Never the Same River Twice » Changes That Stick

Changes That Stick: Summing It All Up

Maria Gajewski — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:00:19 +0000

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

If you’ve stuck with this series for this long, thank you and congratulations! I hope you’ve learned a lot about what is takes to create real, lasting change. When you think back on changes that you’ve made in the past can you identify the following stages? (Here’s a hint: they don’t always happen in a neat, linear way):

Precontemplation. These were the “bad old days” before you realized that change had to happen. For some period of time – maybe your whole life up to that point – you stayed stuck in your pre-change ways and may have even been happy there. Then, you discovered that there was a better way to do things or to live and you advanced to…
Contemplation. At this point you started thinking that you needed to make a change. Maybe you started to feel emotional about your situation and saw ways to make it better. Maybe others started pointing out a need for change and you began to agree with them. Eventually you made your mind up that you were going to change and you started…
Preparation. When you began making serious plans and doing the background work you needed to begin a change in earnest, you were preparing. You might have done some mental preparation, visualization, and positive thinking. Maybe you enrolled in a class and learned the skills that you needed to change. You could have purchased some supplies or removed some obstacles. When all of this prep work was done you moved to…
Action. During action you expended the energy you needed to change the direction in which you were traveling. You got up early, or stayed up late, and started the work to create the change that you desire. Action lasts as long as it takes to get adjusted to the change and progress to…
Maintenance. The final stage of change is maintenance, where the change moves from being very active to being just the way you do things. At a minimum, it takes a person at least 21 days to establish a new behavioral habit, but many changes require even longer to become maintenance activities. When you are in maintenance you gradually take steps to ensure that you don’t regress to your previous state. You “burn your bridges” and put new systems and routines in place to make it easier to remain on the new path.

What Next?

There are only three things you can do when you are in the maintenance stage of change. You can:

Continue to maintain, allowing your new state to become the status quo,
Regress to your previous state,
Or, decide to change some more and begin the process all over again.

Most of us want to avoid regressing, but it does happen – especially when trying to change long ingrained habits such as smoking or poor eating habits. If regression happens, the best course of action is to move back to action as quickly as possible, taking some time for better preparation if needed.

Eventually, many of us want to improve on the changes that we’ve made, so we enter into another round of the stages that change. This can be a really positive thing, since much change is iterative – it is best done gradually. For example, I might want to change my diet from an omnivore diet to a vegetarian diet. Once I’ve adjusted to that, I might want to eat more complex carbohydrates and less sugar, or I might give up dairy products. It’s hard to make all of these changes at once, so it can be helpful to make one change at a time, give yourself a chance to adjust, then tackle the next stage of the change.

Finally, it’s perfectly fine to continue to maintain the change you’ve made, assuming that you are getting positive results. In fact, it’s probably a good thing to give yourself a break after making an intense change. Give yourself a chance to reach an equilibrium again, since trying to change too many things in too rapid of succession can lead to change fatigue and ultimately cause resistance to change.

A Promise and a Request

If you’ve found this series valuable, I have good news for you. I am currently working on turning the series into an ebook that I will be giving away for free on this site. I am currently working on creating some additional content for the ebook and plan to include some worksheets and more practically focused suggestions to help you make real, lasting changes in your life – but I need your help!

Is there anything that you would like to see in an expanded version of this series? Are there questions you have that I didn’t answer? Do you feel that I skimmed over some parts of the process and would like to see more details about anything?

Please let me know what you would like to learn either by leaving a comment below, or sending an email to maria (at) neverthesamerivertwice (dot) com.

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Changes That Stick: Maintaining the Change

Maria Gajewski — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:00:22 +0000

Note: This is Part 6 of a 7 part series. The rest of the series includes:

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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Changes That Stick: 3, 2, 1 … Action!

Maria Gajewski — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:30:13 +0000

Note: This is Part 5 of a 7 part series. The rest of the series includes:

You spent some time in contemplation. You’ve prepared your plan. Everything is in place for your change. All you have to do is … Act! Pretty simple, isn’t it? If I wanted to be flippant I could end this post right now.

But, wait. What’s that you say? Action is the hardest part of change?

Right you are.

Human beings are really good at procrastinating. It’s such an issue that there is an entire industry churning out motivational material, affirmations, lifehacks and even ways to outsource all of the things that you’re going to procrastinate anyway! Yet we still continue to avoid taking actions that we truly think will be helpful to us.

As one example, in the time I’ve been working on this post, I’ve managed to check my email (several times), make a big pot of soup, get some laundry done, and watch some bad television. As you can see, I’m not immune to the procrastination bug even though I’m well aware of the psychology that causes it.

By the time you or your organization has reached the action stage of change, you are convinced that you need to make a change and you have confidence in your ability to do so. You’ve made the needed preparations. Now it’s time to enact your plans. So why are you frozen? And how can you break through that feeling and accomplish real change?

Action. Change with a Big “C”

The action stage of change is where activity becomes visible. In the previous stages, most of the work taking place is in the mind of the individual, or is in the form of preliminary planning. The action stage is where all of the observable, measurable results start to take place.

This stage begins at the first concrete action – the first workout, nicotine patch, or policy rewrite – and continues until the desired change is accomplished. For ongoing changes such as lifestyle alterations, action continues until the new behavior becomes a habit or a standard operating procedure. At that point you move into the maintenance stage which lasts anywhere from months to years until the rest of your life, depending on the circumstances.

Because this stage is so visible, action is what we tend to think about when we think of the word change. For most of us change = doing something. So why do we resist taking action with so much energy? There are a few common reasons. Each of these could be a book by itself, but I will try to explain them concisely so that we can all get busy on our changes!

Fear of Failure. Fear of Success. Completing a change has consequences. Generally, the larger the change, the greater the consequences. Some of these consequences are positive (you get healthier) and some are negative (men start staring at your newly thin body). In either event, you may have a fear of failing and not getting the positives. You could also have a fear of succeeding and having to deal with the negatives. Your internal dialogue about these fears can keep you from taking action.
This Stuff Seems Hard. Some of the steps you have to take to change effectively may seem very difficult. To loose a significant amount of weight you may have to change your diet completely (no peanut butter cups), and keep it that way for a long time. To really change a company you may have to fire people who don’t fit into your new vision. These unpleasant realities are legitimate parts of a change process. Your motivation to change has to be strong enough to push you past these.
Moving a Body at Rest. Human behavior has a lot in common with a freight train. It’s hard to get started and even harder to tun, but once it gets going, it gets easier and easier to keep it moving. However, the initial step of getting the train going can be really daunting.

Three Ways to (Temporarily) Overcome Procrastination

Let’s be honest. I cannot stop you from procrastinating. Entire industries of self-help books cannot stop you from procrastinating. You will always procrastinate to one degree or another. However, there are lots of ways to temporarily get past your blocks and start acting.

Use Your Momentum. By passing through the contemplation and preparation stages with energy and focus, you have gained some momentum that will help you power through some of the blocks and objections you may have to parts of the change. You’ve already done some of the hard work of getting the freight train rolling. By moving quickly (are you sensing a theme by now) to implement the initial steps of your change you keep your momentum going.
Take Mircrosteps. There are many changes that require hard work, but they usually don’t require all the hard work to be done at once. Strategize ways that you can break up the change into very small steps. Then get started one walk, one cigarette, one procedure at a time. I’ve used this technique myself on long runs. If I’m getting tired, I’ll concentrate on just reaching the next telephone pole, then the next, then the next. Do this enough and you will make lots of progress.
Keep Your Motivation High. Constantly remind yourself of why you decided to make a change. What are the consequences of not completing the change? What pain will you have to go through? How great will it feel when you have accomplished your goal? Change can be a long road. By keeping yourself focused on your motivation you can keep going until you start to see the benefits of the change.

What’s Next?

Most of us think of change as being done at the action stage. We make our plan, we act on it, end of story. This isn’t actually the case. Think about it this way. Would you buy a car and then never get the oil changed? (If you said yes, this series probably isn’t for you ) Like cars, most changes require some ongoing Maintenance. That’s what we’ll cover in the next part of this series.

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Changes That Stick: Preparation and Planning to Act

Maria Gajewski — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:03:41 +0000

Note: This is Part 4 of a 7 part series. The rest of the series includes:

All lasting change starts with a plan. That plan can be a single thought (”I want to lose 20 pounds.”) or it can be a 500 page document. No matter how extensive, the act of creating a plan means that you’ve officially graduated to the Preparation stage of change.

Preparation is an important stage in the change process, but it is also fraught with danger. If you’ve ever been part of an organization that engages in endless planning with little or no action to show for it, you’ve seen the dangers of preparation first hand. It is very easy for the preparation to become the activity. This is a false gain because planning doesn’t actually change anything. Ideally, planning and preparation should take the very minimum time required to get to action, and not one second more. This post will teach you some strategies to continue advancing to the action stage.

Intention and Preparation

The preparation stage of change is officially the point at which a person or organization intends to take action toward a change in the very near future, or a maximum of one month. By the time this stage happens, the benefits of changing clearly outweigh the drawbacks. The person or organization also has a strong belief in their ability to change successfully. Most of the objections of the precontemplation and contemplation stages are gone. A mindset shift has occurred that makes change more attractive than the present situation.

At this stage, it is time to make decisions about what actions to take to create the desired change. For individuals this can be a very simple process, such as joining a health club. In a large organization, creating an action plan can take months or years, especially when the change is large scale. For example, the American military engages in strategic planning to determine where to put limited resources for the most efficiency. The process of deciding where to build new bases and which old bases to close can take years because of the complexity of the data and number of people that must be consulted. Fortunately, most changes are much more simple to plan!

Analysis paralysis can continue to be a factor in this stage. There are usually many possible ways to create change, and often one method is just as valid as another. It is possible to loose weight through either a high protein or a low fat diet. An organization could adopt flex time or remote work policies. Often the data available to inform a change is misleading, hard to obtain, or just plain contradictory (Atkins diet versus raw veganism anyone?). It is critical to remain focused on the desired change more than the path to getting there, or procrastination can again take over.

Just Enough Planning – Not a Bite More

So how do you move through preparation and into action in a way that honors the need to plan, but also overrides the tendency to over think? In brief: Don’t try to build the perfect plan. Good enough is good enough to get you started.

Since plans rarely work out the way they were written, it is not helpful to aim for perfection in any planning process. You can always test and tweak your plan as you go along, so the key is to just get started. Create the very roughest outline of a plan – draw it on the back of an old envelope if it helps – and then start acting on it. When you find flaws in the plan, simply adjust and keep moving. (We’ll discuss this more in the Maintenance stage of change, and you can also read my post How to Create a Theory of Change for more information on plan adjustment and reflection.)

Here are a few tips that will help you create a plan that is just good enough:

Ready, Fire, Aim. In traditional planning, the temptation is to Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim… and never actually Fire! In this method, you act first and adjust later. Use the information you learned in the first acting phase to refine your approach. So what if your first attempt fails? The key here is to learn and keep trying.
Think short term. It is easy to fall into thinking that a change has to be forever. It doesn’t, especially if thinking about permanency makes you feel like you’re sure to fail. Commit to acting on your plan for a week, a month, or a year – whatever feels manageable to you. After the end of your timeline evaluate your results and commit to more time if you want.
Run an experiment. If you’re trying to lose weight, try going one week without eating desert and the next week try walking for 30 minutes each day. See which approach is more sustainable and/or gets better results for you. Continue tweaking your plan each week to achieve better results.

Staying flexible and being willing to change your plan, will help you power through the preparation stage of change. Realize that a plan isn’t a life commitment, that it is sure to have weaknesses, and will need adjustment over time. When you do this, planning can become a game rather than a matter of life or death, or failure or success. Minimizing planning time with get you through the Preparation stage and into the excitement of Action!

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Changes That Stick: Contemplation and Procrastination

Maria Gajewski — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 12:00:39 +0000

Note: This is Part 3 of a 7 part series. The rest of the series includes:

Analysis paralysis is one of the most dangerous points on the path to creating lasting change. This is the place where all possible options seem equally valid and you have a hard time deciding what to do in the present moment. The dangers of getting caught in this loop are at their greatest during the Contemplation stage of change. The contemplation stage of change is the point at which an individual or organization intends to change within a relatively short time horizon, such as within the next six months. In this post you’ll learn why this stage is important and how you can move through it quickly to begin the more active stages of change.

In the precontemplation stage of change, a person either a) doesn’t think their situation is bad, or b) doesn’t think they are capable of changing it. The cost of change and the negatives of change outweigh positive benefits of that change. When a person has used emotion or an outside stimulus to move into the contemplation stage of change, they are able to see the pros and cons of change as more equal. They may even see change as more positive, but not know how they are going to get there.

For most individuals and organizations, the reaction to the contemplation stage of change is to engage in ambivalent thinking and doing a lot of planning to plan. If you’ve ever worked in an organization that is weighing the pros and cons of a merger, you know exactly what this is like. There are studies after studies, which produce conflicting results and create so much data that it is impossible to decide on a course of action.

Individuals can do the same thing. Let’s say I was thinking about changing my diet to be 100% vegan. I’ve passed through the precontemplation stage by learning about all of the health benefits I might gain by changing my diet, but I’m concerned that the change will limit my social life and require a lot more work to make sure that I’m getting all of the nutrition I need. If I were stuck in the contemplation stage of this change, I might buy 20 books and subscribe to 50 blogs about veganism. I may read a dozen or more conflicting medical studies about the benefits and dangers of the diet. I might research dietary supplements, raw food, superfoods and more.

In short, I could spend months or years doing everything but moving forward in making a change!

Helpful Procrastination

The contemplation stage can be very helpful and educational when used correctly. It can genuinely help you investigate a change, and it can also show you when a change isn’t right for you. There are certain situations where we might feel that we “should” make a change, but we don’t really want to. If you react to the idea of a change by procrastinating and doing endless “research,” this can be a good indication that you don’t desire a change.

The above example is one such situation. I’ve thought about becoming a vegan for many years for a variety of health, ethical and environmental reasons. However, after going through literally years of just the type of procrastination I described, I realized that I don’t really want to be 100% vegan. My endless procrastination was just my heart telling me what my head was too stupid to figure out. Instead of completely changing my diet, I’ve cut back on my lacto-ovo consumption considerably and found high quality, ethical sources of cheese and eggs. I’ve also accepted responsibility for the fact that my current diet means that my ecological footprint is a bit larger than a vegan’s and that I may still be contributing to the suffering of some animals, although that is greatly reduced. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it works for me, for now.

Unhelpful Procrastination

Procrastination becomes unhelpful and even dangerous when it comes not from a lack of desire to change, but a feeling of inability to change. This is the type of thinking that people fall into when a change seems so large and permanent that they just can’t imagine themselves completing it successfully. Many long time smokers and other types of addicts fall victim to this type of thinking. I’m sure we’ve all met someone with serious health condition who just keeps smoking away, and might even joke about how their addiction is going to kill them.

In companies, hearing phrases like “This is the way we’ve always done things,” or “We have a rich tradition of…X” are good indicators of endless procrastination on change. When this type of thinking becomes really ingrained, there is usually a recognition of the need for change, an intention to change, and maybe even the beginning of a plan to change, but no mindset for change. It’s as if a person is standing at the bottom of Mt. Everest, looking up and thinking, “I can’t climb this thing!”

The root of all of this resistance is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of failure. Fear of success. Fear is an incredible motivator, but it can also be the world’s be demotivator. If your procrastination is stemming from fear or lack of belief in your ability to change, you’ll need some tools to overcome it.

How to Break Through Procrastination

When procrastination stems from a genuine lack of desire to change, the person or organization usually regresses to the precontemplation stage. If a change is absolutely needed, the strategies outlined in that post can help advance the process back to Contemplation. When procrastination comes from a lack of belief in the ability to change, there are many ways of turning Mt. Everest into a molehill.

Break the change into small pieces. Even if you need to completely restructure a Fortune 500 company, there are ways to break the process down into smaller pieces. Use a technique like mindmapping to start with a large change and break it down into its smallest components. For example, “restructuring” might mean upgrading your Human Resources software, implementing remote work arrangements, or selling off a division. Choose the most critical piece of this project and begin to work on it. The rest of the changes can come later.
It doesn’t have to be forever. We tend to think that we have to make a permanent change right from the beginning. Even though this series is titled Changes That Stick, I don’t think it’s realistic that every change we make will be permanent. Start by trying to change for a weekend or a month. Or think about ways to change gradually. Can you cut back on junk food a little bit at a time, replacing an unhealthy snack with some fruit or nuts? Can you give up your after lunch cigarette right now and work on the rest later? Choose a small task that can give you a quick victory.
Work with your support system. If you think a change is going to be especially difficult, be sure to involve as many support people as needed. Ask your friends to help you watch your diet, or be available for late night phone calls. Call in the consultants and coaches when you need them. If you are feeling weak and unable to change, you need the support of anyone you think can help.
Act before you can think. If you are really prone to analysis paralysis, it may be best to just skip over Contemplation as quickly as possible. The second you think, “I should change my diet,” throw away all your junk food, go to the store, and buy 3 pounds of salad mix. If you see that you need new relationship management software, put an action oriented person on the task and let it go. Defend against your worst instincts by outrunning your own thoughts.

The contemplation stage is a necessary, but perilous step on the path to lasting change. The key to this stage is to stay in it just long enough to create the momentum needed to move on to the next stage, preparation, but not a second longer! In the next part of this series, we’ll explore Preparation and Planning to Act.

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