Operation: Conquer Change

Hi Friends,

January 21^st is a pivotal day in your life.  Do you know why?  It is that time of year where people embark upon new chapters, aspirations, and endeavors.  Whether it be setting new goals, living by a theme, choosing a word to live by for the year, or setting a traditional New Year’s resolution, most of us are trying something new.  It is said it takes 21 days to create a new habit.  This means we are all breaching the point of cementing in a new habit, falling off the bandwagon, or landing somewhere in the middle.  Will you be setting the same goal next year or is this your year to shine?  I want this year and every year to be your year!  Let’s talk about why change is a process and how we can embrace the process to get the results we want.

Have you ever noticed some changes come about in an instant while other changes seem to hold the equivalent difficulty of moving Mount Everest?  For me, I can have a very delightful and pleasing thought of derailing my diet by smashing my face in these deliciously decadent fudgy homemade brownies I have stashed securely in my freezer for my diet destroying impulses.  I go instantly from thought to action, and in .0007654 seconds I am attacking the private stash.  Conversely, if I am wanting to break my bad habit of allowing laundry to pile up for weeks on end, my motivation and commitment to change looks much different.  Initially I think doing laundry weekly sounds great.  For about the first week.  Then doing laundry every other week will be sufficient.  Eventually I am back to where I started doing laundry when my last sports bra is on my body, and the thought of skipping my workout tomorrow motivates me to get the laundry done.  I know, I know, workouts don’t generally correlate to laundry motivation for normal people, but brownies.  I’m telling ya…

Back to the topic at hand, why can the best intentions fade so quickly while others are easy to master in a heartbeat?  One factor is instant versus delayed gratification.  In my example, brownies offer sugar which light up many pleasure centers in the brain while also feeding my ever so sincere love affair with chocolate.  The brownies do not offer much delayed gratification because once the sugar wears off and my blood sugar drops I am left feeling very sedentary.  However, in the moment the desire to obtain that instant gratification wins out and the queen of smash face is on her game.  The laundry goal, on the other hand, offers me a different reward.  In fact, the only instant gratification I can think of is feeling like a higher achiever in the area of adulting.  The delayed gratification in changing my laundry habits come from not having to rush around like a maniac washing something I need right before I need it or spending endless hours searching for something else to wear when that perfect outfit is in the hamper.

How do we stay committed to our goals for those crucial 21 days it takes to implement the new habit?  Two really smart people (Carlo Di Clemente & James O. Prochaska) introduced a five stage model of change, The Transtheoretical Model, which assesses an individual’s readiness to act on a new, healthier behavior.  The model is based upon their personal observations of how people modified problem behaviors such as smoking, overeating, and problem drinking.  Not attempting to make any changes in these areas?  Bear with me just a bit longer, and consider interchanging your goal item as the “problem behavior”.  Assessing my own progress through this model has made most change achievable for me personally.  In fact, this process was used to launch this blog.  More on that in a bit.  For those of you who are visual, here’s a diagram that depicts the model:

As you can see, change begins in the stage of precontemplation (not yet realizing a change needs to be made) and ends at maintenance (where you are rocking the change without difficulty).  Most of us are likely finding ourselves in either the preparation or action stages with our New Year’s resolutions.  Although some may still be contemplating whether they have the confidence to make a change, if the timing is right, or addressing other barriers which prevent them from committing.  Briefly to explain each stage:

• Contemplation is when you are considering making a change but you still feel very ambivalent weighing the pros and cons of changing or staying the same.
• Preparation begins when the pros to change finally outweigh the cons. Likely there is still some amount of ambivalence, but it is no longer insurmountable. You make a realistic plan for how you will go about accomplishing the goals you want to achieve.
• Action comes when the plan is put into effect. You will likely tell those closest to you about what you’ve set your sights on and perhaps even obtain an accountability partner to keep your momentum moving forward.

As the diagram shows, not only can we move forward in the model but at any time we can step away from our forward progress and regress to a previous phase in the model.  It’s not unusual for forward progress to not always be fluid.  For instance, I have become aware that I tend to get stuck in the preparation phase.  I’m often motivated to try something new, I put together a really solid plan, but I just can’t make that initial jump into the action phase.  This is the precise thing I experienced when wanting to begin this blog.  When I was posed the questions of what was holding me back (fear of being vulnerable on the world wide web), when would this thing holding me back ever change (potentially never), and what did I really have to lose (not much other than my sanity?) I decided I just needed to make the jump (sanity is always expendable).  If we bring an awareness to our past patterns with change, we can identify where we tend to get stuck.  Once we have this initial awareness we can then introspectively ask ourselves questions about why we get stuck there, what is holding us back, and what we need to do differently in order to make progress.  If you’re like me and fear the jump, I’ve found an accountability partner willing to push me off a cliff when needed is a fantastic solution.  Just make sure the person who shoves you off the cliff also believes in your ability to land on your feet.

I hope all of you are finding success in your New Year’s goals.  For those of you finding yourself in a complacent space, give this model some consideration and ask yourself some introspective questions about where you are, why you’re there, and how you can get to where you want to be.  I know we all have the power inside to do anything we deem worthy of our time and energy!

If you happen to leave a comment or drop me an email and I don’t promptly respond  just know I am likely recovering from a sugar coma induced by the most succulent brownies I have ever experienced.  When it comes to exiling these brownies from my life I’m going to stay in the precontemplative stage.  For now.

Peace & Love,

Janessa