change your life: part 3: Process of change

Six places of change

How do we make changes in our lives? What is the process of change? Think
about the last time you made a change, anything it could be the simplest thing
like tidying the house or the biggest thing you’ve ever done like buying
a house. What was the process for the change? Think about it for a few
minutes.

The process of change

When my family first moved to a new house a few years ago it was a huge
decision. The
first part of the process of buying a house was noticing that a change might
need to occur. You
can’t decide to change something unless you think a change needs to occur,
no matter what the reasons are. So you are constantly examining your
life, consciously and unconsciously. We kept on saying that there wasn’t
enough room for the four of us in the house anymore this led to us passively
looking for somewhere else to stay.

The next stage is deciding that a change needs to occur. in the example
above where we needed to move house we went from passively looking for house
to actively looking for a new housing. we decided we needed the change.

The next stage is deciding what to change to. This is where a lot of
people might fall down and a lot of people get stuck in a rut for this very
reason. You know you want to change your job but you don’t know
what you want to do or how to do it.

For those of you who get past the second stage the next stage is to actually
believe you can make the change. you can see yourself making the change
and you can see yourself with the new house, the new job, being a non smoker,
being thin you can picture it in your mind. Again this is another major
stumbling block. We
all hold beliefs in our heads about everything in our lives and often those
beliefs can often conflict with each other, in psychological terms this is
called cognitive
dissonance. An example of this is the person who smokes, they know
it’s bad for their health but they continue to smoke. The reason people
still smoke is because they have not given themselves enough good reasons to
stop smoking and given themselves more good reasons to keep smoking, it’s that
simple. Before I gave up smoking last year ,my reasons for smoking far
outweighed my reasons for not smoking. I enjoyed smoking (yes I did!
for those of you who are saying ‘you thought you enjoyed it’, Ii did really
enjoy it), I felt it relaxed me and it did, it gave me time to myself, it was
a way to get a break etc etc. I knew of all the health warnings but the
thing that tipped it for me was power over my own mind. I kept saying
I could give up if i wanted to but I didn’t want to. Then I asked could
I really give up. so I tried and I couldn’t. Then I thought i am
in control here I can do anything I want with my body. So there was a
battle of wills in my head. I digress a little, but you get my point.

Okay you’ve got past the dissonance stage what now. You have to take
action. You have to take a step toward your desired outcome. again you
have to picture what your outcome is going to be. Takes small steps toward
it. If you want to lose weight you might take the first step to giving
up sweets. You don’t give up all the crap at the same time ‘ small steps
Ellie, small steps…’ give up the sweets then once you’ve mastered that, give
up the cake, once you’ve mastered that give up the burgers etc. All the
time you picture in your head what you want your outcome to be.

the next step of the process is: Continuation. You go through the cycle
of stages of 4-5 until you reach your desired outcome. When you reach
your desired outcome you have momentum. You have a new belief that you
can change. your new belief spurs you on to change other aspects of your
life that you may want to change and you will have a stronger belief that you
can do it.

The stages of change

1. Examining – Before you can make a change you need to
recognize the need for change. This happens on a conscious and unconscious
level.

2. Deciding – Once you have recognized the need to change
you decided to actively make a change.

3. Desired outcome – You have to know what your desired outcome is.

4. Belief - When you have decided to change you have to believe that you
can do it and get past conflicting beliefs in your head.

5. Action - You have to take action towards your desired
outcome, I recommend small steps, but do anything to take action.

6. Continuation – You repeat stages 4-5 until you reach your desired outcome.

This process of change occurs in every single aspect of our lives from changing
a job to washing your hands after going to the toilet. we can use this
model to show us exactly where in our lives we are falling down. My biggest
let down was at stages 3 and 4, i knew i had to change some aspect of my
life it was knowing what I wanted and the belief that i could do it that let
me down. Concentrating on these two stages would often lead me to get over
them.

For example I knew I wanted to stop working at BT and after examining my life
I knew I wanted to work with people to be able to make a difference in their
lives but I didn’t really have the belief that I could achieve this. Knowing
I was lacking in belief I looked at myself and asked myself what i was good
at, I was good at actively listening,Ii was good at empathizing, I had patience
in abundance, all the things you need to work with people in order to help
them help themselves change their lives.

When you know which part of the process you are stuck on you can work on It
until you get past it.

Exercise to do

Try this exercise just now;

Write down something you want to change in your life.

Find out where you are on the process of change model above.

Work on where you are stuck in the model.

Does it make a difference, let me

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