Changing in Baby Steps

Today I got to listen in on a teleconference about learning to work as a life coach. It was highly informative for me. One of the biggest things I learned is that rather than being trained for it in this lifetime, I've been commissioned to do this, trained in previous lives. More on that concept in the blog next week on Lightworkers. The other thing I learned is that one of the most effective things I do in life coaching is teach people that change comes in baby steps. I touched on this a little yesterday but want to elaborate on it today.

When we're trying to change habits or develop new behaviors, it's best to give yourself a limited time period rather than thinking "forever" & to start small. It's pretty easy for people to see that with diets, & there's lots of information out there about how to do that. They tell you not to forbid yourself your favorite foods, to give yourself time off for holidays, to plan for small portions of it from time to time. That helps take out the "forever" feeling that leads to failure. It enables you to make a total lifestyle change rather than "dieting," which is the kind of change we're talking about here - it applies to changing all habits or adopting new behaviors. In fact, "lifestyle" changes is a better way to think of this process than "resolutions" or "changing bad habits."

Let's talk about when I first started learning to play the clarinet, in 4th grade. I was to practice 15 minutes a day, & even that was painful for me. I basically had to be forced most days. I hated it because I wasn't any good. And of course I was playing the most simple things, only a few notes. It was quite awhile before I learned enough to play a full scale & then a simple song. The teacher started us small in practice time & small in that with only a few notes. By 12th grade, I was voluntarily practicing 3 hours a day, & it was all a joy. I was playing Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, complicated exercises & all the scales, major & minor. I was good enough to start college as a music major. I would have missed so much if I hadn't practiced, had quit, or if the teacher had started me off wrong, like with Mozart. So too when you want to learn any new behavior, as well as unlearn habits.

The example given in today's teleconference was great. A woman said she wasn't exercising at all these days & wanted to exercise an hour a day, 5 days a week. The coach talked with her about doing baby steps. If she set the goal from 0 - 1 hour X 5 per week, she wouldn't follow through. He asked her what the minimum, baby step she knew she could follow through on, & she decided on 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week. Even then, she was at first reluctant to commit. He asked leading questions about what would change for the better vs. the consequences of not exercising, & she came up with her own motivation to do it. She agreed to the baby steps to start with, so that she would follow through. That's what you need to do with whatever you want to change. The goal isn't for her to never do more than 15 minutes a day - the goal is to go from 0 to activity. So too, your goal is to create or banish a behavior, & most of us are starting from 0 so we need to make the first step easily doable, then go up from there. More on this later.