One of my clients had not long come out of prison. He was angry. He resented having been in prison for a number of years. Incongruously, he stated that he was now ready to change. And I say incongruously, because everything about his tone, his words, and his demeanour suggested that he was far from ready for change. He then applied for a training course. He completed the training and promptly got a job. A few weeks later he proudly showed me the receipt for the television that he had just bought. For the first time ever, and by his own admission, hundreds of televisions later, he now legitimately owned a TV. He really was ready for change, and there was no going back. So, where are you in all of this? Are you usually now sustaining change, or are your barriers still constantly holding you back?
There appears to be a turning point. A moment when the desire for change is so great that it seems to become an inevitability. The Satir Change Model refers to a point when the chaos and pain of remaining the same become so great that the challenges of change become almost appealing. Change is better than maintaining the status quo, because it cannot be as bad as the status quo.
My client had reached that point. While outwardly he was still presenting as unready or perhaps not there yet, inwardly he had already turned the corner. He was not going back. It had all been too dreadful, he had missed so much, and he was now on a mission. One of the presuppositions of NLP is to calibrate on behaviour. Words come and go. Behaviour tells us so much more. And my client’s behaviour was all about change.
Think about yourself for a moment. Possibly, you want to change and you’re not there yet. Potentially, you’re saying one thing and doing something very different. Alternatively, the pain of change may still feel too great, and your current situation needs to get a lot worse before the pain of change is more appealing.
Ask yourself how bad it needs to get. Do you really want to wait for that, or do you think you could perhaps start the change process now?
If you can do it, do it now. If you’re not sure, book a free consultation here, and then take the next step. You know that you can do it, and you know that it makes sense, don’t you?
