MindThe Beginner

Change is all around us and there are a lot  of people writing about this subject. But what is the essence of change? In this post I would like to write about something I learned in my eduction as an exercise therapist. It’s about making a change in your life that will last. Not a simple overnight venture but true, lasting change in your habits. It comprises of seven steps that actually describe the complete process of changing behaviours and can be adapted to anything we do in our life.

Be open: You can not change anything in life if you’re not open towards it. It seems logical but think about it for a second. If you don’t like to learn languages you’ll never be open to learning one. Set aside you presumption and experience what there is to be offered. Look around, look inside yourself, is there something there you would like to change? Or are you happy with things just the way they are.

Understand: You need to understand what it is you want to do, understand what it is exactly that you want to change and how you want to tackle the process of changing. Explore the road you will be taking so you know what’s ahead of you. There will always be unforeseen events but the better you explore these the easier it gets. Watch out for paralysis by thought however. You want to understand things, but don’t overthink them.

Want: You can be open to change and understand how the change will work and what’s in store for you, but if deep down somewhere you don’t want to change the change will never come. Do you really want something or is it just another dream you’re having that you don’t really want to work for? Change always means work, hard work even. Are you up to it? Do you want to change?

Can: We need the right environment to change our behaviour. If you understand what you want but your environment won’t support your choice of change you’re still not going to change. It might also be that you’re not realistic out things. As therapist it’s sometimes hard to get people to realize that that they want, their body won’t do anymore. Honesty hurts sometimes but if your unrealistic about what you want to change you will never get there.

These last three elements are a kind of trinity. After going through these three steps, and this can happen in an order or even simultaneously we’re ready for the two final steps in changing our behaviour, our habit. The last two steps are where most people get stuck. They read tons of self-help books and on a subconscious level know what the next step is but somehow they don’t get there. This step is:

Do it: We know what to do, we know why we want it and everything is in place to start doing it. Now comes the hardest step of all. Actually doing at needs to be done to change your habits. This has to be  conscious choice and we need to support it with all our heart and mind or this is were things will go wrong quickly. We succumb to our old habits and then start beating ourselves up with thoughts about being a failure. This is a very though process, and we can use all the help we can get. Write about it in your blog, tell people about what you are doing. The more people know about what you want to change the more likely it is that you will get there. It’s something called peer pressure and it’s a very powerful motivational tool. You don’t want to let everyone down now do you? The last step in enduring change gets easier every week:

Persevere: Keep doing what you need to do, it might result in a inner struggle because we all want to keep our old habits but it’s going to get easier every single day. One day we realize that we made it through all the steps and changed our habit.

Everything we do can be deconstructed into these steps, we take it all for granted most of the time but once you sit down and think about these steps you can find out where things went wrong or what’s keeping you back in changing.

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