5 Must Haves for an Effective Change in Oneself

Our personalities and habits keep changing with time, either actively or passively. Every other experience can bring a certain kind of change in ourselves and our behaviors.

Behavioral school of thought states that everything that changes someone’s behavior lies outside that person. This means that a person by default is ‘tabula rasa’ (scraped tablet; blank slate), and one can be taught anything and everything. Cognitive school of thought however differs, and states that a person also has a mental ability to think, perceive and remember on its own. This means that identical experiences can stimulate different behaviors in two different people, due to the influence of their own ability to process experiences. What we can conclude is that change in our behaviors is inevitable — its parameters (magnitude, direction and speed) however can be controlled if we drive these changes ourselves actively.

Driving a change in oneself requires presence of certain conditions that initiate, facilitate and ensure the change to take place. In my opinion, the mentioned 5 conditions summarize all we need to drive a change in ourselves.

1. Acknowledgement of Urgency

In his 8 step process of bringing change in an organization, John Kotter started with Creating Sense of Urgency as the first step. Here, since we are talking about personal change, it would be hard, and even unfair to expect, for a person to create a sense of urgency for oneself. So on personal level, one should at least be able to acknowledge urgency. The realization of how important is the need to change, is very critical. For a person like me who is overweight, I cannot begin the process of reducing weight unless I acknowledge how critical it is for me to lose it.

And it would definitely be better for me to sense that urgency now, instead of waiting till my body creates an emergency, because that will be too late. But it is impossible to sense the urgency in the comfort of one’s own safety. When things keep going, even if you don’t have a heart to continue, the inertia of your routine will keep the ball rolling. This will continue until a situation forces you to stop or change paths. This disorienting experience creates a cognitive dissonance within you and you start to rethink things.

This approach is however reactive and is bound to make things hard. A proactive approach however would be pushing oneself out of comfort zone and standing up for oneself, taking important decisions focusing on what you want to be and how you want things to end up.

2. Clarity of the Vision

How do you want the things to end up? You know how your present is not what you want your future to be, because future is nothing but a projection of your present in the times to come. You want your upcoming present to be different from the present that you have. But what kind of present do you want to have?

Think as far as you can. It doesn’t mean you have to think of the last moment that you are alive, but just as far as you can think. What kind of moment would you want it to be? What would you want to have in that moment? That is your vision. That is what you want to be, and how you want the things to end up.

Once you have a vision, you have to think of it as a destination and trace it back to the present. I am sure you must have solved a lot of mazes. It is much easier to find the right path once you start from the end. It is exactly like that. A lot of paths start from your present but only one is going to take you to your vision. When traced back, you have to mark milestones — signs to measure your progress towards reaching your vision. These are your goals. Remember to keep them very SMART! To learn more about SMART goals and how to achieve success, check this out. You have to trace these goals down to what you need to do right now, and later today, and tomorrow. That is how you will know where to start. This level of clarity maybe hard to achieve on your own.

3. Willingness to change

Now that you have figured out exactly where to start from, all you have to do is move your ass! It’s not as easy as it sounds. Just like overcoming static friction, it takes a lot of effort and courage to move.

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney in one of my all time favorite feature films Up In The Air, gives speeches on ‘What’s in your backpack?’. In those speeches, he talks about how we carry so much, including our needs, relationships and so on, that our shoulders are burdened and they make it hard for us to move. The idea is that we should carry bare minimum if we want to keep moving. That does work, but in reality that is escapism and evasion of responsibility, which he also eventually realizes when he discovers the warmth of relationships. True essence of life is in the ability of managing that weight — of not just picking up things but of throwing out as well to make space for new ones. So you don’t have to burden, but you have to manage.

So willingness to change refers to readiness to unlearn. In Lewin’s model of change has just 3 steps — unfreeze, change and refreeze. So to change, one has to unfreeze, which is a very tedious task as our neural linkages have to break and we have to challenge the beliefs that we already have had for many many years because we have to accommodate new knowledge. Personal desire to unlearn and enabling oneself to learn new things is what gets the ball rolling towards the vision.

4. Guidance or Mentorship

Throughout this journey, we need someone to guide us. From figuring out our vision, to marking milestones, to starting off as well as to keeping ourselves from going astray, we need someone to help us with the direction to move in order to achieve our vision, just like the North Star, or a compass. We need to keep track of our progress and we need to be reminded at every step of what we have originally set out to achieve. A good mentor leads the way and enables us to become we aspire to.

5. Cheerleaders or well wishers

Throughout the journey, apart from the mentors, we undoubtedly need people around us to cheer for us — a company of people who appreciate you at every step and encourage you to keep going. It is so much important that even if our journey is solo and is irrelevant to them, we always need people around, at least one person but ideally more, to help us cope with the stress that the journey gives us. It’s not easy, it is definitely not easy. Those of us who have transformed themselves know how desperately at times they needed someone to listen to them, or they needed words of genuine support and care, or just a shoulder to cry on. These people literally do not have to do anything at all other than just being there, just telling us when we are low that this isn’t over.

So whenever there is a challenge in front of you, or a need to change yourself, make sure to have these conditions around you like a first aid box. You are definitely going to need them. And not that you are never going to be able to find these people in hurry at the time of need. You have to train your army at the time of peace so that it can fight for you at the time of war. Don’t wait for a war to come. Be prepared. Best of Luck!