- Long Term Change happens gradually
- We are all capable of making quick changes, but more often than not we want to make sustainable changes and that is a different (and much slower) process.
- We often give up or think of ourselves as a failure / lazy when we encounter a situation where we fall into old patterns rather than use the new ones we are trying to work towards.
- This happens because we’ve tried to use the new skill without really getting the hang of it first.
- When we want to change a behavior or pattern we need to start working on making changes in low stress situations and work on increasing the complexity only when we are able to do the new thing consistently in the low stress situation.
- Unfortunately, we can feel defeated because those high stress / more complex / difficult situations will still arise before we’ve been able to make the changes necessary to handle them in the new way.
- Those moments are not failures. They just arose before we were ready.
- The key is to stick to the gradual plan rather than give up. You will get there eventually.
When you learned how to drive, did you start on the highway? Probably not. You probably started in a parking lot, got your bearings, and gradually made your way to side streets, main streets, and eventually you got on the highway.
Often, when we try to change, whether it’s building a new habit or trying a new coping skill, we come into it with unrealistically high expectations of ourselves or others for how quickly that learning and growth process should be. Then, we can’t keep up with the activity or properly implement the skill and despite our interest or desire to change we lose hope, can start to feel like a failure, or we label ourselves (or others) as lazy or incapable.
This is because more often than not we start on “the highway” rather than in “the parking lot” with something new. The time to start working on learning how to take deep breaths to soothe your nerves is not when you’re at your wits end. It’s when you feel a little off.
The time to work on being more vulnerable with your partner is not when you’re feeling intense negative feelings, it’s when you feel pretty safe and comfortable with them and yourself.
The time to start working on taking a step back and pausing rather than saying something you might regret is when you’re a little irritated not fuming with anger.
Eventually, with time and practice you can work your way up to more complex situations. The goal is to get to those situations, but to be effective in them we can’t start with them or get to them before we’re ready.
The trouble for many people is that those difficult situations will continue to arise while you are working on building this new way of doing things. This can leave someone feeling like a failure because they fall into old patterns. But, the way to really make change is to accept that you will get to those more complex situations eventually and the way to get there is with lots of practice in simple(r) situations. See comments for more.
We must work our way up to situations with increasing complexity and intensity and we must do it gradually, otherwise we are not setting ourselves up for success or permanent change.
Notes:
- A “complex” situation may not seem “complex” at first. It may seem really simple, like “we were just trying to figure out who was going to load to the dishwasher” but what makes it complex is your mood, what your day was like before, how prepared you were for the conversation, what this relationship is like more generally, and how you felt about how the other person was reacting to what you were saying. How able we are to do new things is also diminished if we are hungry, tired, or in pain. Trust yourself. If it felt intense, it probably was.
- In this account I am going to offer you A LOT of suggested coping mechanisms, ways to think, and ways to potentially change how you approach yourself, others, and the world. You may, at times feel overwhelmed, or like you can’t keep it with you. THIS IS NORMAL AND HEALTHY. The only way to really integrate changes is to expose yourself again and again, stick with it, keep trying, and taking things bit by bit and chunk by chunk.
- When I do skills based work with clients, and I cover the materials I am sharing in this account, I tell folks to expect it to take two years for life to really be different and for these skills to feel seamless. Now, that doesn’t mean two years to see changes; progress and change can start right away – that means two years of learning, talking, revisiting, applying the skills, and then covering them all again and again until they become second nature (though they will probably always require some degree of intentionality). Two years may sound like a lot, but that’s with me teaching 50-100 skills. So if you’re only working on a handful of things it will and can go faster.
- Example: If you are trying to work on not saying something in anger that you might regret start working on it when you’re annoyed, irritated or angry (but at like a 1 or 2 out of 10). Anything beyond that, you want to just let go, tell yourself you’ll get there eventually, and stay working on those less intense situations. Once you can do that consistently, then try upping the scale to a 3 or 4 – or perhaps a situation where the outcome isn’t terribly important to you (like if you got overcharged for gas and you’re angry you may be more likely to challenge yourself to take a breather before speaking than if your family member who regularly drives you nuts says something irritating…again). Keep working up to increasingly important relationships (the more important the relationship the higher stress the situation may be), increasingly important topics (like getting a raise is going to more important than returning a 3 dollar item), increasingly difficult scenarios (like it’s going to be harder to keep your cool when you’re starving and tired then when you’re well fed and rested), and relationships with decreasing safety (like if you often feel judged by someone they are going to be harder to be vulnerable with than someone who you feel is accepting, supportive, and forgiving).
- You don’t have to have it all mapped out at first, that would be way too complicated. Just work towards looking for opportunities that feel accessible, keep trying, and work to reflect on what may have made a situation where you didn’t succeed stressful so you can be thoughtful about how to approach it again.