Change Your Approach and Change Your Life

For those of us that want to be implementing change in our lives, and real change, a familiar cycle may be becoming apparent. Whatever it is we wish to alter in our lives inevitably comes back to bite us, and, depressed, we find ourselves back where we started from. However, if we wish to alter our lives and our approaches, we first need a smarter change management process.

The Five Stages of Real Self Change

Usually we have only two states in our minds - our problematic state, and our “cured”, “perfect” or “improved” state. This simplistic model means we will forever be going between the two poles. Worse still, the more that our approach to change fails, the more tired we grow trying to alter it, after meeting with repeated failure.

What we need is a more nuanced and realistic model of change - and for this we have the Five Stages of Change model.

The Pre-Contemplative Stage

Not really a stage, this is at least the state many of us find ourselves in. We don’t think, or much less care, about the particular situation we are in. Perhaps the negative ramifications of our personality or responses haven’t occurred yet. In any effect, with the onset of difficulties this “stage” quickly moves to Stage 1.

Stage 1. Contemplation

In the first stage of effective change, we start to think it would be good to work on a particular issue in our lives. You may not think dramatically “I have to change my life” at this point, but you will be recognizing potential problems — and perhaps potential things you wish were different. For instance, you might decide you want to smoke less, be less obsessive, or to spend less time procrastinating. Or whatever personal attribute you wish was different.