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Note: This is Part 2 of a 7 part series. The rest of the series includes:

1. How to Make Lasting Changes
2. From Unconscious to Conscious
3. Contemplation & Procrastination
4. Preparation & Planning to Act
5. 3, 2, 1… Action!
6. Maintaining the Change
7. Summing it All Up

Do you know anyone who has a real problem such as being a heavy smoker or very overweight, but feels just fine about their current situation? How about someone who has tried to change many times without success and has completely given up? These people, who are not taking steps to improve their lives, are in the precontemplation stage of change.

Precontemplation is the opposite of what most of us think of as change, but it is a stage we all have to pass through on our way to the active stage of contemplation, preparation, and action. This stage is the most difficult to pass through, as we can see from the number of unhappy people and underperforming businesses around us every day. There are two criteria for successfully completing this stage and moving on to contemplation:

1. Unhappiness with the current situation
2. Belief that change is possible

So how do you move out of the precontemplation stage of change and get started on making lasting changes? The most effective way seems to be…

Using Emotion to Change

Human beings are emotional creatures. As I’ve written previously becoming very emotional is a great way to change quickly. Unfortunately, in the precontemplation stage, the person in question doesn’t have any emotion about their current situation. In the absence of any internal emotion, the motivation to change has to come from the outside. Some outside influence has to act as the trigger that motivates them to begin the change process. Here are a few possible ways that a person can start to become emotional about a change.

• Compare to Others. In our daily lives we are constantly comparing one thing to another. We compare our physical attractiveness to other people, we compare our profitability to other companies. We compare our dinner order to the next table. If we start seeing our situation as much worse than the situations that others are in, we become motivated to change. This is one reason that self improvement gurus often suggest spending time with people that are already at the level you want to be. Seeing their success will motivate you to change your own life to match.
• Education and Positive Media. Remember the old “This is your brain on drugs,” commercials? They featured a person cracking and frying an egg to simulate the effects that drug abuse has on the human brain. This and other public education materials are designed to elicit strong emotion in people and help them realize that they need to change their behavior (or never begin a behavior in the first place). Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that people know that smoking, taking drugs, and eating a steady diet of Twinkies is bad for them and they do it anyways, so education isn’t the most effective way to create change.
• Intervention. When a situation gets really out of hand, such as with serious drug addiction or a company on the verge of bankruptcy, outside forces can try to intervene to motivate immediate change. Family members might gather and tell the drug addict how his or her behavior is causing everyone pain. A takeover offer might wake corporate managers out of their complacency and inspire them to begin a massive change management initiative. The goal of any intervention is simply to motivate the first step toward change.

The precontemplation stage is often the most difficult stage to break out of on the journey to create lasting changes. For negative situations, strong emotions are often the best way to inspire change, or at the next step toward change. Unfortunately, human beings seem to be more powerfully motivated by negative emotions than by positive emotions. The good news is that as soon as a person sees the need to change they have advanced to the contemplation stage of change. In the next post in this series we’ll talk about that stage and how it can help you make lasting changes in your life.

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