Are there changes (or resolutions…) you would like to make but you haven’t been able?
Here’s an insider tip on personal change you can use for yourself.
Whether you want to change an old habit or pick up a new behavior consider that your solution is often different to what you expect.
Especially if you have tried and failed to change before you might already know that often the secret is not to go for all the change at once, but to go for a smaller change that will get you moving in the right direction and inevitably lead to the bigger change.
There’s a case story of perhaps the greatest ever expert on personal change, Dr. Milton Erickson, in which he served a retired police officer who was in bad shape.
Rather than talk to the former officer for hours (or years…) about drinking and smoking less and exercising more (which he had for years already failed to do), instead Erickson relied on something far more subtle.
Knowing as a police officer he had once lived with great discipline and habit Erickson merely made two simple suggestions.
First, he told the officer that he could smoke as much as he likes (by not confronting the existing habit, he avoids resistance), only he must stop buying his cigarettes by the carton at the local store and walk across town to buy one pack at a time.
Second, he suggested that the former officer could still drink as much as he likes only instead of camping out at the local pub like a character on Cheers he could only have one beer at his local, then he’d have to walk to another bar for every other drink.
Leaving the session frustrated that Erickson didn’t talk to him about stopping drinking and smoking and exercising more the officer went home and followed his suggestions that ultimately led him to stop drinking and smoking and exercise more…
Hence, rather than trying to get the officer to make changes he had already failed to make, instead Erickson relied on his natural discipline to make the small changes that ultimately led to the bigger changes.
Consider this when you are trying to change yourself or someone else…