The key to healing in any context is the ability to make changes. If you can’t change the way things are, you’re stuck with something you don’t want. To heal disease, heal finances, heal work, relationships, whatever you are struggling with in life, you need to change.

Yet change is one of the most feared and resisted aspects of living—ask any coach or psychologist. Even when a person says they consciously want change, often the resistance it at a deeper level.

I’ve put together a few thoughts on change which I hope will be enlightening and helpful.

Working to a success formula

It is possible to structure the need for change in one’s life into a sequence of events that might be called a “Successful Change Formula”.

Aristotle had one; he said that there are three basic steps that you must take to get what you want out of life:

1. Understand that you can achieve success

2. Define what success represents, for you

3. Organise your life around its achievement by making the necessary changes

Don’t under-estimate the value of these simple steps because here you have the ultimate success formula. It is the secret that everyone who has ever been successful, in any field of endeavour, has used.

Properly adhered to, this will ensure far more efficacious actions than most people usually engage in.

However, I’d like to suggest something a little broader and more modern. Success is seen in terms of decisive change. Obviously, if you haven’t got what you really want, you need to change something. But what? It is vital to recognize accurately what it is that holds you back. Then remedy it. Dealing with the wrong problem will lead to failure. So this is pretty important stuff.

The formula given here will help you. All success and improvement can be mapped in these terms, whether the individual has consciously applied them or not. Obviously, knowing and willing application of its steps will bring a far higher success rate than mere unknowing and random encounters with one or two of the steps.

The Basic Change Formula

1. Acknowledging that one is responsible for one’s own condition.

2. Recognition that change is possible

3. Identification of something which needs changing.

4. Locating the CORRECT source of the problem.

5. Pinpointing the correct SOLUTION to that problem.

6. Evaluating progress.

7. Recognizing when change is successful and complete.

In other words, to bring this down to a simple one-sentence axiom: success lies in deciding what change would be decisive, planning how to make this change and then carrying it through to its logical conclusion.

 

A joke

One may light-heartedly at this point put up an alternative “formula” which could be described as The Route to Failure. Let’s call it the Counter-Success Formula. It would go somewhat as follows:

The route to failure:

1. Blaming others

2. Being stuck in one’s ways.

3. Unable to see anything is wrong

4. Unable to recognize where the trouble is coming from

5. Having no strategies to change or improve matters

Reversing (6 and 7) would hardly be relevant in this mess but could probably be replaced by:

6a. Constantly counter-acting anything which brings benefit

7a. Repeatedly engaging in behaviours which cause damage.

But wait a minute— doesn’t it sound like an accurate description of everyday human living? Absolutely right it does.

So let’s get back to what makes sense—the personal success formula:

Let’s look at the steps in turn

The first essential step is to recognize that change comes entirely from within one’s own domain; one has to be accountable.

It is a classical attitude of mind, that other people are to blame; that if only EVERYONE ELSE would do a little better or try harder, one’s own life would be so much improved. Once again, this is a miserably failed strategy that has been in town a very long time, yet it won’t go away.

The fatal flaw with mis-assigning ownership of problems in this way is that it blocks the road to a resolution. One CAN NOT change other people; attempts to control them and enforce one’s point of view become oppressive and ultimately destructive.

The second step in progress is to recognize that change is possible.

Far too many people lead miserable unsatisfactory lives, without ever considering that things could be different. Yet there are countless examples of individuals who disprove this limiting hypothesis, having shown that change is little more than the consequence of simply deciding to change. Everything else follows.

The sad reality is that the vast majority of humans endure conditions they don’t like and don’t want, feeling somehow cheated that the aims and goals they so much desired will remain forever out of reach because they cannot see a realistic way out of the trap. This is the very stuff of madness, divorce, antisocial behaviour and suicide we see today.

Even those who outwardly appear to be succeeding have no cause to be smug. The vast amount of chemicalized addiction in our society is the same phenomenon, seen at a different level. People take street drugs, medicines and alcohol as an attempt to handle their problems in a more sociable way. But they are still trying to come to terms with the unmanageability of their condition.

The critical step is identifying what it is that needs changing.

It will all lead nowhere, if this step falters or fails. Not only do we need to identify the core of the problem but one has to come up with a correct, working solution. Solving the wrong problem is a waste of time but not having a solution to the real problem is just as ineffective. If you are not careful you may even make matters worse.

Often what is wrong is not what at first sight appears to be the trouble. It can be a considerable skill to be able to simplify circumstances down to the important basics and focus on the real issues. This is where intelligence and knowledge comes in.