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Note: This is Part 6 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

Congratulations! You have done all of the hard work of creating lasting change. You’ve successfully planned and prepared and you’ve taken action and stuck with it long enough for the change to become a part of daily life. Now you’ve progressed to the final stage of change – maintenance.

The maintenance stage begins at the point where the change becomes a habit or a standard operating procedure and continues until you are ready to make a change to something that will replace your new status quo. For example, you could change from an omnivore to a vegetarian and remain in maintenance with that until you decide to become a vegan or an omnivore again.

During maintenance you will focus your efforts on reinforcing your new status quo and resisting temptations that can lead to relapse.

When Does Maintenance Begin?

Research suggests that it takes a minimum of 21 days of consistently applied effort to form a new habit and reach the maintenance stage. If you haven’t reached a minimum of 21 days of practicing a new behavior without any relapses, you’re not in maintenance yet. Reread the section on action and keep applying those principles until you’ve formed new habits.

For organizations, there are no hard and fast guidelines for how long action needs to last, but it is generally much longer than for individuals. This is because an organizational change is actually a combination of the changes all of the individuals in the organization must go through. Since each individual will progress through all of the stages at different rates, the organization can’t begin maintenance until everyone who needs to be on board with the change has proceeded to maintenance. This can take 6 months, a year, or even more depending on the scale of the change.

How Long Does Maintenance Last?

The maintenance stage of change lasts from the end of the action stage of change until relapse, or until you or your organization decide to create another change. In terms of a timeline, this could be one day or it could be for the rest of your life. For example, someone who has quit smoking could relapse and become re-addicted with just one cigarette, or he or she could remain a nonsmoker for a lifetime.

Relapse happens quite often, especially when trying to change ingrained habits and addictions. The good news is that people rarely relapse all the way to the precontemplation stage where they give up entirely on making a change. Usually, people relapse to either the contemplation (I’ve got to quit smoking again) or preparation (I’ll start my diet again on Monday) stage.

Maintenance can also end when you or your organization decides to make another change that builds upon or compliments the change you’ve already made. For example, you could now be a vegetarian and decide that you want to give up dairy products or processed foods. This is a large enough change that you may have to start the stages of change all over again. Fortunately you’re current diet (vegetarian) is so habitual that you don’t really have to expend any effort maintaining it, so you can concentrate on the new changes.

Ideally, if you seek continuous improvement either in your daily life or in your organization, the change cycle will look something like the diagram to the left. You will go through a process of change, which can be difficult and generally takes a lot of energy. Then you will remain in maintenance for a period of time long enough to create some rest and allow you to recharge your batteries. Then, when you are feeling a little too comfortable you will identify the next area that you wish to change.

In this sense, the change process is never “finished.” Some people find this upsetting or burdensome, but I see it as a way to keep learning and making life more exciting. Imagine if you only had to change each area of your life once. It would be like buying a house, remodeling it to your liking and then living there for the rest of your life without doing any updates. Some people choose to do this, but most of us like a new coat of paint or a few new pieces of furniture from time to time. The good news is that you get to decide the pace of change in your own life. There’s no need to keep up with the Jonses here!

How to Maintain a Change

In a lot of ways, the maintenance stage of change is the most difficult part. It can seem like a long and difficult task to keep up a new habit or an organizational change over the long haul. While it may be true that the action stage and the early part of maintenance require a lot of vigilance and energy, any change gets easier to maintain over time. I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years now and I usually don’t even think about eating meat. Very rarely I’ll still get a craving for bacon (that may never go away!) or some other odd dish, but 99.9% of the time it’s just not part of my life anymore. Any major change will become like that after a while.

Until you get to a place where the change that you’ve made is just your new reality, there are some ways that you can reinforce the change and keep your energy up.

• Review Progress. Do a regular review of the progress you and your colleagues have made. Have a weekly meeting, keep charts and other visual reminders of progress. Keep a daily journal documenting your challenges and successes. Be honest with yourself and identify areas that still need work. See how you’ve changed over time and enjoy the progress that you have made.
• Reward Good Behavior. Humans generally pursue pleasure and avoid pain. One of the reasons that change is often hard is because it causes some short term pain. Make sure to give yourself a pleasurable reward at frequent time intervals if you stick to a change. Be careful not to reward yourself with something related to your old, bad behavior! Don’t reward a successful week of dieting with a slice of chocolate cake. Instead, identify something that you really enjoy that has no relation to the change. Reward good dietary behavior with a manicure or the book you’ve been wanting.
• Burn Your Bridges. Reinforce your new change by taking steps to make it difficult to relapse to your old state. Get rid of your “fat” clothes. Make sure everyone has removed your organization’s old bookeeping software from their computers. Stop talking to friends that you used drugs with. We all dig ruts in our daily lives that keep us locked into old behavior. Do everything you can to fill in the rut you want to escape and then throw away your shovel!

Maintenance is the point at which your change transforms into your life. It is a long process, but in many ways it is the most important stage. Be sure to treat it as a part of the stages of change and make sure that you enjoy all of the gains that you’ve made along the way. Move at a pace that is helpful to you without being overwhelming. Above all else, feel good that you have taken steps that most people don’t consciously take!

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Related posts:

1. Changes That Stick: How to Make Lasting Changes
2. Changes That Stick: 3, 2, 1 … Action!
3. Changes That Stick: Summing It All Up
4. Changes That Stick: From Unconscious to Conscious
5. Changes That Stick: Preparation and Planning to Act

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