5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All The Time! – Part 6

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Norcross’s Changeology Step 3 is Perspire: Taking Action, which is essentially the same as the Practice P of the P10 Principle. According to the author, Edison’s 99% Perspiration, the fury of action, takes place between 14 and 30 days into the 90-day change journey.

Norcross contends successful action requires avoiding step/strategy mismatch by abandoning the earlier psych and prep step strategies of raising your self-awareness and arousing your emotions and replacing those strategies with four action-based change-catalyzing strategies:

  1. Rewarding yourself to strengthen your goal behavior in a systematic, intentional way
  2. Countering by talking yourself instructionally about how to engage in the healthy opposite of the bad behavior
  3. Controlling your environment to enhance the effectiveness of your change by populating your life with reminders and people that help you maintain your change work
  4. Developing a team of helping relationships quarterbacked by a professional coach and with which you maintain at least one daily contact with at least one team member

Rewarding is both a science and an art unto itself. Some types of rewards include:

  • Consumables – treats like pizza
  • Activities – like movies and sex (ok, Norcross only mentions getting a massage, but the right massage can convey a totally different message; Norcross later even uses a G-rated example)
  • Interpersonal strokes – nice things said by others
  • Positive self-talk – nice things said by yourself to your self
  • Tokens – non-consumable treats that can be accumulated and traded later for other types of rewards like pizza, a movie, or a good massage
  • Removal of a dreaded chore by paying someone else to do something you hate to do as a reward for hitting a new milestone of changed behavior

The secret is to identify those rewards that modify your behavior and then create a reinforcement plan that will get you through your essential 90-day successful change time frame. Your reinforcement plan should follow these suggestions:

  • Reinforce yourself for reaching target behaviors
  • Keep rewards contingent on meeting a prespecified step
  • Reward each baby step taken toward a bigger destination
  • Deliver the reward immediately and every time
  • Don’t cheat yourself – do all the work required to get each reward legitimately
  • Rotate the rewards being used
  • Create and fulfill a contingency contract with a member of your change team, such that, if you hit a target, then they will participate in a reward event with you
  • Regardless of what other rewards are used, constantly give your self reassuring compliments and come to own a positive self-image
  • Never punish your self for not performing as desired

Norcross acknowledges people are most likely going to break this last rule. Therefore, he proposes the following suggestions for punishments:

  • Punish like a tree: immediately, contingently, and calmly
  • Punish consistently
  • Punish early in the behavior chain
  • Vary the punishment like you vary the rewards
  • Punish the failure and then immediately reward the good behavior
  • Put yourself in time out
  • Ignore bad behavior (i.e. failures to behave as desired) and just reward the good stuff

Norcross lists the eight most common countering methods as:

  1. Diversion
  2. Exercise
  3. Relaxation
  4. Assertion
  5. Healthy thoughts
  6. Exposure
  7. Imagery
  8. Acceptance

Numerous other possible countering methods exist. Almost anything will do if it answers the question, “What is the healthy opposite or alternative to my problem?”

Norcross next jumps to the core premise of cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT’s premise is one’s interpretations of and feelings about an event, usually based on one’s own (often incorrect) beliefs, are probably more important than the event itself.

After a brief review of CBT, Norcross discusses several of his listed countering methods. Repeating all his discussion is beyond the scope of and space available in this post. Suffice it to say, I think it’s worth your reading after you get the book.

The last of Norcross’s list of countering methods, however, bears a few sentences here. Norcross quotes Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer, focusing on its first part. I agree with him – acceptance of those things you cannot change is an essential implement in your toolbox for effective living. The wisdom to know the difference between the unchangeable and the changeable is also an excellent expression of life’s precious resource of intellect.

The middle part of the Serenity Prayer, however, “Courage to change the things I can,” to me, is the most important. Being Great! All the time! is all about continuous quality improvement in all the facets of your life. Be wise enough to know what you can change and accept what you cannot change.

But for Greatness! sake, invest your life’s precious resources in enhancing the very essence of living your life by changing the things you can.

Norcross finishes the last half of his Perspire Step/Stage discussing changing your environment and developing and using your change team effectively. Again, there’s more there than fits here. Buy the book Changeology and read it. Nonetheless, here are the tops of the change team waves:

  • Listen actively and accept genuine support
  • Chat frequently
  • Express what you need clearly
  • Keep it positive
  • Use an experienced coach
  • Accept peer pressure
  • Return the favor
  • Buddy up
  • Race to the top
  • Enlarge the team
  • Invite challenges

We are now 51% of the way through Changeology.

[reminder]What’s one thing you are wise enough to know you cannot change and you are willing to accept and work around?[/reminder]

Running Your Own Business – Part 2

RUN YOUR OWN BUSINESSIn Part 1, we discussed the “big picture” of Greatness! Now, in this Part 2, let’s begin with the end in mind and discuss in just a bit more detail the concept of Greatness!, which must drive you to be Great! in business.

Before we start doing “whatever it takes!” to make you Great! in your own business, let’s agree on our definition of Greatness!

Because you are not with me writing this blog, let’s start with my definition of Greatness! Continue reading “Running Your Own Business – Part 2”

Running Your Own Business – Part 1

RUN YOUR OWN BUSINESSIn the Business Facet of this Great! All the Time! blog, you will learn in detail the following ideas:

  • The concept of Greatness! must drive you to be Great! in business.
  • A Great! business leader fulfills the five functions of mentoring, marketing, management, money, and moving on.
  • To be Great! in business, everyone in your business must brand, broadcast, attract, connect, relate, serve, Cha-ching!, Cha-ching!, and repeat.
  • The P10 Principle is the best way to set up and run a Great! business, allow the you to fulfill the five functions of a business leader, and allow everyone in your Great! business to enjoy The Overarching Concept of Greatness!

Continue reading “Running Your Own Business – Part 1”

5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All The Time! – Part 5

book_imgChangeology Step 2: Planning Before Leaping contains a lot of information. These are the tops of the waves. Read the book yourself to get the full effect.

Norcross’s planning skills include:

  • Defining your goals specifically.
  • Tracking progress some more,
  • Assembling your change team,
  • Solidifying your commitment, and
  • Finalizing your action plan.

But, Norcross cautions us, do not plan to the level of dysfunctional perfectionism. Continue reading “5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All The Time! – Part 5”

5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 4

book_imgPart II of Changeology works through the 5 Steps (Stages) of Change

Step 1 is Psych: Getting Ready. Motivation is important, but often overestimated. Change requires a balance of motivation and skills, with the accent on the skills part.

After you decide on your goals, the Psych Step contains four catalysts: Continue reading “5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 4”

5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 3

book_imgIn Part 2 of this series on John Norcross’s Changeology and it’s similarity to parts of the P10 Principle, we discussed Norcross’s brief discussion on the science of change. In this Part 3, we will discuss what Norcross calls “The Keys” to change.

Effective change takes time; usually at least 90 days. And there are certain catalytic strategies that provoke or accelerate significant change.

 

Continue reading “5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 3”

5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 2

book_imgIn our first post on change and Changeology, we discussed John C. Norcross’s fascination with change. In this second post we are going to look at the first part of Changeology, wherein Norcross discusses the science behind and keys supporting.

Change is hard. Not the constant change that permeates our growth in life. That’s natural and just a little bit difficult each time we do it. But, focused and intentional change is hard. We resist this type of change with a love/hate vengeance. Don’t fight this resistance; embrace it and use it as fuel.

Norcross’s Changeology posits we all change within Four Ambition Clusters: Continue reading “5 Changeology Steps To Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 2”

5 Changeology Steps to Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 1

book_imgAchieving Greatness! requires change. For this and the next seven posts we are going to see how the methods we teach at Great! All the Time! stack up against the teachings of probably the Greatest Changeologist in the world.

John C. Norcross, Ph.D. states in Changeology that following his scientific program outlined therein can increase your chance of success in changing what you want to change and experience lasting results within 90 days and without drugs or other types of formal treatment. Continue reading “5 Changeology Steps to Becoming Great! All the Time! – Part 1”

The Best Way To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? About half of us do. The other half of us think they are silly. Pie crust promises, as Mary Poppins calls them. Easily made and more easily broken. But, have you ever made a New Year’s resolution at 11:59 and broken it by 12:01?

Mine was, “This year, I’m going to get more and better sleep each night.” I made it about an hour after take off on the flight back from Susan’s and my anniversary think week in Hawaii. Right before midnight. Just as I dozed off thinking how silly New Year’s resolutions are. And then, not two minutes later, something in my subconscious poked me in my third eye and said, “No, they are not.”

So, having quickly broken my pie crust, I switched on the Southwest Airlines wifi and tried to justify how I felt about New Year’s resolutions. Let me tell you what I found out.

Most of us are not quite as fast I was to break resolutions. According to John Norcross’s ongoing research at University of Scranton, about only 70% of us make it for two weeks, only half of us make it three months, and only one in five of us resolvers can say we have successfully maintained a New Year’s change for two years.

Nonetheless, Norcross’s research does show that resolvers are ten times more likely to make a change last than nonresolvers to make change last. That’s 10,000 percent more likely, friends. 10,000%!

So, the question to which everyone obviously wants the answer so they can use it is, “How do they do it?”

Which is exactly why I have just bought John’s book, Changeology, and have started reading it cover to cover. I’ll let you know how it goes. If you want to try it yourself, here’s a link to the book on Amazon. (Note: this is an affiliate link. It won’t cost you any more to buy it through this link, but I’ll pick up a few pennies for recommending it to you. See my FTC disclosure below.)

We’ll talk more after chapter one.

[reminder]Are you a New Year’s resolver? Yes or no?[/reminder]

Social Media Can Help Your Most Personal Relationships

Post Great! things about each other.Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and their phone beeps, chirps, or plays a musical notification that tells them something is happening in their social media sphere? And they just have to stop, in mid-thought with you, and check it out. Has that ever happened with you?

Yeah, me too. People used to hate it when I did that. So I’ve tried not to do it as much. Almost never now. I solved the problem by setting alone time appointments during which I focus on my social media presence and activity. It’s part of my business work to pay attention to my social media relationships.

Whether we as parents, spouses, or friends like it or not, social media is everywhere. And almost all of us seem to hate it – whenever anyone else is doing it that is. But did you know, properly used, social media can actually help your relationships. With your spouse, your parents, your kids, your other family and close friends, your business relationships, and all the other folks you include in your life’s precious resource of people.

How? By communicating positive and affirming things with and about those with whom we have relationships and for whom and to whom our values make us responsible. The concept is called “public commitment theory.”

Sociology researchers posit people who post positive and affirming things together or about each other are more likely to have better relationships with those they post with or about.

Apparently, publicly testifying about each other as a couple or the other as an individual does several things:

  • It makes the couple’s relationship a larger part of their individual identities.
  • It reinforces the couple’s aspiration for how they want their relationship to be.
  • It drives the couple to become what they have publicly aspired to be.

Working on doing such public testimony together has an even greater effect on your mutual relationship. Investing the resources of self, time, effort, energy, emotion, intellect, property, and people in taking and posting positive and affirming pictures of people shows your “other” is on your mind. Telling positive and affirming stories online about yourselves and each other all shows how much your relationship means to the both of you.

Showing your bond with another to the entire world of third parties “out there” shows you are proud of your relationship, you are making it a priority in your life, and you want the rest of the world to share your relationship. Saying nice things about the other person in your relationship to the other person is nice. Saying nice things about the other person and your relationship to the rest of the world is even nicer.

Properly used, social media can help your most personal relationships.

[reminder]When was the last time you posted something nice about someone else online?[/reminder]