We are now in John Norcross’s fifth and final step in Changeology, Persist.
Unless properly managed and maintained over the long term, effective change dissipates slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly as a result of minor slips. Just like Norcross consistently teaches the first four steps/stages of change require working on them in order and mastering each step’s skills and strategies, Norcross maintains his persistence step/stage requires not only mastering the skills and strategies, but also a fundamental shift in thinking.
An example of such a fundamental shift is moving from the limited, short-term deprivation of a diet to the continual, long-term enjoyment of a more enhanced lifestyle.
I have often said, “Maintenance is the largest burden of ownership.” Norcross explains that psychologists define maintenance as the consolidation and continuation of behavior change across time, long after the psychologist’s treatment ends, by intentional, active pursuit of continuing the change obtained.
Maintenance requires internalization of the skills and strategies used in the perspire step, which should be less intense as they become pleasant, almost automatic habits. One seeking to maintain change, however, should never cease using on some level those perspire skills.
Norcross warns again about step mismatching, using the good skills and strategies, but using them in the wrong steps. The persistence phase is not the time to go back and raise your awareness and arouse your emotions like it should have been done in the psych, prep, and perspire stages.
One skill/strategy that spans all five steps, however, is tracking your progress to monitor the changed behavior closely and detect any regression quickly. Using a change team continues through the persist step as well.
Tracking your progress in the maintenance phase should help you realize what action catalysts work best for you and which environments prompt you to regress. You will probably find the triggers for limited slips are quite different from the triggers promoting gradual decay.
Norcross recommends reducing the frequency of the tracking your progress and contacting your change team. In addition, he recommends shifting from receiving help from others to giving help to others coming along the path you just traveled. Your extrinsic rewards should decrease as your intrinsic rewards of self-esteem and wellbeing increasing. Countering previous “undesired” behaviors with new “preferred” behaviors by affirmation of the negative and positive effects of each respectively defeats the “denial” aspect of not getting to do something you thought you previously enjoyed.
Norcross also advises controlling your environment to avoid cues and planning to and preparing to face cues that you cannot easily avoid. For example, learning to be mindful of those cues and your prior reactions to them and your new reactions to them.
As we lawyers like to say, “Notwithstanding anything contained herein …,” Norcross reveals at this late point, the maintenance step is more of a relapse management phase. This makes the pattern of change less of a chain of steps and more like a wheel of change. Then Norcross states there is always a hope to make the change permanent by combining the chain and the wheel into an upward spiral beginning with the first psych step and repeating the first four steps over and over again until you terminate having made the change permanently easy to manage forever.
Summing Changeology all up, there is a scientific method applicable to almost any positive behavioral change you could ever want to make. Like Great! All the time!’s P10 Principle, Norcross’s program has six steps , the five in his title and an additional contemplative phase. Norcross’s steps, strategies, and program fairly well track the one we use at Great! All the time! It is always reassuring to have noted international experts affirm we are using essentially the same methods they suggest.
So let’s keep on keeping on.
[reminder]Question: What change do you want to make now?[/reminder]