Set a date Setting a time frame is critical for behavior change. Choosing a date to begin can help prevent both premature action and prolonged procrastination, and can help make your action as convenient as possible. The date should be realistic, but it should also be scheduled as soon as possible, so you can capitalize on your decision-making momentum. If you are truly ready for action, choose a date within the next month. Delaying your action date for much longer than that only risks unforeseen circumstances that can interfere with your plan. Deciding to delay the date is a good sign that you are still in the contemplation stage.
Once you commit yourself to an action date, guard against finding excuses or reasons to delay it, which can weaken your will. Plan to complete whatever preparations, and—rather than waiting for a magic moment—take responsibility for taking action on the date. Be realistic about the nature of the tasks ahead. Underestimating the challenges of change can lead to cockiness and overconfidence. Wishful thinking about the ease of change will lead to disappointment, which in turn may contribute to ineffective action.
While there are no perfect times for action, some are unquestionably better than others. The summer months, like the holidays, tend to be times for self-indulgence rather than self-discipline. Deciding to change when the external environment is most supportive—on New Year’s Day or after a birthday—can be helpful. These are auspicious times to reevaluate your life and take action to enhance it.
Go public Don’t make the mistake of keeping your commitment secret. Going public with your intended change increases anxiety, since you may feel embarrassed if you fail. Public commitments are more powerful than private pledges. When you go public, you enlist the sympathy of others, and allow them to understand your behaviors as they change.
Don’t keep it in the family. Tell your colleagues and your neighbors, write friends and relatives. Some people even put a short advertisement in the newspaper, announcing that on a certain date they will quit smoking or start losing weight, and that they will not be responsible for their moods.
It takes courage to go public, but remember: Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to act in the face of fear.
Prepare for a major operation Many changes—quitting smoking or drinking, losing weight, reducing stress, or becoming active—involve a psychic surgery that is as serious as many life-saving operations. The date you set to make your change is as important as one for coronary bypass surgery or chemotherapy. Change is powerful and real. Throw yourself fully into overcoming your problem, and spend the time and emotional energy your recovery will require.
Preparing for psychic surgery means that you and those who support you put the operation first and everything else second. Changes in your mood, in your relationships, in your work performance, and in other areas should be accepted as consequences of the all-important work that will soon enhance your life. This much disruption may last for several weeks or more. Top priority must be given to recovering from your problem behavior; other areas of your life may suffer for a short while as a result.
Create your own plan of action An effective plan of action, employing all the information obtained during the contemplation stage, can include helpful hints from others who have made a similar change. Listen to your friends’ advice (but don’t assume that their successful plans will work for you). Look also to books and other literature, and to support groups that deal with your problem. There is no dearth of action-oriented plans out there, and many of them contain valuable information. But to maximize commitment, the final plan must be yours.
Why is it so important to develop your own plan? Once I was in a drugstore waiting for a prescription to be filled. At the checkout counter there was a display of six different items offering “effective” ways to quit smoking. There was gum, a package of tablets with audio tapes, a series of nicotine-reducing filters, and so on. All the packaging featured testimonials from smokers who had quit successfully using that particular method. Were these people lying? Are all of these methods equally good?
The skeptic would say, “None of them is any good.” Indeed, there are ineffective methods, offered by charlatans. But any program that is based on sound theory, research, and experience will produce successful change for some people. How each method works is not always clear. What is certain is that one key element for success is the confidence the individual has in the program he or she is using. To a large extent, success depends on using a plan that you believe works; if you create the plan yourself, that belief becomes much stronger.
Your plan for action may be lengthy or short, but it must be specific. At this point, you may already have completed the precontemplation and contemplation stages, and begun the work of this stage. Your plan should list a variety of techniques for coping with any expected barriers to change. Make sure to review your previous attempts to change: They hold valuable information about your own barriers. And pay attention to the external environment—which may indicate stress, too many activities, or problems at work—and your current internal state, which may reveal low self-confidence or negative thinking. Address these barriers to change and include techniques to overcome, avoid, or circumvent them.
Here is a rather simple example of an action plan: To quit smoking, a number of years ago, Carlo scheduled the date at the most convenient time possible, the end of the semester. He smoked more cigarettes than usual the week before quitting in order to increase his disgust with the habit, and he stocked up on gum and mints to help satisfy his oral cravings. His firm commitment to this simple but detailed plan, his understanding of the problem and his behavior, and his vision of himself as a nonsmoker helped make his attempt a success.
Chapter 10, which gives specific strategies for taking you through the cycle of change with three common problems, contains other more complex action plans. However, your own thoughtful action plan is the best one for you.
Commitment self-assessment
Here is a brief self-assessment to check your progress with commitment. Once again, be honest and realistic. Fill in the number that most closely reflects how frequently you have used the methods below in the past week to combat your problem.
1 = Never, 2 = Seldom, 3 = Occasionally, 4 = Often, 5 = Repeatedly
FREQUENCY:
____ I tell myself that if I try hard enough I can change my problem.
____ I make commitments against giving in to my problem.
____ I use willpower to keep from engaging in my problem behavior.
____ I tell myself I can choose to change or not.
____ = Score
In order to be ready to take effective action, your score on this self-assessment should be 14 or higher. If your score is lower, you have more work to do on the commitment process before you can move forward successfully.
GAIL PREPARES
Preparing a plan for a new low-fat diet and aerobic exercise program was easy for Gail. Finding time to put the plan into action was not. But she knew she had to make a big commitment; she told herself that a halfhearted effort now would leave her with an unhealthy heart later. Opening up time in her schedule to accommodate the plan became her first priority, and her first chore.
There was an aerobics class that started at 6:30 A.M. at a local health club. First she considered taking out a monthly membership, but decided to take the initially more costly step of enrolling for a year. Gail enlisted Dan’s help with the morning routine, which gave her the extra time she needed to take the class. Even so, she could only restructure her schedule enough to take two classes a week, but at least this got her started.
Gail began her diet by focusing on low-fat substitutes for some of her favorite foods. She also allowed herself to consume certain fattening foods at one meal a day. This way she didn’t feel deprived. She asked Dan to hide his favorite junk foods, especially potato chips and blue corn chips, since these were the high-fat foods she turned to when looking for a fast fix. When the chips were no longer within easy reach, Gail fou
nd she could stop, think, and talk herself out of her cravings, where before she had automatically satisfied them.
Dan actively supported Gail’s new lifestyle. At his request, she detailed the things that he could do to help her; in past efforts at dieting she had asked for his help, but then scolded him for nagging whenever she decided to break her commitment. He was wary of falling into these old patterns, and by clearly setting out what each expected of the other, Dan and Gail came up with some ground rules that both were comfortable with. He was willing to try some new, healthier restaurants that offered low-fat alternatives. He hid his most tempting junk food. Most important of all, he reinforced Gail in her morning aerobics classes and in her healthier eating habits.
Gail also went public with her commitment. She let her colleagues know she was committed to a healthier lifestyle, so that they would not offer her snacks during coffee breaks. When she and Dan hosted a dinner party for their friends, she prepared a selection of delicious, low-fat dishes, proving that her diet was no barrier to entertaining. Without pressuring them to follow her example, Gail also enlisted their friends’ support for her dieting efforts.
HELPING RELATIONSHIPS DURING PREPARATION
Whenever someone decides to change, the people close to that person are affected, sometimes greatly. Our partners, spouses, and other helpers can play an important role during the preparation stage. Since preparation usually involves noticeable changes, it is virtually impossible to disguise them from your spouse or close friends. So, if you have not yet enlisted them in your crusade, this is the time to do so.
You need support from others even if you decide against going public. Be assertive in asking others for their consideration, especially in those difficult situations when you need to overcome the barriers to change. If you are stressed and feeling overwhelmed, for example, ask for help. Set up your situation at work and home to free up your energy for change.
Going public makes things somewhat easier. When you announce your planned change to others, you also can advise them how they can be most helpful. People who love you are willing to help, but don’t always know how. Don’t depend on their reading your mind and understanding your needs. Offer them instead a comprehensive list of “dos and don’ts.” For example:
Don’t keep asking how I am doing.
Don’t nag me.
Offer to help when I look overwhelmed.
Tell me how proud you are that I am doing this.
The first few days will be the most difficult as you begin to shift your routine and change your old ways of handling things. It is tempting, and in fact quite easy, to give up during those initial days or weeks. At this time, support from others can help tremendously. Prepare your helpers by letting them know when you are going to implement your action plan, and by asking them to be tolerant when you are on edge. Ask them directly for their attention and help during this time. When people know why you are being difficult, they can be much more understanding.
THE PRINCIPLES OF PROGRESS
One morning I was in my study revising a complex manuscript that contained fifteen profiles of smokers in four stages of change. A colleague, Wayne Velicer, the first author on this paper, was making a sophisticated case for there being three types of changers in each stage. Suddenly, it struck me that his sophisticated case could probably be reduced to a few fundamental principles for progressing across the stages.
Quickly, I took out a manuscript I had mailed to a scientific journal earlier. This manuscript contained the twelve graphs shown in Figure 4. These graphs involve the relationships between the pros and cons of changing and the stages of change for twelve different problem behaviors. The horizontal axis represents the five stages of change: PC = Precontemplation; C = Contemplation; P = Preparation; A = Action; and M = Maintenance. The vertical axis represents the importance of the pros and the cons for people at each stage of change for each problem behavior.
The graphs show that for all twelve problem behaviors, the cons of changing are more important than the pros for people in the precontemplation stage. The opposite is true for people in the action stage in eleven out of twelve problems.
Figure 4. Relationships Between the Pros and Cons and the Stages of Change
That morning I had a feeling I had experienced only a few times before when I had explored something unknown and unexpected. I felt as if the back of my head had opened up and light was pouring in. My eyes felt as if they were on fire—with an intense glow enlightening the raw data in front of me.
First, I noticed that the pros of changing always increase from precontemplation to contemplation. The first principle of progress is, therefore, that if you are to advance from precontemplation to contemplation, you must increase your perception of the pros of changing your problem behavior. Don’t worry about the cons of changing at this stage. They come later.
Next, the cons of changing always decrease from contemplation to action. The second principle of progress states correspondingly that if you are to advance from contemplation to action, you must decrease your perception of the cons of changing your problem behavior. Don’t worry about the pros of changing at this stage. They come earlier.
After these quick insights, I nevertheless suspected there might be more information to be had. After all, those graphs represented eighty thousand data points from over three thousand individuals from twelve different groups of self-changers. If there were generalizations to be made about human behavior change, these graphs were likely to hold the key.
What I noticed next was that the pros seemed to increase more than the cons decreased. I got out one of my high-technology tools—a ruler—and measured the maximum increase in the pros between precontemplation and action and the maximum decrease in the cons. To my amazement (and the amazement of every behavioral scientist who has seen these results), it became evident that two mathematical ratios underlie the two principles of progress mentioned earlier. I found that across the twelve problem behaviors, the pros increased an average of 10 T points. Across the twelve problem behaviors, the cons decreased an average of 4.96 T points.*
My wife, Jan, was home reading in the living room. I ran in in a frenzy, shouting about the amazing discoveries I had just made. I couldn’t believe it. It was too good to be true. Nothing like this had ever been found before. In her calm way, Jan communicated her concern that I might be getting a little manic. I must say I felt a little manic. I was having trouble believing my eyes or my mind.
But I was prepared to go back into my study and subject my precious principles of progress to the riskiest tests available. I was prepared to destroy in the afternoon what I had discovered in the morning. This is the terrible obligation of a scientist: You must be prepared to falsify what you most want to believe is true.
So, I took out an article we had published the previous year, containing data on 1464 smokers in the first 3 stages of change. I predicted that from precontemplation to preparation the pros of changing would increase 10 T points. They increased 9.6 points. I predicted the cons would decrease 5 T points. They decreased 5.6 points.
I felt I had just opened, like some latter-day Pandora, the lid that had kept two tremendously potent principles of behavior change hidden for centuries. I knew that the power of science can always be used for good or ill. I pictured the magnates in the tobacco industry being the first to organize ad campaigns around these principles to prepare kids for smoking.
But fears such as these can’t stop science. When you’re a scientist, you have to share whatever truths are revealed to you. I called a meeting at our research center and showed my colleagues what I had discovered. Words like “amazing,” “incredible,” and “thrilling” peppered their comments.
Early in this research, I had worried that self-destructive behaviors, and our attempts to be free of them, were as indeterminate as electrons, whose speed and location can never simultaneously be ascertained. Certainly it was possible that action based on personal freedom could follow som
e principles of indeterminacy. Maybe people made unpredictable “quantum leaps” from one stage of change to the next, and my hunch that there was some pattern to it was merely a reflection of my emotional need to help people. If change were unstructured, we could not have helped people get rid of unwanted problems. They would simply have had to rely on a roll of the dice—with which, in spite of what Einstein said, I once worried that maybe God was playing.
After a time it became apparent that self-change was neither indeterminate nor unstructured. With all our prior discoveries, nothing prepared us to recognize the degree to which self-change may be predicted.
Behavioral and social scientists are pleased as punch whenever they can predict which variables make a difference in human behaviors. But they have never been able to predict the magnitude of those variables. Predicting the magnitude of the differences on key variables has historically been the provenance of physics and other lawful sciences. As the director of the Addictions Center at the famous Maudely Hospital in London said when he saw our research, “Behavioral research has never behaved this way before.”
To appreciate these two mathematical principles of progress, you need to know that on our tests, 10 T points equals 1 standard deviation. A standard deviation (S.D.) is a measure of how a given score varies or deviates from the average or mean of a population. With IQ tests, for example, the mean of a population is set at 100 and a S.D. is 15. People who vary 2 S.D.s above the mean (IQ = 130) are considered gifted, while those who vary 2 S.D.s below the mean (IQ = 70) have traditionally been considered mentally retarded. This gives some measure of the relative significance of a standard deviation. Raising your IQ 15 points would clearly make a major difference in your life. Keeping this in mind, let’s examine our two principles.
Changing for Good Page 14