The ingredients needed for change aren’t numerous or complicated:

1. Awareness of a problem.
2. An ability to observe the contributing factors to the problem.
3. Development of a plan.
4. Buy-in to a level of critical mass aka marketing.
5. Enough resiliency to stay with the change process
6. Humility, love and validation of successes.

This is an easy feat to accomplish.

Steps one-three are relatively straight forward, but deconstructing harm/challenge/inefficiency etc. can take time. I’ve worked on projects where deconstructing and understanding the problem were the hardest parts of the sequence. Discovering exactly what type of shit hit the fan requires patience. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had to ask “was this an intended or unintended consequence” over the years. Lol.

Number four is normally where people start to balk — there are so many coaches and healers still blowing smoke up people’s egos. I can’t tell you how many people have come back to me over the years and laughed at me when I said “at least three months”. They still want the easy button and there are still plenty of pretty people selling quick fixes.

To be fair, quick fixes do work for some. Not everyone needs the complete overhaul and most people who need real change are slow to move into awareness around it anyway. Our instant gratification society doesn’t help either. If someone comes to me fresh into their journey I almost always send them free resources first — or I recommend just an intuitive reading.

Throwing the kitchen sink at a newbie is ill advised.

Here’s why:

Once committed to change one of the very first things that happens for most is a big “oh fuck”. Fear kicks in. Insecurity kicks in. Worthiness issues kick in. Welcome to step five. It’s a doozy.

This is where the rubber hits the road, however, and the crisis of confidence is a very real phenomenon when change strategies come into play. This is often where someone starts to recognize what role self-sabotage plays in their lives.

If the individual (or organization) can hang with the discomfort long enough, however, the repeated esteemable choices start to beef up confidence and erode internal doubt. This is also where attachment to certain negative beliefs also comes into play. This is actually one of my favorite parts of the change management process.

Why?

Because new options start to avail themselves in this place. Old messaging from the past gets thrown out and while the change still takes time, being able to gain footing on old demons is a bit akin taking a baseball bat to bullshit and letting the old programming out with the trash.

It requires commitment too. And time. Again, not something that you can fix in one or two sessions. For individuals who already possess grounded self-awareness about their resistance points, this process is less inflammatory. Individuals new to “compassionate accountability” and “radical responsibility” often struggle here at first, however, and early intervention strategies are thus focused on training self-resourcing strategies.

As a facilitator in this space, I often remind people that what brought them into wanting change wasn’t overnight. Long term healing takes time and often can’t be completed in one change management cycle.

Most of my personal change arcs have taken me eighteen months from start to finish. If the change is in the organizational realm it can happen faster, but only if there is consistent organizational support.

Change. Is. Incremental.

Step six, while at the end, is actually best leveraged at all phases of this journey. Allowing someone to vocalize discomfort is important. Validating successes is really important. Developing shared language and a shared vision are important. I have found that these are best achieved when there is a culture of safety, trust and transparency present at all times.

Not all change initiatives follow this trajectory in a straight line either. Many times steps have to be repeated or shifted. The idea is to create enough structure to scaffold the changes but not so much to choke the natural flow of the process.

Like everything else, it’s a both/and. I hope this information was helpful. It feels like it may be helpful to many.

Thank you for coming to my “why change is hard” chat.