– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

[applause]

Why is it so hard to change?

Honestly, I've spent the last 20 years

asking that question as a doctor, as a

coach, and as a human being who once

believed I just wasn't the kind of

person who could change.

You probably know the feeling. Maybe it

was a New Year's resolution or a

milestone birthday. Something that made

you say, "That's it. Time to turn things

around." So, you downloaded a habit

tracker, bought a blender, a yoga mat,

and enough kale to alarm your family.

And then two weeks later, there you

were, side eyeing the blender like it

betrayed you and pretending the habit

tracker never existed.

Back to the same patterns and the same

routines.

I've been there too, many times with my

health, my career, and my money. For a

while, my credit card lived in the

freezer, literally in a block of ice

beside the frozen peas.

A solid plan until the night I wanted a

pair of boots badly enough to melt the

ice around it with a haird dryer.

I tried every budgeting trick.

Spreadsheets, envelopes, you name it.

But nothing lasted. And I kept thinking,

I'm doing all the right things. Why

can't I stick with this?

That cycle of hope, effort, and defeat

can leave you wondering, "What's wrong

with me?"

But what if nothing is wrong with you?

What if the reason change doesn't last

isn't because you're doing it wrong, but

because you're asking the wrong

question.

We all want to change something. Lose

weight, start a business, be more

confident, get more sleep.

And there's no shortage of strategies. 5

a.m. routines, cold plunges, vision

boards, bio hacks.

But if knowing what to do were enough,

we'd all be thriving by now. So why is

it still so hard?

As a family doctor, I watched patients

struggle, not with understanding what to

do, but with actually doing it and

staying consistent.

So I started asking different questions.

Not how do we build better habits, but

something deeper.

What makes change stick? Why do some

people succeed and others don't even

when they're trying just as hard?

And the more I looked, the more I

started to see a pattern.

And then I found a study that offered a

fascinating clue.

In 2011, ahead of an election, a team of

researchers from Stanford and Harvard

asked one group, "How important is it to

you to vote in the upcoming election?"

They asked another group, "How important

is it to you to be a voter in the

upcoming election?"

And in that study, that one tiny shift

from doing to being made people

significantly more likely to show up at

the polls.

Why? Because one focused on action, the

other focused on self-concept.

Once I saw that, I started seeing it

everywhere. People who called themselves

runners, they were still out there in

February, long after the resolution

crowd disappeared.

People who'd said, "I'm trying to run

more." Most of them were already back on

the couch.

So, I began to wonder, what if the real

obstacle isn't your habits or your

willpower?

What if it's your identity?

Not just what you do, but who you

believe yourself to be?

When I look back, that's exactly what

was happening with my credit card in the

freezer. I wasn't just fighting a

spending habit. I was defending an

identity.

I still saw myself as someone who's bad

with money. And every time I said that,

I wasn't describing the problem. I was

reinforcing it. I had unknowingly

written an instruction manual for

myself. Here's who you are. Here's what

you do. Because when we believe the

story, we live the story. That's what

identity does. It tells your brain how

to behave even when you're desperate to

change the script.

But when you change the who, you change

the what.

Picture it this way. You download a

fancy new app on your phone, but it

keeps crashing, won't load, glitches

out. Turns out your phone's operating

system hasn't been updated in years.

That's what it's like when we try to fix

our lives from the outside. New habits,

new hacks, new goals. But underneath the

identity you're running on, it's still

the old version. It sounds like I'm not

good at this.

I never follow through.

I always put others first.

That's the outdated OS. And those shiny

new habits crash, not because they were

wrong, but because they weren't

supported by the system underneath.

Real change doesn't last until you

update the system. Until you upgrade who

you believe you are.

Because here's what I've seen again and

again.

Identity always wins.

And the research backs this up. For

example, studies show that people who

define themselves as non-smokers are

consistently more successful at quitting

than those who say, "I'm trying to

quit."

Why? Because when a behavior aligns with

your identity, your actions naturally

follow.

But when it doesn't align, when it

challenges the person you've always

believed yourself to be, that's when

change gets hard.

Because we're not just afraid of

failing,

we're afraid of losing who we've always

been.

And that's the part that fascinates me.

Even when a new habit is something that

you genuinely want, if it's not aligned

with your current identity, your

subconscious mind will resist it. It's

like your subconscious is one of those

nasty shopladies in Pretty Woman.

new habit walks in and your mind looks

it up and down and goes, "You obviously

are in the wrong place. Please leave."

Your mind prioritizes what's familiar,

not what's better.

And here's what I've come to believe.

Identity isn't just the missing link to

small daily behavior change like going

to the gym. It's also what shapes your

entire trajectory.

Because once I started seeing this

pattern in my patients, I started seeing

it in myself.

Two decades into practicing medicine, I

felt increasingly misaligned,

not burned out, misaligned.

I wanted to reach people before they got

sick, not just treat them after.

I wanted to teach, to create, to help

people change their lives in a deeper

way. But I couldn't seem to walk away.

It wasn't the work itself. It was the

identity that I had built around it.

I had lived that story for so long. I

couldn't imagine another way. I kept

telling myself, "This is who I am. This

is what I do.

This is what people expect of me."

But the truth is that story was outdated

and it was keeping me small.

And maybe you've been there, too.

You're not stuck. You're just loyal to

an old story.

William Faulner said, "You cannot swim

for new horizons until you have courage

to lose sight of the shore."

For me, losing sight of the shore meant

letting go of who I'd been and giving

myself permission to become someone new.

A creator, an educator, a YouTuber.

Roles that didn't come with a title or

prestige or any kind of safety net.

A new identity that made no sense on

paper, but made complete sense inside.

Once I stopped clinging to doctor as my

core identity, then the bold decisions

became possible.

I remember handing in my resignation.

I thought it would feel terrifying.

It didn't. It felt true.

And on my last day after my last

patient, I walked out of the clinic, got

into my car, and ugly cried for a solid

15 minutes.

I cried for my 17-year-old self who had

dreamed of becoming a doctor. And now it

was over.

But then, as I drove home, music up,

windows down, I started to feel

something else.

I could finally breathe.

And that's the power of identity. It

doesn't just help you change,

it sets you free.

If your current identity is misaligned

with the change that you want to make,

whether that's a small change or a big

one, the answer isn't to push harder.

It's to pause and look within.

You begin by recognizing the story that

you've been living inside and then

asking yourself a simple but seismic

question.

What if that story isn't true anymore?

Right now, I'm learning to golf. And

when I say learning, I mean humbling

myself weekly in front of retired men

named Roger.

But the more that I identify as a

golfer, the more I start showing up like

one, I book lessons, watch swing

breakdowns, even bought the shoes. And I

don't say I'm dabbling anymore. I say

I'm a golfer, not because I've mastered

it, but because that's who I'm becoming.

So when you're trying to change, the

real question isn't what should I do?

It's who do I need to become?

Because when that internal shift

happens, everything else starts to

follow. Not because it suddenly becomes

easy, but because it finally makes

sense.

So, let me leave you with this. Whatever

change you want to make, you're no

longer approaching it as the person that

you've been, but as the person that

you're becoming.

That old credit card does not live in my

freezer anymore because I stopped

needing to protect myself from my own

story.

And this is what true reinvention looks

like. Because when you redesign your

identity from the inside out, your whole

life begins to shift.

You parent differently, lead

differently, create differently, serve

differently, and that ripples outward

because people who know who they are are

the ones who change the world. Thank

you.

[applause]

[applause]

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
resolution /ˌrɛz.əˈluː.ʃən/ B2	noun - a firm decision to do or not to do something
milestone /ˈmaɪl.stəʊn/ B2	noun - an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development
consistent /kənˈsɪs.tənt/ B2	adjective - acting or done in the same way over time
fascinating /ˈfæs.ən.eɪ.tɪŋ/ B2	adjective - extremely interesting
obstacle /ˈɒb.stə.kəl/ B2	noun - a thing that blocks one's way or prevents progress
identity /aɪˈden.tɪ.ti/ B2	noun - the fact of being who or what a person or thing is
reinforcing /ˌriː.ɪnˈfɔːr.sɪŋ/ C1	verb - strengthening or supporting an object or substance
outdated /ˌaʊtˈdeɪ.tɪd/ B2	adjective - behind the times
subconscious /ˌsʌbˈkɒn.ʃəs/ C1	adjective - concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware
trajectory /trəˈdʒek.tər.i/ C2	noun - the path followed by a projectile or object
misaligned /ˌmɪs.əˈlaɪnd/ C1	adjective - not in the correct or appropriate relative position
prestige /presˈtiːʒ/ C1	noun - widespread respect and admiration felt for someone
resignation /ˌrez.ɪɡˈneɪ.ʃən/ C1	noun - an act of retiring or giving up a position
seismic /ˈsaɪz.mɪk/ C2	adjective - of enormous proportions or having great impact
reinvention /ˌriː.ɪnˈven.ʃən/ C1	noun - the action or process of changing or creating something again

Key Grammar Structures

• I've spent the last 20 years asking that question.

  ➔ Present Perfect Continuous (or Simple with 'spend time')

  ➔ Use "have spent" + duration + verb-ing to describe an activity that has been happening over a long period.

• Why is it so hard to change?

  ➔ Cleft sentence structure (It + be + adjective + infinitive)

  ➔ The "It" is a dummy subject used to introduce an infinitive phrase as the real subject.

• What if the reason change doesn't last isn't because you're doing it wrong?

  ➔ Conditional "What if" (Hypothetical questions)

  ➔ "What if" is used to suggest a possibility or pose a hypothetical situation.

• If knowing what to do were enough, we'd all be thriving by now.

  ➔ Second Conditional (Hypothetical situation in the present)

  ➔ We use "were" (for all subjects) in the "if" clause to describe an unreal situation.

• Not just what you do, but who you believe yourself to be?

  ➔ Correlative Conjunction (Not just X, but Y)

  ➔ Use "not just... but" to emphasize the second element as being more significant.

• That's what it's like when we try to fix our lives from the outside.

  ➔ Relative Clause (What = The thing that)

  ➔ "What" functions as a noun clause here, meaning "the thing that".

• I couldn't imagine another way.

  ➔ Modal Verb of Ability in the past (couldn't)

  ➔ "Couldn't" (could not) is used here to describe an inability to conceive of a different situation in the past.

• Once I stopped clinging to doctor as my core identity, then the bold decisions became possible.

  ➔ Time clause with 'Once' (As soon as)

  ➔ "Once" acts as a conjunction meaning "as soon as" or "after the moment that".