Change often means uncertainty, which can be intimidating. Many companies and individuals need to change if they want to improve their results but find it difficult due to the process and time that it takes to create and enforce new habits. This applies to all sorts of areas in life.

According to inews.co.uk, 9 out of 10 people will give up on their diets just 12 days into their new healthy routine. This is the perfect example of when a person will set huge goals but go straight into the panic zone and relapse into old habits because they haven’t seen instant results. More on the panic zone later!

Implementing change is hard. We live in a world with instant gratification in every aspect of life whether that be takeaway food, fast-forwarding through the TV adverts or streaming a full box set in one night. Change is not instant and requires a slow, yet rewarding process.

People love to be in their comfort zone as it is a secure environment where we can feel calm and comfortable with our performance. Yet, staying within the comfort zone for too long can make us compliant with little desire or motivation to make change.

The best way to effect change is by growing our comfort zone by entering the stretch zone, the section where you challenge and push yourself to try something new or unknown to yourself, while feeling excited, energised and motivated. If we stretch ourselves when we are not ready or when we are too ambitious then we can easily end up in the panic zone feeling distressed or overwhelmed. This is what often happens when a person makes a new year’s resolution that is too ambitious so it is key to grow our comfort zone slowly and within our window of tolerance.

People attempt to change aspects of their life all the time. For example, according to responsesource.com, 13,951,466 people in Britain made a new year’s resolution in 2020 but 5,580,587 of them decided to quit their journey by the 19th of January! Clearly, something is not working.

A logical starting point for the cycle of change is ‘pre-contemplation’, where a person may not be aware of any problems and has no intention of making any changes to their behaviour. The ‘pre-contemplation’ phase is then followed by ‘contemplation’. This is the stage where a person has acknowledged a problem in their life/behaviour but has made no commitment to change.

If a person believes that making a change will have a positive outcome that outweighs the cost of staying the same, along with a sense of self-efficacy then they will move to ‘preparation’. This means that the person is ready to implement change and will feel motivated to do so.

Now comes ‘action’, the stage in which individuals will modify their behaviour, experiences, or environment in order to overcome their problems. During this time the person will need to be fully committed as it involves the most overt behavioural changes and requires a considerable commitment of time and energy.

The change has now been actioned so the next step is ‘maintenance’ where the person will need to work on the gains attained during the ‘action’ phase and focus on preventing any relapsing. As I have mentioned, change is not a part of the ‘instant gratification’ way of life. In order for the change to be effective, you will need to work on yourself, sometimes for a considerable amount of time, before you will see a difference.

Nevertheless, what can happen at this point is people will go into the ‘relapse’ phase when they fall back into old patterns of behaviour due to a lack of commitment during the ‘maintenance’ stage. The ‘upward spiral’ is when a person goes through the cycle and learns from each relapse. If all goes accordingly, they will grow more efficient each time so that the relapses become shorter and less devastating.

The way we act during the cycle is determined by the degree of control that we feel. If you have no control then you will end up in your panic zone so you should always feel in full control throughout the cycle.

Change is possible but it won’t happen overnight. If you start a diet then you will not be healthier the next day. Change isn’t instant. Nothing is going to happen until you take the first step. This shouldn’t be the biggest step and it definitely shouldn’t take you into the panic zone so make sure you are being realistic with your process. You will discover that once you start implementing change into your life, it will create a domino effect and you will achieve things that you never expected.

‘We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are’ – Max Depee