elements of change

Most often the change model is similar to the grief sequence of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, where denial, anger, bargaining and depression can be experienced many times. Occasionally people move straight to acceptance from the moment change is initiated and they become early adopters, or change leaders.

Here is another potential model where we have initiation, departure and return (a model of the hero’s journey, from Daniel Pink’s book “A whole new mind”). In departure there is an emotional trigger for change followed by denial or resistance. In the initiation phase there is some element of transformational change and significant learning. Once the change is complete there is the return where mentoring and coaching can take place as the individual has accepted the change.

The departure, initiation and return cycle is a change model that recognizes that change doesn’t just happen and stop but occurs over and over again. In many cases there are multiple change cycles occurring at the same time which can create a change overload.

Karim Rashid wrote, “if human nature is to live in the past – to change the world is to change human nature”.

Do you think human nature is to live in the past?   How difficult is it to change human nature?

What is your model for change?

modalities of change

Change comes in different forms or modes and depending on the mode of change we accept or reject it. Our attitude on change becomes the determining factor in how we deal with the change.

Persistent change – the kind of change that wears, like water over a rock. Eventually the sharp edges of the rough surface are removed and what emerges is something smooth.

Consistent change – The world we live in is an example of consistent change, technology is often a driver for that. We live at a time where change just happens at an ever quickening pace.

Resistant change - in the advance of change is the ability to deny it (which may be true or not). Our beliefs and values are resistent to change (look at the election and party affiliation). Even change that may turn out to be beneficial is often resisted due to fear. The WIIFM (What’s in it for me) factor plays into the ability/desire to change.

Sudden change – Life is all planned and things are going well and then there is an event that demands swift action. Perhaps it is just for a short period of time and things will return to the daily/normal/predictable patterns of daily living.

Transformational change – Something that radically transforms your world view. Your beliefs or values suddenly don’t match the direction you desire to go in and gradually you outgrow the old patterns and develop new patterns.

Transitional change - Steps that are taken to move from one state of being to a new state.

Disruptive change – Changes that force a new way of living that is not desired or welcome (loss of job, grief, death, …), or it could be positive change as well, a change in career, a change in living location, …

Chaotic change - The kind of change that is more stressful than it should be, unplanned and untamed the change that results in setting up one pattern only to have that one displaced by something else or something old.

What kind of change do you experience the most often?

What kind of change do you resist?

What kind of changes do you want to make happen and haven’t?

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Ghandi

satisfied by

“You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation.”

Homer Rice

What are you motivated by?

Are you living the kind of life that excites you, is filled with joy, and surrounded by the kind of feelings that give you comfort?   Sure you can’t live in some blissful euphoric state all the time; there is the reality of life the pains, the sorrows, the times that grip you by the throat and won’t let go.   But, what if most of the time you could achieve and master the things that you wish you could?

What if most of the time you lived by your strengths, you lived with joy and you found more smiles than frowns in your life?   Wouldn’t that be worth having?

For most people it is possible to live a life that is satisfying, rewarding, fulfilling and joyful.   It is possible!

What stops you right now from living the best possible life?   Not an imaginary dream, but a life that contains all that is “needed”.   For most people it is a matter of choice or choices.    For many it is the words that are presented to the conscious mind on a daily basis, words that speak out with hope, choice, freedom and joy.

What does a fulfilling life look like?  

What does joy look like?

What does a life filled with meaning look like?

 

What would you say you score in these life categories?

1.       Relationships

2.       Career/Job/Vocation

3.       Spiritual knowledge/understanding/relationship

4.       Family

5.       Friends

6.       Personal growth/Education/Learning/seeking knowledge

7.       Leisure/recreation/rest/relaxation

8.      Personal time – quiet time – times of silence/reflection

9.       Contribution/charity/volunteerism

 

Give yourself a score of 10 if you are fully satisfied and a score of 1 if you are barely started.    Then use 2-9 to indicate the relative strength of any of those categories with the larger number indicating greater satisfaction.

What areas do you need the most growth, work, or change?

Are you motivated enough to make those changes yourself?

break the habit

“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”  Franklin D. Roosevelt

What habits are working for you or against you?

We are programmed to routinize all that we do from eating breakfast to driving to work.  I’ll bet that you have driven to work or back to home and you don’t really remember making the trip, the trip seems like an illusion.  Have you had those experiences?

You may have heard you are what you eat.  There is truth in that as well.  We become what we make of ourselves.  What if you don’t like what you see?

How do you break the bad habits and replace them with new habits that can bring you to new levels of joy in your life.  “Even small changes at the root level of belief will produce amazing changes in behavior and performance”, writes Harry Alder.   Do you believe that?

Here’s a powerful thought … The only prerequisite is that you must commit to change and when you do the right people will show up to help you. (Canfield, “The power of focus”).

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”  William James

Where do you start?

Start with a vision.  Where do you want your life to go?  If you’re not satisfied with the life you have today you do have the power to change it.  Look at your habits.  Which ones should be changed – really changed?  Move the big rocks one inch at a time.   Over time, perhaps 3-4 weeks of consistent rock solid behavior you’ll see things change.  Your dreams will start to become true.

to improve is to change

Winston Churchill wrote, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

How often do we desire to improve?   Is it something you look at daily and ask, “I want to do better here or I want to learn more there?”  

Personal growth is tied to a relentless desire to improve and to improve means changing the paradigm you are living in today.     In some respects the nature of pesonal coaching is to help people discover what they want to change in their own life so they can improve.   The definition of what it means to improve is created by the client.    What in your life do you want to improve?   Do you have the tenacity, drive, desire and willingness to hold yourself accountable for the results?   Most people don’t have the willingness to hold themselves accountable for the results they want to achieve.

Are you willing to change?   Are you willing to improve your results in all facets of your life or the facets you choose?

start living today

“It takes courage to look at yourself and accept your imperfections. It takes courage to love yourself anyway. It takes courage to go beyond merely trying to survive your life and start trying to actually enjoy it.”  Seth Godin  “The Tribes Casebook”  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/CurrentTribesCasebook.pdf

 

It takes courage to change.  It takes courage to want to be better than you are today.  It takes courage to live.

 

When do you want to start living?

 

 

 

icebergs

You’re on a block of ice floating in the sea, it is cold, barren, and shrinking, but it has been your home and you can’t leave. Inhabiting a shrinking environment that offers only the fact that it is what you know and your are comfortable with. When the block of ice shrinks to the point where there is no chance but to leave will require change when the options are few.

To anticipate change rather than waiting until change must happen may create stress and that stress will likely be less than the stress that would be experienced by waiting until the last possible moment.

Anticipating change means being aware of the surroundings and constantly looking for opportunities that align with your purpose. Waiting may lead to grabbing at anything that passes by which may be against the grain of your purpose.

What can be done to stay ahead of change? What can be done to help reduce the potential anxiety of change?

 

The mind thinks
That any change
Is painful.
The heart feels
That any change
Is powerful.

Sri Chinmoy

footsteps in the sand

Imagine walking down a beach and what you see are a crisscross myriad of footsteps. You stop to look at some of them, footprints, footprints of children, footprints of those who wearing shoes, footprints etched deeply in the sand and others that just skim the surface. The waves move in to erase the canvas of footprints.

You put down your foot into the wet sand and you too leave an impression in the sand, your mark on the world an ephemeral mark as the water rises and sweeps up the sandy beach erasing all that was printed there. You notice three footprints – your footprints etched onto this large canvas and they tell your story.

The first footprint is the mark of your values. What is it that you value? What do you care deeply about? Write those values down? Oh, by the way, money is not a value. It is a tool. What are your values? Now that you have them written down, rate them in terms of desired importance in your life from 1 to 10. The value of one indicates that you are not even close to living out this value and a ten is saying out loud that this value is fully being realized. Are you able to live your values?

The second footprint is about your smile. We all can smile but do we? Do we practice smiling? Or, are we not able to smile because of the way we feel about ourselves or others. We have shutdown and stopped smiling. What makes you smile? When was the last time you were able to genuinely smile? You know the kind of smile, the one that is fueled from deep within. It is not the smile we can put on our face, this is a smile that erupts across our face without denial – it appears and you can’t erase it – it is alive. When was the last time you had one of those kinds of smiles?

The third footstep is a hunger for our personal truth. Dante writes, “Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” This footprint seems to be floating up and out of the sand and before long the print is lost. To seek the right path, to seek our personal truth requires that we be honest with ourselves. How can you find the right path?

Align your attitude with your values. Smile from within. Seek the right path – honestly.

“Our feelings of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, loss of hope and so forth are in fact related to all phenomena. If we do not adopt the right outlook, it is possible that anything and everything could cause us frustration. Yet phenomena are part of reality and we are subject to the laws of existence. So this leaves us only one option: to change our own attitude. By bringing about a change in our outlook towards things and events, all phenomena can become friends or sources of happiness, instead of becoming enemies or sources of frustration.”

“The Dalai Lama’s Book Of Wisdom” (1999)

Courage …

Alan Cohen wrote,

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.”

What do you think?

Power in change?   Do you have the courage to become something new?   By new it is not a physical change but a transformational change of looking at issues and problems in a new way.   To see the same problem in a different way may give you the strength to remove the problem.

Courage to change?

beginning of Freedom

“We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.” Anais Nin

A photograph like a sculpture is a snapshot in time.  Some people are just like that fixed in time unwilling to change or to adapt to become who they really are. Others copy an image in an effort to be more like that image refusing their own image. The beginning of freedom is recognizing that the picture is dynamic and that it must change.

Change begins with a thought, the thought that change must begin.  The direction of change is in alignment with values, beliefs, strengths, abilities, desires, passions, and dreams which need to be cultivated and developed.

What change are you holding back on that will bring about freedom?