6 Steps to: Change

Change is often thought of as a single moment: you decide and then you do! [Or else you don’t, which leaves you feeling like a failure, so you give up.]

It can be much more helpful to understand change as a process, involving several steps:

• What change?
  Initially, change isn’t even on your radar

• Umm I don’t know…
  You’ve started to consider a shift but you’re still not entirely convinced

• I’m on my way
  You’re more committed, you have plans and you’ve even made a few small adjustments

• Yes!
  You’ve jumped in and you’re practising your new ways

• Done and dusted
  Your new behaviours are firmly established

• Oops
  You’ve relapsed but that’s entirely normal. You’ve learnt from what happened and now you’re back on track.

When you understand that change isn’t just succeed/fail and when you see that different stages are involved, you can start designing action steps that correspond to the stage you’re at.

And THEN? You can start making great change happen.