Using one of the core principles of Greatness! and the P10 Principle, Norcross begins his fourth step of change, the perseverance stage, in his book Changeology, by reminding one and all that most mere mortals cannot achieve perfection. But here’s the good news.
- Studies show 58 to 71% of change-seekers slip at least once in their first 30 days of Step 3 (Perspire).
- The average changer slips six times.
- 71% of people who resolve to make changes and have slips and manage those slips feel the slip strengthens their commitment to their resolution.
Change is an experience. My definition of experience is breaking things and having to fix them. Norcross says the perseverance stage of behavior change is a process of slipping, learning from the mistake, and overcoming the inevitable slip by trying again despite the discouragement and opposition slips engender.
It is natural for anyone seeking change to fear relapsing. The secret to overcoming fear is to acknowledge it, understand its sources, and then advance prepared to meet it with resilience.
The difference between a slip and a fall is a matter of degree and control. A slip is a single event of unwanted behavior that does not lead to a fall, which is the total abandonment of desired goal of behavioral change and complete reversion to the undesired behavior with no intention to try to change again.
The trick to succeeding at change is to prepare to and positively engage the slip and prevent it from becoming a fall. The five strategies for overcoming slips and persevering entail:
- Avoiding high-risk triggers that surround your first slip
- Practicing saying no
- Resisting the initial urge to slip
- Responding constructively if you do slip
- Preparing for the next time you slip
The seven most common slip triggers are:
- Excessive stress
- Negative emotions
- Social pressure
- Lack of control
- Interpersonal Conflict
- Positive emotions
- Physical cravings
Overcoming triggers first requires identifying their various qualities of
- Who is supporting or accompanying old behaviors?
- What activities, feelings, thoughts, etc. bring about old behaviors?
- When during the day or in relation to a particular event do old behaviors reappear?
- Where are the locations and circumstances where old behaviors reappear?
After you have identified your triggers, you need to plan and prepare your life to practice avoidance or, failing that, affirmative and assertive coping strategies to handle slips proactively or reactively.
Let me indulge a brief definition segue. There are two types of practice. There are daily practices that one does everyday. Get up, eat, pray, work, play, sleep. Then there is practice in preparation for handling specific situations reasonably expected to occur in the future. The first type of practice is the replacement of bad behaviors with good behaviors discussed in the first three change steps. The second type of practice is both intrapersonal and interpersonal (with your change team members) roleplaying drills to help you prepare to say no when the who, what, when, and where of your triggers arise.
Norcross suggests ten proven urge resistance coping practices to practice:
- Take a breather and relax.
- Challenge the “I need it” thought process vigorously.
- Affirm your resolve saying, “Yes, I can choose not to do this.”
- Walk away from the urge literally, either briskly or meditatively as you and your circumstances require.
- Do the healthy opposite of what you crave.
- Talk yourself or get a change team member to help you talk yourself down from the temptation.
- Distract yourself to the next extreme.
- If walking, talking or distracting the temptation away didn’t help, then run away to do something else instead.
- Reward yourself for staying strong instead of giving in.
- Search your self to revisit the emotional needs and intellectual deficits feeding the temptations.
From this tenth strategy, Norcross segues to teach Dr. Alan Marlatt’s “urge surfing” technique. Urge surfing roots itself in mindfulness and cognitive behavior therapy. Repeating Dr. Norcross’s description of Dr. Marlatt’s technique exceeds our available space in this post and would probably exceed the bounds of fair use Dr. Norcross’s intellectual property. (I am both a creator of written intellectual property and a lawyer with a good deal of intellectual property law experience after all.) Buy a copy of Changelogy and dig in.
If nothing else hits you in this chapter, Norcross’s PIG will. Norcross’s PIG labels each craving as the “Problem of Immediate Gratification.” Imagine your craving being a greedy, impulsive animal with a ravenous appetite grunting, “Feed me! Feed me, now!” If you’ve never considered the possibility of surfing a PIG, you will after you read Changeology .
As an alternative to “Surfing the PIG,” Norcross also offers creation and execution of a “slip plan.” First, however, he teaches how relapse works as a process, a systematic chain of psychological events bringing about an Abstinence Violation Effect – that all-or-nothing/saint-or-sinner/success-or-failure pattern that leads you to elevate single slip into a disastrous fall. How you respond to the slip that occurred in your life determines whether or not it will defeat you and become a full-on, unrecoverable fall.
Norcross’s calls his AVE-defeating techniques Slip Busters, and they are:
- Say it and believe it: A slip is not a fall.
- Go positive.
- Think big picture.
- Condemn the behavior, not the person.
- Get back on the horse immediately.
- Take one step at a time.
- Unwrap the urge.
- Learn from it.
Norcross teaches a four-part technique to build a good slip plan, which comprises identifying and discussing:
- What were you thinking when you slipped?
- What were you doing when you slipped?
- What were you feeling when you slipped?
- Whom were you with when you slipped?
Finally, Norcross stresses, when dealing with slips and preventing falls, you have to exploit the resources of your change team.
We are not 59% of the way done with Changeology .
[reminder]What is the last slip you kept from becoming a fall?[/reminder]