That phrase still makes my palms a little sticky. That’s because thirty two years ago “What Change?” was the exam question for one of my finals papers (to be clear, the only question on that particular paper): Three hours to shine or three hours to dig myself down into the abyss of drivel.
I guess I am still adding to that essay even now. (I got a First, so my original answer must have had at least some merit).
Change is a queer beast. I, like most, spend much of my time avoiding it. “A creature of habit” is how most would describe me. And yet at times in my life I have embraced big changes. Very big changes. Twenty years ago I gave up a career in the corporate world to become a therapist, substituting working with numbers for working with people. I was ready for that change – suffering with ME a few years previously had made me re-evaluate my priorities. There was no longer certainty that the world I was inhabiting was the best place for me.
For all of us, so much of life is about change – avoiding it, minimising it, managing it, planning for it, going with it, embracing it. “Change is the only constant in life” observed ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
Coronavirus is a time of collective change – it brings change for all of us. I was about to add ‘it is a natural disaster’ but then I hesitated – is the virus the disaster or is it more how we reacted to it that defines the disaster? Is it how we have as individuals or societies responded to the changes triggered by the virus that will define if this is a disaster or not?
Ordinarily, change is usually a choice – most often there is the safe option of doing nothing. If you contemplate changing your diet for example, you generally do have the option of sticking to your old way of eating (or falling back to that if the change fails). Equally if you are contemplating changing jobs, ordinarily ‘no’ is still an option.
For someone who normally avoids change, I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about it. My professional life (before Coronavirus put it on pause) was focussed on helping others with their change processes – changing posture, changing relationships with pain, changing dietary habits.
For many, these sorts of changes have a ‘do nothing’ option lurking in the background. This has a gravitational pull of its own and my job as a therapist is to coax patients away from that option and help keep them well away from it. The gravitational pull of ‘do nothing’ diminishes the further you can escape it.
Change can be a very sensitive subject – that saying about leading horses to water is no less true for humans. No one likes having change forced upon them – we all like to think we are in the driving seat. But I often think that the measure of the (wo)man is how quickly we can take back the steering wheel when life is hijacked.
And coronavirus has certainly hijacked most of us.
As we transition between two significant eras of human existences – ‘Before Coronavirus’ to ‘After Coronavirus’ – we are facing great changes. And for many of us those changes are without a ‘do nothing’ option – we have already been thrust into the orbit of change far from the gravitational pull of how things used to be.
Before I look at some of the tools of change, allow me a word or two of caution regarding the influence of others and Social Media in an era of change.
For those of us in the free-fall orbit ready for change, beware the gravitational pull created by others who are resisting change. Coronavirus has been the great divider: There are those who have lost loved-ones to the infection; there are very many more who have not. There are those whose jobs and careers will be little changed; there are those whose businesses and ways of working are lost forever. For some, lockdown has created an oasis of solace, safety and comfort; others have been straining against every restriction it has created.
Each of these responses to coronavirus and lockdown make their own motivations either for change or for keeping things as they are. No response is invalid and I believe also that no response should be used to invalidate any other. Alas, as schools partially reopen today, a battle between these opposing responses is raging. And as is so often the way in this modern era, Social Media is the arena where this battle is taking place. To me this is just an example of the conflicting responses people have to change – some are comfortable with change, others are not. Some expect the gravitational pull making change inconceivable for them, should make it equally inconceivable to you. If you are already in the free-fall orbit of change, equally understand that there are those who do not want to be there with you.
So if you are on a trajectory of change, enforced or self-selected, beware of sabotage. Use Social Media to promote and catalyse your changes but do not let the emotional ups and downs of that arena take you off your course. No one is in your shoes and that cuts both ways.
I know that many subscribers to Pampering Times are self-employed hands-on therapists (like myself). For most of us change is now inescapable. Coronavirus has hijacked our old ways of working and we need to be back in the driving seat.
Ever the analyst, this enforced change has made me think about my own relationship with the process of change itself. I thought therefore that this month I would share some of those thoughts with you.
My old life as a statistician still shapes much of how I think. One of those ways is the way I use models as a medium for understanding and communication of ideas. There are various models used to describe the process of change and one I often use is known as the ’trans theoretical model’ (TTM). In this model there are five stages of change:
- Precontemplation
- Contemplation
- Preparation
- Action, and
- Maintenance
Understanding each stage of a model and the processes/thoughts required to move between the stages is often a good source of insight. Let me start by introducing the five stages of this particular model in their clinical (non-coronavirus) context:
PRECONTEMPLATION:
This is the stage where you are unaware or in denial that change is needed. It is a comfortable place that many choose to inhabit. Using a postural example: “Everyone tells me I have good posture” might be the view of someone in this stage and yet that same individual may have chronic lower back pain, with no history of traumatic onset and is getting progressively worse. Clearly a heavy dose of denial.
I only occasionally see patients at this stage in the process – if they are in denial of any problem they will not usually be out seeking a solution. When I do see people at Precontemplation it is usually because a close relative has pushed them in my direction.
Ordinarily, just holding-up a mirror (real or figurative) to people in this stage can be enough to help coax them out. Promoting self-awareness is the therapist’s strongest tool here.
CONTEMPLATION
This is the first stage of acceptance that there has to be change. That ticking off from the GP that your eating habits cannot continue unchecked or the gentle coaxing from me that uncorrected bad postural habits will continue to cause pain are all likely reasons why they have moved from Precontemplation to Contemplation. But at this stage there is no plan, there is no commitment to act. The language is still uncertain; there is still fence-sitting. “I understand that losing a few pounds would help, but diets never work for me”, is the meta-language of this stage.
This can be the most fragile stage in the process as uncertainty, lack of encouragement and fear of failure can too easily let them slip back into Precontemplation. The barriers of denial are once more erected around the problem.
PREPARATION
“When the going gets tough the tough get going”. And the Preparation phase is where ‘the tough’ head-to next on their journey. This is where Contemplation starts to become a plan. This is where there is the first true embracing that change has to happen. Here change is seen for the first time as the catalyst and not the enemy.
But it is also the first place where costs and risks are weighed against the potential rewards. “Those changes to my diet could well help me lose weight but I am not sure I have the time needed to prepare the food”. “I can see those exercises will help with my posture, but what if I injure myself?”
Fighting ambivalence is the key to stopping someone falling back into Contemplation and never fully making it through the Preparation stage. The stronger the ambivalence, the greater the gravitational pull back to Contemplation. Ambivalence is expressed in the mixed feelings of “shall I, shan’t I” . If you are coaching someone on their journey through change, you must become attuned to their use of ‘change talk’ and ‘sustain talk’: “I really cannot carry on living in this much pain” versus “The last time I tried exercising it made it worse”. Reinforce their talk of change; coax them away from their talk of sustaining the old way.
ACTION
This the hardest stage. Up until now, the stages have been about mental awareness and preparedness for change. But at the Action stage the plans of the Preparation phase are put into motion requiring physical effort and energy expenditure. Everything feels new which can be both exhilarating and scary. This is where the risks of change are most evident and yet because often there are long lead times between effort and reward, it is where the change journey can be self-sabotaged. Any remaining fears and ambivalence can scupper the plan of action. The conversation during the Action phase might sound like: “I started the new diet and at first it was really difficult to make time to make all the food from scratch. But now I am getting into a rhythm with it.”
MAINTENANCE
Maintenance is often not considered as a separate phase but just a measure that the Action phase has been adhered to for long enough that it has become the new ‘norm’.
“Moving with this new posture feels so comfortable now – I hardly ever have to think about it”.
There are still risks here of descending back into the old ways of thinking and acting but the longer the new actions are followed, the risk of this diminishes.
So there is the TTM model for looking at the process of change as I would have used it in the ‘pre-coronavirus’ world.
But can it tell us anything useful for the new way of things? I believe it can. I think it is something that may allow those of us ready for change better able to embrace that change and give it some structure. For those not yet ready for change, it may reveal where your road blocks are and help us identify those blockages in others.
There are three coronavirus-triggered change processes I want to consider in the context of this model:
- The change many of us now face because our old way of working is no longer likely to be available to us;
- The change process that took is into lockdown;
- The change process we face in order to come out of lockdown.
One first thing I should note here is that all of those changes are to some greater or lesser extent externally driven. They are going to be uncomfortable to us all until you have taken back the steering wheel.
CHANGE 1
I do not have any statistics on this but I believe most of us would have been in the Precontemplation stage with regard our careers and working life prior to coronavirus. All of us in denial that anything needed to change. When you are on the treadmill of life, it is easier just to keep going. It works. “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broken”.
I think coronavirus and in particular lockdown, deposited many of us into the Contemplation stage whether we wanted it or not. It held that mirror up against us to reveal some inner truths. My own personal experience was that lockdown created some breathing space and some thinking space. At first there was almost a bereavement stage – my working life had been taken from me and I was mourning its loss. But then the sense of space and the freedom that that generates began to manifest itself.
After a few weeks, I realised I had already drifted into a Preparation stage. With hindsight there were two things I learnt during the Contemplation phase:
- The reality of a post-lockdown world was that my old way of hands-on working was probably not going to be possible for quite some time and indeed it may never quite be the same again. I need to enter Preparation for a new way of working that would be forced on me.
- I had enjoyed the intellectual freedoms of lockdown too much to want to let them go after lockdown! Even if my old way of working were instantly available to me again, I might not want it!
For those of us where the old way of working is probably no longer an option, the risks and fears that might normally thwart change are no longer going to be the points of weakness in our action plans. Specifically, one of the barriers of moving from Contemplation to Preparation in the ‘normal’ world is the excuse that “life just gets in the way”. But of course for many of us in lockdown life is on pause: That excuse is now laid bare!
The Preparation and Action phases have already started for me. New ideas, new training, new thoughts on where I will be in five years. Lockdown is the time to be productive on plans.
What I think is interesting is my perception of others’ experience of lockdown. Many people have not been forced into Contemplation – they are still in Precontemplation. This could be because although they will feel the restriction of lockdown as much as the rest of us, their livelihoods will have been little changed by lockdown and will still be available to them post lockdown. Yes, lockdown and social distancing are big imposed changes but they will be temporary – there is an ‘old life’ waiting for them to go back to. This of course does not mean that change might not benefit people in this category (like my earlier examples of people in Precontemplation), it is just that considering change has not been forced upon them by lockdown: Lockdown has not made them stare into the mirror!
[As an interesting statistical aside, this latter group in the Precontemplation stage with little loss of income or livelihood because of lockdown are far more likely to want lockdown to continue. They have the least to gain and fear they have the most to lose from easing lockdown. Those like myself in the Preparation/Action stage are those most wanting lockdown to ease as we have the most to lose and the least to gain from continuing lockdown.]
CHANGE 2
Introducing lockdown was of course a change process in its own right but not one any of us had a say in. It was sudden, not negotiated nor negotiable. Overnight we were forced through all five stages of this model of change from Precontemplation to Maintenance.
The moment my perception of lockdown changed was when I realised that I could put myself back in control. Accepting that change was then so much easier once I was back at the helm: For the first time in a long time, I actually controlled how I spent my days. That was a truly liberating feeling.
And this is a great learning point for me – whenever I use the change model with patients in the future, I now know just how uncomfortable it is being dragged through the five stages of change with someone else in the driving seat. Putting the client back at the helm is so important. Forcing someone to the Maintenance stage is not a robust or enduring solution to change. Note to self: In future, I need to learn to ease back more and let the clients drive their own changes!
CHANGE 3
And there is of course the third change process that we all need to face sometime and sometime soon: Coming out of lockdown (in addition to the change process many of us are facing with regard new ways of working post lockdown). Whether it is venturing into ‘non essential shops’ for the first time or the return of the first children to school, we cannot stay in lockdown forever. Emerging from lockdown is just as much a five stage change process from Precontemplation to Maintenance and one we all need to Contemplate and Prepare for.
Some, like me, are itching to be out – we have been long enough in the Preparation stage and so now need to be in the Action stage. But there are others very definitely afraid of coming out.
This has made me aware of just how fear can be a strong motivator to stay in the Precontemplation phase. I would say that fear has been as pandemic as the virus so far in 2020 and for many it has been paralysing. Lockdown with its physical and mental barriers to the outside world has offered many protection, real or imaginary, from their deepest fears. And so it will be hard for these people to let go of their places of safety and sanctuary.
Many of these people are still in the Precontemplation stage of their change process out of lockdown. Even though shops and schools are re-opening and more of us can meet-up, those most afraid are still in Precontemplation. They do not see the need to come out yet and so are not ready to do so. Even though the Contemplation and Preparation stages of change do not need them to have ventured out yet, those who are most afraid cannot even contemplate those stages. Their fear has paralysed them and is imprisoning them in the Precontemplation stage. Regrettably I think Social Media plays a disproportionate role in spreading and sustaining that fear and the most vulnerable seem to absorb that propagated fear more than most.
Here I would use some of the techniques of motivational coaching to help these people migrate to the Contemplation and Preparation stages. Empathy goes a long way as does affirming the positives and reflecting compassion. Avoiding falling into the ‘righting reflex’ – giving unsolicited advice – is useful too. Understand their fear and gently place a mirror up against it for them. Let them find their own cues to releasing it.
Help them on their journey from Precontemplation to Contemplation and then on to Preparation. They do not have to come out yet, but get them at least thinking in that direction.
I hope those few insights may help in some way with your journey through lockdown and beyond or make you better able to understand the journey of others around you.
Coronavirus has been, and will continue to be, a date with change – let it be a fruitful union.
At a time when we cannot embrace each other, perhaps this is more than ever the time to embrace change.