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:
- Rewarding yourself to strengthen your goal behavior in a systematic, intentional way
- Countering by talking yourself instructionally about how to engage in the healthy opposite of the bad behavior
- 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
- 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:
- Diversion
- Exercise
- Relaxation
- Assertion
- Healthy thoughts
- Exposure
- Imagery
- 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]