As the calendar flips to a new year, most of us become reflective. We think about the past year with all its joys and its disappointments. We think about the things in our lives we’d like to change. I’ve written before about the value of setting intentions for the new year rather than making resolutions. A resolution, a firm decision to do or not to do something, can be hard to achieve, and it can lead to all or nothing thinking. By contrast, setting an intention is about focusing your attention and energy in a particular direction.
But no matter how worthy our intentions, it is easy for us to lose sight of them and slip back into old habits. One of the first things I learned in coaching training is that human beings have a deep and often subconscious resistance to change, even to the change that we KNOW we want for ourselves. As psychologist James O. Prochaska writes, “However healthy change may be, it threatens our security, and sometimes even self-defeating security feels better than none.”[i]
Most of the time, changing your life is not like flipping a switch. It’s not a matter of “yesterday I did it this way, and today, I’ve changed completely.” Prochaska and his colleagues have outlined a six stage model of change:
· Precontemplation—At this stage, you have not yet recognized that you need to make a change—though you might think everyone around you should change.
· Contemplation—You recognize a problem you want to solve or that you’re stuck in a place you don’t want to be and you begin to think about how you want to get there, but you are not quite ready to take action. Some people get stuck in chronic contemplation.
· Preparation—You begin to focus on the solution rather than the problem and to think more about the future than the past. People in the preparation stage may still be feeling ambivalent. They may be trying to convince themselves to take action. At this stage you may make your intended change public, sharing with friends and family your intention. This is the stage when many people seek coaching. The preparation stage is the time to develop a detailed plan of action and get support that will help get you started on making change.
· Action—This is the stage where you overtly make the changes you’ve been preparing to make. People who didn’t enter coaching in the preparation stage often seek support in the action stage.
· Maintenance—This is where you need to develop systems—the interlocking networks of small habits--to be sure you maintain the changes you’ve begun.
· Termination—The point where the change has become your “new normal,” and it’s fully incorporated into your life.
Referring to a six-stage model can be misleading. These are not necessarily neatly defined stages, but rather a continuum. Prochaska likens the model to a spiral that slowly moves upward.
We can begin making change and then backslide, maybe more than once. In coaching circles, this is often called “the dip.” The dip can occur after a few coaching sessions when the client realizes that change is hard, that old ways and patterns feel familiar, and that making change requires focus, energy, and more than a little bit of courage. Clients may become discouraged and retreat from their commitment to change. They may even disappear from coaching all together, ghosting the coach.
One of my coaching texts put it this way: “Particularly in the middle of change, when the old way is undone and the new way is not yet embedded, there is a strong pull to go back to the familiar, the known, even if it didn’t get clients the results they wanted. Change requires the expenditure of energy, and continuing the process of change requires sustaining energy.”[ii]
There are a number of mental traps that can cause us to get stuck at the contemplation stage or to stop stall in either the preparation or action stages. One of these is the need for absolute certainty. I see clients who want to change careers struggling with this trap. They know they are miserable in their current role or position, but they are terrified to make a change unless they have 100% certainty that the next move is the “right” move. A related trap is waiting for the magic moment to make change. Folks mired in these traps tend to remain stuck, waiting for a sign from the heavens identifying the absolutely right next step or signaling that the timing is perfect.
Another mental trap, perhaps the most common one, is wishful thinking. This might sound like “I wish my boss would suddenly change his/her way of managing our team.” Or “I wish I could eat anything I want without gaining weight.” Or “I wish this person I’ve been in an abusive or exploitive relationship with for twenty years would realize the error of their ways.” Or “I wish I had finished my college degree instead of dropping out as a sophomore.” Wishing is easier than working toward change. A wish is very different than a hope. Wishing is passive while hope “demands that you envision your success ,and then work toward it.”[iii]
A final mental trap that prevents us from making the changes we desire is premature action. That’s jumping into change before we are ready to do the work. Most often, people take premature action at the behest of a loved one who badgers us to make change. In coaching, I sometimes see this. Occasionally a client will arrive at our initial consultation and say something on the order of, “I’m here because my spouse thinks it will be good for me. S/he has been nagging me to call you for a year.” Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with suggesting coaching as an option for a loved one who wants to make change, but if the client is there just so the loved one will shut up about it, the whole process is unlikely to succeed.
Change is hard. That’s a cliché that we repeat over and over because it’s rooted in profound truths. People stay in bad relationships and bad jobs because of this subconscious resistance to change. We fail to pursue our fondest dreams because familiar routines feel deceptively safe.
Next month, I’ll explore a mindset shift that may help you move beyond contemplation and preparation into action.
[i] James O. Prochaska, et al, Changing for Good: A Revolutionary Six-Stage Program for Overcoming Bad Habits and Moving Your Life Positively Forward (New York: William Morrow, 1994): 110.
[ii] Henry Kimsey-House, et al, Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives, 3rd ed., (Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011): 26.
[iii] Prochaska, 113.