and more, I’m just so aware of the somatic importance of not just letting things be spinning around in our brains. Like we can be thinking about shit for a very long time, but

When we get into motion, like very literally moving our body, like go have a little dance party about the thing that you’re trying to change. The very first interview episode of this podcast with Dr. Sarah Roth, we were talking about how movement can really aid in making changes and the sort of cognitive things that can happen when we’re letting our bodies and brains

interact with each other, play with each other, and not just trying to like do it all in our head. I love the saying that I cannot think myself into right action, I have to act myself into right thinking. That movement and motion, whether it’s writing things out by hand, whether it’s drawing some pictures, that getting our whole body experience involved in the process of contemplation and preparation

Cate Blouke (24:48.543)

is really going to be juicy and likely to help you get to that action space if you’re not there yet. So if there is a change in your life that you have been pre-contemplating, contemplating, and are maybe preparing for but want some support, hit me up! I’m your girl. You can always visit my website to book a free chemistry call or a coaching session and like we can work on it.

That’s a lovely little one-off. We can spend an hour mapping out your preparation, really talking through what it is you’re trying to make the change around. And if you don’t want to do any of that, I would still love to hear, what are you contemplating changing? What feels hard about that? What are you excited about? What’s going to help you move from contemplation into preparation? Tell me what’s going on in your life. Because I love hearing from you and

I’m excited to be in this sort of big period of change for myself and to be able to share that with you. So I hope that something changes for you today or if things are fucking awesome, then I hope that nothing changes for you today. All we have is today. So like whatever’s going on today, I hope that you are able to feel supported and loved.

Cate Blouke (26:12.077)

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts, and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one-on-one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.