No One Can Make Me But Me

This past Thursday I was on a Seattle Metro Transit bus heading to the airport when this sign was directly across from me. It’s part of an ad campaign for a smoking cessation program, but you can replace the word “quit” with any other word, and it remains an equally powerful and true message.

What I love about this message is that it cuts to the core of the change process – lasting change has to come from within. Your spouse, significant other, coach, or doctor can ask you to make a change, and give you dozens of great reasons to do so, but until you actually OWN it — making the change and all of the consequences that go with it — it doesn’t matter.

The change process isn’t nearly as straightforward as you would think (or even like it to be). The Transtheoretical Model of change used in health psychology identifies six different stages that people can be in during the change process. Everyone goes through all six stages, and oftentimes will shift among them several times before finally changing their behavior for good.

I’ll use giving up the nightly ice cream cone as an example of a behavior that could be changed. (Disclaimer: I’m a fan of ice cream, so I’m not saying it’s bad — I just had to pick an example).

Pre-Contemplation

A person in pre-contemplation doesn’t feel the need to change, and from their perspective isn’t even in the change process. They may know that they want to lose 20 pounds, but don’t see a correlation between the ice cream and the 20 pounds. The ice cream is a part of the evening ritual — something that is looked forward to and enjoyed.

Contemplation

Someone contemplating change doesn’t really want to give up the behavior, but is sure ready to be done with the side effects. In the case of our ice cream lover, they are starting to ge behind the idea that maybe the ice cream isn’t helping the weight loss effort, but they really don’t want to give it up yet. It’s at this stage where the helpful friend will often start offering suggestions and send the person right back to pre-contemplation.

Preparation

The preparation stage is exactly what it sounds like — it’s where the research, planning, and murphy-proofing is done in preparation for change. Since the ice cream is part of the evening ritual, the job becomes finding either lighter fare or a non-food ritual to replace the ice cream. Finding a support network is an important component here as well.

Action

There has been a lot of work to get to this point, but here is where the rubber meets the road and things come to fruition. It’s a day-by-day challenge to not eat the ice cream — here is where having gone thorough preparation and calling upon the support network are critical.

Maintenance

Once the goal is met, the challenge is staying there. Maintenance is the stage during which a person needs to remain on his or her guard against reverting back to old habits. Statistics have shown that individuals typically remain in Maintenance 6 months to 5 years.

Termination

Termination is only achieved once the process becomes automatic. For our ice cream lover, the temptation of the evening ice cream is gone. It doesn’t mean he or she will never eat ice cream again, but it’s no longer associated with the ritual and there is no danger of falling back in to that habit.

And, of course, because it is a process, there are always going to be relapses. The wheels simply come off and the individual reverts back to an earlier stage in the change model. Our bodies are resistant to change (it literally requires more energy to change than not to), so relapsing should be accepted as a part of the process – it’s something to be learned from.

Change is a complicated process, and making it through start to finish takes a really long time. It’s why OWNING what you are going to change is so critically important.

What are you going to change?