Keeping to the Path

How do we keep moving forward with change? How do we keep to the path we’ve so bravely mapped and set out on?

Just in the last few days, professionally and socially, I’ve had change conversations with someone being more assertive at work, someone being more assertive with their loved ones, someone who’s been sober for the best part of a year, someone considering giving up self-employment to go back into organisational life, someone looking to be more outward towards their stakeholders, someone looking to leave their partner….

In coaching, personal change and transformation is at the heart of our service. In friendship, the smorgasbord of roles is broader. TBD in another forum perhaps. Am usually up for a coffee (or a smorgasbord).

When implementing change, we talk about mindset shift as the initial, crucial underpinner of behavioural change. Arbinger’s Outward Mindset or Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset approaches outline the background and reasons for this, often with very pretty diagrams.

We talk of kissing ourselves over the edge into change, helping ourselves make that initial leap of faith into the unknown. ORSC has some great tools in this area.

We talk about building habits so that they become ingrained. Incremental baby steps. Atomic Habits (James Clear) and, in a different way, Stolen Focus (Johann Hari) are particularly good books in this field.

We talk too of support networks, the people around us who will help us on our way, e.g. our ‘Board’, our accountability partners, our midnight call, and other terms.

We talk of mapping out our path clearly, setting milestones, pacing ourselves, looking to determine potential challenges and risks, and all other good wayfinding practices.

We talk of aligning our path with our values, our true interests, and our strengths as appropriate.

We talk of building self-awareness to note potential triggers and signs when we’re starting to go astray.

We talk of building resilience, that sheer bloody-mindedness to keep going when it becomes a Billy Ocean song.

We talk of many things.

With the Western concept of being self-determining agents of our own destinies, this conversation is usually about what we ourselves can, should, and do, er, do. We talk less about the others around us. And yet this was the unifying theme of all the conversations I mention above. It was the perceived attitudes of the family, friends, work colleagues, and others. It ain’t me, buddy, it’s them.

As that naughty old Existentialist wrote,

Hell is other people

Depending on the progress of the change journey, this seemed to be the tone of the conversations… How will others react when I change? How will they respond to this new me? Will they undermine everything I’m doing? What do I do if they don’t like the new me? What do I do when they treat me like my old self? What do I do when they keep pulling me back into this old self?

The dialogue here is often tough. Embarking on a new way of being leads to change in our self-identity and who we believe we are to the world. We need to rethink our relationships and our roles in those relationships. Our own change impacts those around us in concentric ripples, maybe even waves. Loved ones can feel bewildered by what’s going on with us to the point of seeing themselves and their ways as rejected. It can be hard for those used to the old us not to take it personally. More strongly, it often forces them to explore and confront their own identity and their own ways of being.

If we’re feeling that others are threatening to derail our change ambition, here are some points to consider in addition to the above elements of support, resilience, etc…

• The famous Circles of Control / Influence. What can I control or influence about how others see and treat me? What is outside these circles?
• Reputation. What am I bringing to this situation? What is important to me about my reputation and how others see me? Which values and whose voices are in my head when I think about my self-identity? Why do I care what others think? What do my fears say about me and my commitment to change?
• Communication. Have I engaged and clarified to those important to me the reasons for the change, what I’m looking for, what I need from them, and all the rest? This is, loosely, the It’s not you, it’s me approach.
• Realignment. Am I ready and willing to do the dirty and reduce time spent with some people, even cut them out if necessary? It may not be for good, just till I’m up and running and established on my way. Remember I may need them in the future for further change. This is the who got me here won’t get me there approach.
• Empathy. Have I looked at what I’m doing from others’ perspectives and engaged accordingly? Do I understand their needs and views?
• Experience. What have I done in the past which helped or was less successful? What can I put into play now to help my circle of friends and family through this?

Fortunately, we’ve moved on from Lewin’s change model of Unfreeze – Change – Refreeze. It’s not a question of changing something and then thank you, ma’am, we’re done. We change and change again, evolving, developing, growing further. It’s a path, and pretty soon there’ll be another crossroads.

And in the end, people always surprise our expectations. We may well find that those we expected to be the most difficult are actually our strongest advocates and support.

Maybe hell is the absence of other people after all.

Julian

I help people lead their own way forward