Part 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:
- Tracking progress
- Raising awareness
- Arousing emotions
- Committing
Norcross’s goal is to teach you how to think and feel differently about your problems, how to convert fear of change into fuel for action, how to mobilize your excitement for a glorious problem-free future, and how to kindle and keep commitment.
Some people have issues with substance addictions ranging from overeating, to smoking, to alcohol, to drugs. Others have problems with relationships with people, places, things, and ideas. Often, people do harmful things because those things bolster their low self-esteem. Norcross offers to help you not do this.
Before you get off into the Psych phase, you have to define your goals. First, generally; then, specifically. You must select your goals and then define them in behavioral terms.
Your goal must be:
- Personal, i.e. about your own behavior,
- Measurable, i.e. capable of being operationalized,
- Realistic,
- Controllable by you, and
- Positive, i.e. based on pursuing positive action instead of avoiding negative actions.
Now you can move into the four catalysts of Norcross’s Psych phase.
First, you have to track your progress. As I say, because tracking during a journey increases the likelihood of arriving at the desired destination in the shortest amount of time. As Drucker defines reactivity, “What’s measured improves.” As I say, “You have to count what counts.” Norcross says tracking reminds you what you are doing, gives you feedback for adjustment, and is highly rewarding all by itself. I agree. Do you?
So here’s a Great! idea: track your baseline during your Psych (P10 – Perception) step for a week or two and then continue tracking for as long as it takes to achieve your long-term change and then thereafter for maintenance.
Second, you have to raise your awareness of the causes of, consequences of, and cures for your problems. This is essentially the 5 R’s of P10’s Proaction Phase, but it blends with P10 Perception P as well.
Norcross breaks raising your awareness down as follows:
- Face the facts about the causes and consequences of your problem.
- Ask for trouble by seeking feedback from trusted friends and family.
- Ask a professional psychologist, physician, nutritionist, clergyperson, etc.
- Look in popular culture, because it is amazing what messages are contained in good books, good television, and Disney movies and such.
Once you have raised your awareness, re-evaluate what you are doing and want to do in light of your new consciousness. When you get to the point you cry, “Enough!” in disgust with your current behavior, you are ready to move on to.
Third, you have to use your new awareness to arouse your emotions, because one without the other is like flame with no fuel. Roll around in the awareness. Feel the fear and pain of the bad consequences of your current behavior. Enjoy the thrill of eventual success. Envision a better tomorrow. Tell a new story; the one you want to live instead of the one you have been living. Double down by feeling the past and present pain of doing “wrong” and the present and future pleasure of doing “right.”
Norcross discusses four exercises for this:
- Count your rumination time.
- Consider the past and the future.
- Write a goodbye letter to your old problem discuss why your are leaving it.
- Spend some time in front of a mirror talking to your self to release the anger are your past behavior and then build the excitement for the new behavior.
Fourth, you have to commit. Realize the new alternatives, deliberately create them for your self, and avidly pursue that choice. Say it out loud. Revisit the push-pull of the old and new. Generate a slogan for yourself and repeat it regularly. Pick a real person to be your avatar and internalize the real, living model person you’ve picked to emulate. Like many, Norcross endorses Teddy Roosevelt’s brief speech, “It is not the critic who counts. … The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.” Invite others to be part of your action group.
Congratulations! We are now 26% done with the book, Changeology.