I’m currently studying my NLP Practitioner’s certificate with a view to moving on to becoming a Master Practitioner. Not with a view to practising per se – more for my own personal development and imparting and including some of the knowledge with my coaching clients. I’m viewing it as a bit of a toolbox I suppose. I came across this part of the course the other day and really had to read it a few times because it is so incredibly powerful. Quite often the simplest things really are the most powerful aren’t they? Quite often the simplest things really are the most powerful aren’t they? I’ve now decided to include this in my quarterly self-reflection together with my Life Balance Wheel (reach out if you would like a copy of it – happy to share). It’s kind of a temperature check on where we are travelling in life and how much progress we are making in every aspect of it. Sometimes we can be doing great financially, but our relationships suffer. Some times it can be the reverse. It’s good to be aware of these things and just reflect on what we have been doing and how we have been living our lives so that we can continue bringing it all into balance. It’s not always possible as life has a habit of throwing significant challenges our way, but I have always found that awareness is half the battle. Once you are aware, you can then take the necessary action. And this exercise I think is a fantastic tool in supporting you to do exactly that. Feel free to copy and paste it to your pc and refer back to it often. Hope you experience the transformation for yourself. And thanks to Kain Ramsey of Achology for sharing this.
The Seven Stages of Personal Change
Stage 1. Developing Awareness
The motivation for change begins with a sense that we aren’t fulfilling our full potential in at least one area of our life. This awareness can be subtle at first; you may begin to feel somewhat unhappy, but unsure as to where this emotion is coming from. This feeling is quietly passed off as phasic until one day you realise that you no longer feel satisfied in certain areas of your life.
These indications initiate your personal recognition that something needs to be adjusted, either in your mindset or in a practical area of your life. Even before you can put your finger on the particular source of internal discomfort, you feel it on some level.
Stage 2. Discovery
The discovery stage is where your conscious mind has located the primary source of your discomfort and is doing it’s best to help you become more aware of its presence. Be warned: at this stage you may experience some resistance from your ego!
The human ego often seeks refuge in denial, where it pretends that your discomfort is resulting from a source that’s external to you as opposed to an internal one. For personal change to occur beyond this stage, it’s crucial that we accept that the source of our uneasiness is within ourselves, and also within our ability to control. Capacity to adopt a new mindset is a prerequisite for moving on to the next stage in this process of personal change.
Stage 3. Ownership
In this stage, we must take sole responsibility for our discomfort or unease. That means that we must fully acknowledge that the source of our problem/s is internal and not external. At this stage, we consciously recognise that it is our thought patterns, emotional inconsistencies, lifestyle habits, perception, limiting beliefs, or our faulty reasoning that need to be amended.
This essential step brings us to the realisation that we alone are in control of how it is that we choose to respond or react to the circumstances/situations that we find ourselves in. In life, empowerment comes via taking responsibility, and assuming full ownership of any given situation opens the doorway towards a whole new level of maturity, empowerment and personal growth.
Stage 4. Exposure
This is the stage in the process of change where we expand our search to identify the habit or attitude that has stopped serving us. This can be challenging for many reasons. One reason being that logic is seldom a useful tool in the emotional arena, and secondly, we tend to assume that our beliefs are universal truths, and therefore consistently look for ways to justify them.
Rather than initiating a confrontation, it’s often easier to reflect upon our patterns of behaviour to identify how our different beliefs might be affecting our lives (Albert Ellis’ Irrational Beliefs). Once we recognise that we’ve been held back, or limited, by a particular idea, we will then have both logic and emotion supporting our desire for change.
Stage 5. Intention
This is the threshold of personal change. You have identified an old belief (or behaviour pattern), and you are now motivated to replace it with something more useful. You’re ready to move away from your previous stage and embrace the new. It’s time to choose a direction.
Upon reaching this stage in the process of change, it is relatively easy to identify what your desired state is (i.e. where you want to be). The same comparison process that exposed your source of initial discomfort will have now revealed your ideal future end goal. All that remains left for you to do is to embrace a proactive mindset and formulate your plan of action.
Stage 6. Action
Taking consistent action is the only means by which to achieve real-time results. If you don’t take action, nothing will change, and your discomfort with the present reality will intensify due to your now greater awareness of it.
Taking action demands that we let go of fear and apathy, and embrace faith and uncertainty, as we step out of the comfort zone and into the gap between where we previously were, and where it is that we envisage ourselves being.
Stage 7. Integration
This is the last phase of the process of personal growth where change has now happened. What started out as an awareness that an adjustment needed to be made, has consequently resulted in a new evolutionary stage in your journey of personal growth and development.
You have now grown in your appreciation of what’s achievable for you, and at this stage, it is also likely that you have to let go of an established belief or pattern of behaviour that wasn’t serving you. This has now been replaced with something more useful.