Creating Positive Life
Changes
By Licia Ginne, LMFT
Life
is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to
go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state
and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
Anais Nin
We all want change. We just wish it didn’t have to be
so scary. With change comes risk and fear, and it’s the
experience of fear that holds us back. As the Anais Nin quote
says life is about change and moving through different experiences.
The world is constantly changing and the best we can do is
embrace the changes and identify places where we can be proactive.
You don’t have to enlist the help of a psychotherapist
or personal coach to make changes, but to improve your chances
of success you need to have a strong support system. Your support
group can be a formal group like a 12-step program or psychotherapy
group, you might join a networking or marketing group, it could
be a group of friends who all have the same goal.
First step to identify what you would like different in your
life; our immediate goal may be to improve your health. Next
list all the things that could help improve your health;
it could be more rest, more exercise, or a better eating plan.
You want to keep breaking down the main goal until you have
smaller concrete actions or behavior changes. Improving your
health is the long term goal the steps to getting there are
the concrete actions like more rest, losing weight, eliminating
salt from your diet, etc. .
Now you need to notice opportunities for instituting your
behavior change. It helps if you can make a short study of
the opportunities when you could make change. In studies
on creating change they’ve
found that in the beginning we often notice opportunities after
they have happened. This gives us a starting point. You will
notice a cycle of where you notice an opportunity and can make
the change and times when you notice the opportunity after
it has happened. If you can remain hopeful you will find the
missed opportunities decrease until you don’t have to
remind yourself and you have made the new behavior a habit.
This step is where having a support group is the most helpful;
it will help to keep you motivated and help with identifying
opportunities.
Second: set small goals. I will exercise 3 days a week, or
every day for 20 minutes. Whatever your goal is it should
be realistic to where you are in your life today. If you
don’t
exercise at all than 3 days a week or 10 minutes a day may
be a good place to start. Than you have to set long-term goals.
A long-term goal might be to run a marathon or have washboard
abs. With a marathon your long-term goal is 26.2 miles but
today you start with 10 minutes of walking and keep increasing
as your endurance builds. It is finding that balance between
pushing yourself and not injuring yourself. NBC has a reality
show called the Biggest Loser and they are the perfect example
in some ways of what not to do. I am sorry they couldn’t
offer a better example. They are right when they talk about
changing your lifestyle and adding exercise and a healthy food
plan. They are wrong when they have these contestants pushing
themselves to injury and believing that losing large amounts
of weight in a short period of time is good for you.
Third: Maintenance: This stage is about reinforcing and maintaining
the new behavior. As you continue to look for opportunities
and try them, you find that with practice it will become
easier. It has not yet become habit.
Fourth: You have maintained the new behavior for 6 months
and longer. Your confidence in your ability to cope with
the fear of relapse has strengthened. You do not have to
remind yourself all the time to take the new behavior and
it has become part of your routine.
Most of all remember that change starts with the first step
and you build from there. |