Process of change

Summary: Willingness and ability to change oneself are vital skills. By change I mean changing habits and acquiring new skills, not just acquiring knowledge. I realized that in my case the process of conscious change (or personal development) is usually sequential.

This post is about my experience with change, and a theory of change I came up with recently to describe it. While experience is hard to question, the theory is merely a proposition. I leave it up to you to relate it to your own experience and observation. I never bothered to verify it, though at this point I think it is quite an accurate description.

By change I don't just mean learning. Learning can be interpreted as acquiring knowledge, which for me is easy and definitely not enough to reach the end goal. End goal is usually increased happiness or improved effectiveness. Knowledge doesn't make people happier or more effective. Change does: new behaviors, better handling of emotions, more productive mindsets.

In this article, change is synonymous with removing bad habits, establishing good habits, and learning new skills.

I have become a bit of a personal-development freak over the past five years. Initially I focused on productivity at work. Over time personal growth in all areas of life became highest priority for me. I was unhappy a few years back, and I realized I really needed to change something. It took several years to see the effects, but I have almost revolutionized my emotional life, improved general attitude towards other people and established a few good habits. It took hundreds of hours of hard work, reading, talking to people, psychotherapy, exposure to risk, experiencing failure. It was worth it though.

I now believe that willingness & ability to change are vital skills, especially for young people. There are two reasons. First, such broad exploration is a good way to discover what we like the most. It is necessary to maximize our happiness. Second, it decreases the risk of falling behind others when the world around us changes - if we learn how to adapt quickly, we will be able to respond to potentially dangerous market shifts or social revolutions. It is beneficial for an individual to try many ways of living, many kinds of work, and many kinds of relationships in order to practice adaptation and learn more about one's own preferences.

I treat all contexts of change equally: it could be personal or work life, a small detail like daily routine or complex issues like the way we deal with stress.

Sometimes change occurs "automatically", without conscious effort on our part. For example, we change what we do when we move to live in a new place: new people, new job, new market conditions. You could call it "forced adaptation". I don't care about that. By definition, it happens to us once in a while. What I am concerned with is conscious act of changing how we live when we are not forced to change. A process in which we recognize we want to do something differently, and we find a way to actually do it.

In my case conscious change follows the following "model":

• Step 1. Realize there's something you can improve: a skill to learn; a bad habit to break; a recurring problem to solve
• Step 2. Have the motivation to change: recognize it's important to change and some urgency of this need
• Step 3. Learn how to change: what does the new behavior look like, research the topic, learn from others
• Step 4. Actually make the change: change a habit; learn & practice a skill

I do not mean to suggest that this model applies to everyone. Interestingly, I have found two papers (paper one, paper two) mentioning nearly identical model established by some psychologists in the 1980s. I haven't read the original papers yet, but it was fun to see that I came up with the same thought framework just by reflecting on my own experience!

It can take a lot of time to go through it all. Each step has its own challenges. Most importantly, there is a lot that needs to happen before actual change: I need to be aware of the opportunity to change, have the motivation, and know how to change. The model may sound trivial, but if I fail to go through steps 1-3 *explicitly* in my head, I usually don't succeed in making long-term change. Going all the way through requires admitting that I am not perfect, motivating myself, and perseverance to do the hard work.

Step 1 is usually triggered by challenges, suffering, reading, feedback from others or observing them in action.

Step 2 is mostly about deciding whether or not I want to change now. Without conscious decision to change, most efforts fail.

Step 3 is targeted research. I observe others, read books or the Internet, use formal training, sometimes come up with my own solutions or ideas. It is all about "How do I do it?" Sometimes it is as trivial as never lighting a cigarette again. Other times it is a long project involving buying books, talking to others, gathering more feedback on my behavior and coming up with tricks that will make change easier.

Step 4 is taking the effort to do things differently: stopping the bad habit, starting a new habit, learning and practicing a new skill.

Establishing habits is different than acquiring skills in that habits require perseverance, whereas  skills are more about mastery. I will probably write more about habits, since it is a fascinating topic, and a great life challenge for most people to change them.

Comments

[Greg]

Good post!
It would be nice if You could write more on the subject. I mean - in more details for every step, especially step 3, that it the most difficult (at least for me). Would be nice to see and learn from You, how You handle habit change in more details.

Greetings,
Greg

PS. Great blog :)

[Greg]

Step 4, not 3 as i wrote in upper comment.

[Jakub Petrykowski]

Greg

Thanks for the kind word.

I have a vague feeling that step 4 is by far the hardest when it comes to habits (assuming someone is open to change in the first place).

I had a brief conversation on this topic with a friend a few days ago; she said that maybe changing habits is so hard because every time you are tempted to do something the "old" (bad) way, it takes effort not to. And since we generally minimize effort, we are bound to fail once in a while (or even all the time :).

Anyway, I am amazed how hard it is to make long lasting change with even conceptually simplest habits (smoking, junk food etc.). I will gladly write about it more, though I don't know if I am particularly good at it :)

I mentioned long term perspective and instant gratification in an earlier post on habits (http://blog.petrykowski.net/2010/05/why-is-it-so-hard-to-do-what-should-be-done.html). I will give it some more thought, and maybe do some research. Who knows, perhaps there are good practical answers already?

[Igor]

You're probably aware (or maybe not) about the steps that you need to take to change some behavior (the original English terminology could differ as in my case it's a Dutch -> English -> Polish -> [long time] -> English translation).

1. Unaware + old/bad behavior
2. Aware + old/bad behavior
3. Aware + new/good behavior
4. Unaware + new/good behavior

Mapping to your steps would be following:

- your's step one goes between mine 1&2,
- your's step two and three goes between mine 2&3
- and after some time we reach our final steps :-)

It works, it's fascinating and understanding it helped me to change from being loud & angry jerk into being semi-loud & reserved guy who's liked around :-)

[Igor]

p.s. what about the meditation post?!?

[Jakub Petrykowski]

Igor

I heard about the model you mentioned as four stages of competence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

Related article (thought I didn't read more on validity of the bias):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I still think that compared to most peers you are loud and hardly reserved - in informal settings though. I would love to see you in a more professional setting... maybe I should join one of your PMI workshops or presentations? :)

Re: meditation. I haven't been practicing lately, and I'd rather write about it in depth after I have actually made significant effort in this area. Or if you like, I could point you to a couple good resources and explain briefly (2 paragraphs) what it was like for me when I started / and how I did. Give me some time.

[Igor]

Meditation: I surely would!

About behavior... well... let's say semi-reserved. I'm making comparisons to old me and then the progress is incredible.

But... well... you know that for yourself - when you walk down the street most of people seem to be amazingly interested in their own shoes. It's not hard to stand out as a lil' bit louder than others in such a company...

[Jo]

yearning for a fresh dose of blog.petrykowski.net
but no updates in such a long time :(

*deprived

or ... perhaps you have embarked on your travels to somewhere remote? pray tell us, all the more reason to update with some nice pics! :D

[Jakub Petrykowski]

Jo, I will come back to writing soon. I haven't left Wroclaw yet, though I want to depart soon. Give me a few days :)