“Good riddance to 2020!” so many of us said this past New Year’s eve.  Unfortunately, when we woke up in 2021, little had actually changed.  But our expression is a good sign that we have hope that things can be better and carry within us the belief that it will.  I remind myself that for most significant things, change is slow and actually happens in small steps, little by little, day by day, week by week.  It got me thinking back to one of my very first posts about change being a process.  I thought now might be a good time, at the start of this much anticipated new year, to look more closely at one of the most popular models of how change happens and what we can do to support it.  Over the next few posts I will review each stage of change, starting with today’s overview of the change process.

Nature provides such wonderful examples of change as a process.  A caterpillar turning into a butterfly or the changing of the colors of the leaves remind us of slow transformation that usually involves a complex series of small changes.  But caterpillars don’t worry whether life as a butterfly will be better than life as a caterpillar, and trees don’t have to decide if they want to keep their leaves this year.  As thinking beings we have the capacity for refection, and thus bear responsibility to make choices in how we live.  Therefore, our thought processes are a major focus of understanding the change process and form the lens through which readiness for change is evaluated.

Also called the Stages of Change Model, the Transtheoretical Model was first developed by Prochaska and DiClemente in the late 70’s while studying smokers who were successful in quitting.  The researchers found that people quit smoking when they were ready to do so (surprise!).  They focused their model on the decision making that occurs in the process of becoming ready to change and assumes that people don’t change behaviors quickly and decisively, even if it may appear so to others.  Rather, change, especially of habitual behavior, occurs continuously through a cyclical process.  In order to help support change, understanding the stage of change in which a person is currently in helps to match the intervention to the period of time in which it should be most effective.  For example, giving someone the nicotine patch is not going to be very effective if they’re still wondering if it’s worth the effort to quit smoking.  Conversely, when someone’s in nicotine withdrawal, listing pros and cons of smoking may not be good timing, either (and bears a risk of getting clobbered).

One thought process that proves to be extremely helpful in the change process is motivation.  In order to make sacrifices or endure the discomfort of change that usually happens, either physically or emotionally, we have to have a significant level of motivation and desire for the change.  But motivation is not enough, it turns out.  We also have to have confidence and skill.  We need to know how we will make the change, so that when we apply our motivation, we can succeed.  If we don’t believe we’ll be successful, it’s hard to keep up our effort.  If we don’t have the skill, we’ll lose the confidence.  As you can see, it is indeed a cycle and a complex emotional and mental feedback loop to make and maintain change!

Understanding the level of readiness for any change is so important in keeping perspective about the change process.  Whether it’s on a very personal level of a change within yourself, or for a person you care about, or our society at large, change necessarily involves risk.  By having a better understanding of where things are currently for any change, it helps to identify more specifically what we can do to move it along most successfully.  Reminding myself that change is a process that takes time and sequential steps, moving forward and at times backward, helps me keep up my confidence and motivation.  And Lord knows we need both of these to get 2021 off to the good start we’ve been hoping for.