FIVE EASY STEPS TO CHANGING ANYTHINGIn order to bring about any change you need to be aware that something needs to be changed. So how do you become aware. There are many ways this can happen. You feel uneasy, uncomfortable, restless, depressed, down, heavy, sad, angry (hopefully not all at the same time). You notice something is not right. This may take the form of a physical ailment or a sickness. Your doctor will go through their routines, will do tests and will come up with an answer and will recommend a course of action. You follow it and there is no improvement. The awareness may comes from others. People notice that you are not yourself, or you are acting different, strange or unusual. These people can be very close to you or a complete stranger. Sometimes a big event may get you started at looking at improving your life: kids leaving home, change of career, losing your job, or loosing someone you are close to. A colleague may recommend that you see a counsellor, psychotherapist, naturopath, psychologist or even a psychiatrist. A TV program or a book can give you the “Aha”. Sometimes the awareness is sudden, sometimes it is gradual. It is your intuition (inner-tuition) that usually gets you to see this. The first step is awareness, moving from you don’t know that you don’t know (unconscious and unaware) to you know that you do not know (conscious and unaware) Here is an example. John gets depressed frequently. How did he become aware of that? His awareness came from ongoing self assessment. He often asked myself: how am I feeling? He also noticed sad feelings linger around longer than happy feelings. So John is now aware that he does not know how to handle these frequent down moods. He definitely wants to change this. Second step is accepting responsibility. A man was walking home at night. He takes out his keys and starts playing with them in his hand. About 20 meters before his house, at a particularly dark spot in the street, he drops them. He is distressed. He needs to find them. He starts looking for them and some passers by join to help. After about twenty minutes they turn to him and say “Are you sure you dropped them here?” He says: “No, I dropped them in that dark spot over there.” “Why are we looking for it under the street light then?” they ask. He replies: “There is more light here”. To bring about the change you need to take 100% responsibility of what you are experiencing and feeling. That way you can look for the keys where you should be looking (inside of you). You cannot fix your problem by changing someone or something else. Responsibility sometimes gets mixed up with blame. Responsibility is accepting that you may not be able to control what happens outside of you, but you can control what happens inside of you. Third step is to ask “How do I create this in my life?” This is the pivotal step of the whole process. The answer is: You choose certain thoughts which create certain feelings which lead to certain behaviours which you do not like. How do you put this step into practice? You become detectives. You search and search and search. You follow clues. You take notes. You journal things. You get the help of others (friends, colleagues, family, professionals). You follow the threads of symptoms back to the point they started. You look at your recent past: last five minutes, last hour or last day. “What did I do that got me to think X which led me to feel Y which led me to behave this way?” You will find it. If you are honest with yourself and persistent you will find the situations, circumstances, people, words, colours, phrases, music, smells, physical sensations that trigger the thoughts that lead to drinking, isolating, crying, screaming, withdrawing or lashing out, feeling stuck, depressed, uneasy or uncomfortable, restless, down, heavy, sad or angry. John traced his depressed moments to events that lead him to think that he is less than others (not smart enough, not skilled enough, not good enough, not rich enough, not charming enough) Forth step is closing the Gap You have done most of the work. You know the outcomes (feelings, emotions, behaviours) you do not like, you know you play a major part in it and you have identified the circumstances, situations and thoughts that created it. There is a time gap between what starts the snowball affect and you becoming aware of these unwanted outcomes. An event happens and a while later you have downed six drinks or stuffed yourself with the whole chocolate cake. The gap is the time between the trigger and the unwanted outcome. It is time to close this gap. As you already know what starts it, the triggers, closing the gap means identifying what is happening sooner than later. This develops a big level of self reliance. You are not changing anything yet. You are increasing your awareness. Notice what you do. Notice the sequence of thoughts. He said this, I did that, I felt this, I had six drinks (or ate the whole cake). Aim to notice this quickly. After a while you will get closer and closer to catching yourself doing this. Ultimately you will start catching yourself as you are STARTING to do it. Here is what John did. Every time he felt depressed he looked at what triggered it and how long after that did he notice the depressed feelings. Often it was hours or as much as a full day after the trigger. Eventually he got to get better at catching himself. Step five, time for change When you get good at catching yourself starting that unstoppable landslide of thoughts, feelings and emotions you have the power to nip it in the bud. The simplest way is to say, as loud as you can “STOP”. That will not only shock those around you but it will interrupt your process. Of course you can choose less dramatic things. You can develop a whole range of remedies. Here are some ideas:
There you have it. Once again let us summarise the steps:
As you do
this you will go from: We provide face to face counselling and coaching, as well as telephone and email consultations. Contact us at
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