Spiral Dragonfly Coaching
Mary's Magical Musings
Change
7/29/2009
Why is change so hard? What can we do to reinforce it? What kinds of change are possible? How long does it take?
When I taught 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the general guideline was that it took 21 days to change a habit. I recently heard a statistic that it takes 90 days to make a significant change. In doing research for this article, I found a wide range of timeframes depending on the type of change you are trying to make.
One of the reasons change is so difficult is because we try to make too many changes at once. We decide that we need to lose weight so we get up early Monday morning and go out for a run. We completely change our eating patterns devouring more fresh fruits and vegetables. On Tuesday we get up early planning to go for a run only to discover that the increased fiber in our diet requires us to spend the time we allotted in our schedule for a run on the toilet. At this point we become frustrated and return to our previous eating habits driving through Starbucks for coffee and a pastry.
If we decide to add exercise to our routine in small steps, we probably will have more success. Instead of getting up early to run (changing our sleep patterns and morning routine) we walk for 15 minutes during our lunch hour, we have a better chance of maintaining the change for a longer period of time; maybe even 21 days.
If we decide to change our eating habits INSTEAD of exercise not in addition to exercise, again in small steps, we eat a healthy breakfast instead of coffee and pastry. Only making a change to that one meal for a period of time (21 days?) until we feel that we have created a new healthy habit before we make any other changes, we have a better chance of success.
The other action that almost guarantees failure is trying to make an extreme change. If the television is on whenever someone is home and we decide that we will not turn on the television except one hour a day, we might manage for a few days. But the day we come home from work exhausted and only want to veg out in front of the television because that is all the energy we have, we will most likely revert to our old pattern.
In order to make behavioral changes, several items assist in reinforcing the change and anchoring it as a new behavior. The first item is support. Someone in our life who will encourage, support, and hold us accountable for the behavior we want. We need to consider how we will handle setbacks both acknowledging that setbacks will occur and trying to plan for the most obvious ones.
Another important step is celebrating success. Finding a reward that does not sabotage our goals or our budget is necessary for continued success. Most of us are better about beating ourselves up over setbacks than we are about celebrating or even acknowledging our small successes on the way to a major goal.
If you are interested in an accountability buddy or celebration partner on your journey of change, I would love to hear from you.
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