Mindworks Coaching Montreal

We all know the process of change is slow and painful. It takes time to change and often it seems like a hopeless struggle. We tell ourselves we should change and sometimes might even decide we have to, but we find ourselves stuck in our old ways. We try and fail. Sometimes we know what we need to do but we don’t do it. We know from firsthand experience that change doesn’t happen overnight.
But what if we’re wrong?

Whether it’s a habit, a behaviour or a personality trait, experts agree it takes 21 days to change, and this is true if you try to wing it with willpower alone. They suggest you write down a plan, list the benefits to you, take daily action and finish it off with the best advice of all; “Don’t give up!” 21 gruelling days just to make a change?

Brian Tracy says that “Bad habits are easy to develop but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to develop but easy to live with.” We can all identify with this but surprisingly enough, modern psychology no longer holds the belief that change has to be slow and painful. The most recent form s of conventional psychology such as Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) promise change that’s pretty quick. Advocates of CBT claim that change can happen in hours and not years!

So where did the belief that change is slow and painful come from? The answer is Freud. When he created psychoanalysis in the 1890s, he said “to effect a cure with psychoanalysis will take 100-300 hours. This therapy will not be for the poor.” Back then you needed not just plenty of time, but plenty of money.

Sure, with psychoanalysis it will take 100-300 hours. It’s a long hard journey from Montreal to Vancouver if you take a horse and carriage (method of transport of choice in Freud’s time) but why bother when you can hop on a plane? The field of psychology has come a long way since Freud’s time.
Freud’s idea was that if you understood your problems they would somehow disappear. If you find out why you have the problem, the insight will lead to change. But it’s doesn’t work that way. You can know everything about why you have a problem, dig deep into the past and gain all the understanding in the world and still be the same. To change, you have to know how. You don’t need to understand why you are a certain way, but how you keep being that way. Then you just have to stop it.

The truth is we change all the time. Has anyone ever said something to you that changed your life? Have you ever read something that transformed you?

There is something you probably haven’t realized about any problem you have and that is that one day it wasn’t there… and the next day it was. To acquire a problem, be it a habit, compulsion or self-defeating behaviour, a case of rapid change was necessary. What’s interesting about that is that if one day it wasn’t there and the next day it was, one day it can be there and the next day it can be gone.

A phobia is an exquisite example of rapid change. A phobia is a case of what is known as one-trial learning. Due to one traumatic event, a person will regularly, methodically and consistently produce the same reaction of massive fear every time they are faced with the same stimuli. I can barely remember to take out the garbage, but a phobic will never ever forget to be afraid. Don’t you wish you could learn something so thoroughly that fast? People acquire problems very quickly. So there’s no reason why it should take any longer to pick up something else.

Indeed, change is learning. Humans are learning machines. We are learning all the time. Change is also about learning to change and learning how to change. One of the biggest challenges people face is to get out of their own way. Get out of your own way and change becomes much easier.
We think change doesn’t happen overnight, but in fact it does. If change can happen quickly, why do we find it so hard?

When it comes to change, most of us want to change behaviours. We want to change habits, put an end to automatic reactions or stop acting a certain way. We try to change our behaviour with willpower, which is precisely what you have to do if you want it to be a struggle. Your behaviour is the result of deeper programming. It’s like a symptom of what is going on behind the scenes in the mind. Behaviour doesn’t happen for no reason, and it certainly doesn’t happen regularly, consistently and effortlessly and resist your efforts to change it for no reason. If you want to change your behaviour, you have to change what is causing it.

Behind any behaviour we engage in, no matter how self-defeating or destructive, there are certain drives and intentions. There are values, beliefs, assumptions and associations. It is at this level that changes need to be made for change to be effective and lasting. When you change what’s behind the behaviour, the behaviour changes effortlessly.

But there is something else that stops us from changing and it’s their beliefs about change. Most people have a great deal of faith in the idea that change is slow and painful and that they simply can’t change. They believe that problems are solid and fixed and see them as a permanent state of being. The problem with this is that our beliefs are like the software of the mind. A belief will become a self-fulfilling prophecy in that we will search for evidence to confirm our beliefs and discount evidence to the contrary. What’s more is that a belief becomes a command to the nervous system. If the signal you are sending through your mind is that change is slow and difficult, all your efforts to change will be in vain.

What if the only thing stopping you is your beliefs about the speed of change? To free ourselves from the prison of problems, the first thing we need to do is think differently about problems and change.
Every once in a while I work with a client who just doesn’t think it’s possible for change to happen so quickly. I hear beliefs such as “change has to be slow,” “it’s hard to change,” “it takes time and effort to change.”

One of my clients recently told me that change was a slow process for him. I asked him, “How slowly will you change that?” He looked at me and said, “That is a very good question.”
I recently worked with a client who had experienced rapid change in our work together and told me that even though she has experienced it, she still couldn’t believe it. Her justification was that if she had had a problem for twenty years, we can’t change it in a couple of hours.

Well, what if we can? If you’ve had it for twenty years should it take another twenty to change? I looked at her in the eye and said, “You do realize that one day twenty years ago you did not have this problem, and then the next day you did. That was some pretty rapid change, was it not?” She thought that was a very good point.

Another way in which we fool ourselves is by perceiving problems as solid and fixed. Although the word “problem” makes it sound like a thing, a problem is actually a process we engage in. Any problem you have is more something you do than something you have. Sometimes you have it more, sometimes less. Sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse. Sometimes you forget you have it and then it comes back in full force.

When I have a challenge, I always make sure to remember that it’s a dynamic process that is in a state of flux. Problems are not something frozen in time, but rather, they are unstable, constantly changing and malleable. Since I know this, I make sure the dynamic process is changing in the way that I want. If in any moment a problem is changing, that means it’s either getting better or worse. Participate in the process as more than an observer and you can choose which way it will go.

Interestingly enough I work with many people who believe that change can happen in an instant. This belief enables them to make massive changes in just moments. For people with this belief, a simple realization can lead to a breakthrough. A mere decision can lead to transformation. They realize that problems can seem insurmountable, but it doesn’t mean they are.
What have you decided about change?

Most of us would choose a computer over a typewriter, an email over a telegraph and Google over the library. We upgrade to the newest version of software as soon as it’s available and we can’t wait to get the newest gadget. So why do we hold onto outdated models of psychology and change? Due to advances in neuroscience, psychology, linguistic and cognitive science, today we know more about how the mind works than ever before. And when you know how the mind works, change becomes easy.