The Climb: A fictional short-short story

Gratitude is Overrated

Baby Steps or Cold Turkey?

"I Want to Change. Really I Do!" A fictional short-short story

On Change

Transformers: 7 Ways People Have Changed Their Life Fast

Many people would love their life to be transformed instantly, And just occasionally, I've seen that happen. My Psychology Today article today lists the triggers I've most often seen.

4 Approaches to Change: advice-offering, rational-emotive behavior therapy, motivational messages.

He can’t stop pigging out. She can’t stop worrying. He can’t stop his substance abuse.

Even good psychotherapists (and advertisers) have a hard time getting people to change. It’s been said that it takes six to nine exposures to an ad to get someone to change their brand of toilet paper!

So, there are no magic pills yet. Best we can do, in our own lives and in trying to shepherd others to change, is to have a toolkit of interventions to draw from.  My PsychologyToday.com article today describes four widely used ones.

On the Difficulty Of Getting People to Change

My most well-received tip is the Traffic Light Rule: an antidote to long-windedness. Yet even when clients claim to want to use it, despite guided practice and homework, they rarely do. I explore why in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

"A Person of substance: The interior and exterior life of a morbidly obese person

Today, I wrote a short-short story to encourage us to think about what we want to accept about ourselves versus commit to change. It's my PsychologyToday.com article today. 

The Scholar: A short-short story about change

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I tell a short-short story about a professor who stood firm in the face of his field's change.

Should You Stop Trying to Change Yourself?

Change is much harder than the change industry would have us believe. Many shrinks, how-to writers, and TV exhorters from Oprah to Suze Orman to Rick Warren make it sound easy: "Just do what I say."

It ain't that easy, at least for my clients and for me:

My cold-call reluctant clients rarely get comfortable cold-calling. My math-challenged clients rarely become good at math. My shy clients rarely become social.

I know I should eat broccoli not cheese, be laid-back not intense, cheerful not dour, but I can't make myself do any of them for very long. Nothing helps: reminders, accountability, looking at supposed childhood roots, nothing.

We are mainly a function of our genes and early environment. Defying those ain't easy. So might we all be wiser to  accept ourselves basically as-is and simply find the work, relationships, and recreations that don't require us to make major changes?

You can tune-up a Prius all you like but it will never win a race against a Porsche.  But a Prius, in its context, is most worthy in itself.

Change Can Sometimes Occur Quickly

I watched my client and now friend Jeffrie Givens sing at a student recital. Her voice was lovely but throughout the performance, she stood still, arms at her sides.

I suggested that at the next recital, "You sing Queen Latifah's supersexy song from Chicago, When You're Good to Mama, Mama'll Be Good to You. And your job is to be a performer, not just a singer. To learn the difference, watch YouTube videos of singers who really perform--for example, Bette Midler, Gladys Knight, Queen Latifah. Your job is to perform as big as they do."

The next time I saw her sing, she had made a total transformation: she was as animated and entertaining as Gladys Knight is.

Next, I said, "Now, you're going to try out for a role in a musical at the Woodminster Amphitheatre." It's a 1500-seat venue that hosts semi-professional musical plays. She sang that song at her audition, and lo and behold, although she's never taken an acting course in her life, never auditioned for anything in her life, she was cast in Brigadoon.

Next week, she auditions for a major part in Rent.

The embedded lessons about change:
1. Change is often best facilitated by demonstrating models of the desired change.
2. It can more effective to try for an instant total transformation than incremental change.
3. Change is more likely when someone is pushing you, believing in you.
4. Create high-stakes motivation to change. In this case, her first motivation was to do much better in front of the recital audience. The next motivator was to get to be in a high-quality production of a play in a huge venue.