Table of Contents
Tools For Strategic Personal Change
Awareness and Insight
All change starts with a conscious awareness of what needs to be changed. Unconscious patterns have minds of their own and continue unabated until the conscious mind is able, one way or the other, to see what’s going on.
You can’t change something you’re not aware. Although insight and awareness is not enough to make change, it is the starting point. Some people resist developing and using self-awareness, believe it or not. They prefer to live according to the old adage that ignorance is bliss and that learning more about oneself and how a person functions just adds to emotional conflict and trouble. As a rule, a closed mind cannot change. Even if a closed mined changes, the direction and results of those changes are unpredictable because they’re not being guided by conscious awareness and informed mindfulness about what is best.
To be sure, with awareness and insight about oneself there comes responsibility and accountability, not only to take better care of oneself and make necessary changes to do so, but more fundamentally, with awareness comes the realization of options and the possibility for change. For some this expansion of awareness and increase in the field of options can be scary. Now choices are possible, but the person may be overwhelmed initially with which choice to make.
Contemplation
Strategic personal change is a different approach than the typical one of changing bad habits. The traditional way of changing has been to use will power. The old belief is that a person who really wants to change simply says I will stop doing what I’ve been doing and say no to the old habit. If the change does not happen or does happen but is not sustained, the explanation is that the person didn’t really want to change and also maybe is short on will power.
This change-by-will-power approach may work for a few days or weeks, but if nothing new was put in the place of the old habit, it’s guaranteed the old habit will return and often with a vengeance, as if it knows what you’re up to and will dig even deeper into your psyche to maintain control and resist change.
Change starts with awareness of what needs to be changed, that is the bad pattern or habit which is no longer useful for the person. But before leaping into new behaviors, a necessary and strategic stage is contemplation or the thoughtful consideration of which option to choose and make the change to.
Contemplation, the second phase of strategic change, not only takes time but it must be approached with more thought than emotion. Emotion is the energy of impulse. Impulsive changes usually make things worse because the change is initiated without consideration of which option is best to change to.
First, it is necessary to look at the various changes or options for new behavior available to the person. Initially it may be difficult to see the possibilities. Anxious people in desperate situations, needing to make changes often see only two options: giving up and living with the way things are or making drastic and sweeping changes to the other extreme. Usually the best options for change lie somewhere between “either” and “or.”
When dealing with entrenched, stubborn, bad personal habits, the best process of change is a slow, step-by-step incremental process which in effect grows the new and better behavior pattern. The bad pattern took quite some time to grow and become integrated into the person’s behavior. Although it may not take as long to replace the bad habit with the new, the change process that lasts and brings about sustainable results is an organic one of growing the changes, not immediately implementing changes.
Before making changes, lay out 3 to 10 things you could do differently than what you’ve been doing. Instead of over using alcohol to manage stress, what additional possibilities are there for you to manage your anxiety better? For example, one day you could go ahead and use alcohol to whatever extent necessary to feel better. But the next day, use a different stress manager, such as exercise, counseling, playing and/or listening to music, bodywork, yoga, meditation, etc. and then on the third day use another entirely different stress manager than was used the two days prior.
Second, after various options have been considered, look at the longer-term benefits and consequences of each one. Using alcohol abuse as an example, some people consider changing to another mood altering substance. I have worked with clients who say they gave up alcohol and now use marijuana on a regular basis. Indeed, that is a change. But the long-term consequences may be as debilitating to quality of life as was dependency on the use of alcohol.
Each option you consider as a candidate to change to must be evaluated in terms of what that option will do to help you get the results you want.
Stay away from either/or substitutions because they tend to bring consequences as severe and negative as the former bad pattern, and sometimes worse. The personal change process requires step-by-step progression that moves you away from the old ways and in the direction you want to go, overtime, not all at once. Children do not stop crawling and start walking overnight. Tomatoes do not grow from seedlings to fruit bearing plants all at once. As you contemplate your changes, think of options that move you in steps that are achievable. Then string them together like beads on a necklace, effectively moving you step by step from the bad to the better.
Before you make changes, consider not only the short-term benefits or consequences of the new options you are contemplating, but also the long-term consequences of those changes. This will help guide you away from believing that any change will be better than what you’ve been doing. In the long run, that is often not the case.
A good coach or counselor can be very effective in identifying the right option or choices to guide the changes in your behaviors. Such a person can more objectively look at the pros and cons of different choices you are considering. They can help you realistically, rather than emotionally, plot out consequences of choosing different scenarios in your life.
The most helpful professional at this point in the strategic personal change process is a person who does not have a moral or value agenda to fulfill with you and can guide you in tailoring your choices solely based upon what works best for you. They can be objective and detached and therefore, non-manipulative of your changes.