The Change Process
The anxious Christian who does not express their new identity in Christ is like a caterpillar who transformed into a butterfly but decides to still crawl around on his belly instead of trying out his new wings (Groeschel, C., 2013 p 68).
Change is not possible in you until awareness of a truth is accepted. Your reality will not change until an intentional decision is made to break your old opinion and incorporate the truth into your speech and actions. Change
requires a hopeful attitude that will pull you through the temporary discomfort of learning new skills. (Read the “Introduction” Section for an example.) Aside from training your body to perform new skills, you need to renew your soul to motivate you as you go through the transition process. Take the process of learning to drive a car as an example. It takes both mind (written test) and body (road test) to be qualified to drive, but it takes an optimistic (positive and hopeful attitude) faith and patience to persist through the training steps until you become a skilled driver.
Change is first a decision; a person has the ability to change but that doesn't mean they will. The temporary discomfort of learning new skills affects emotions and is evident in attitude, too. Both soul alignment (making decisions consistent with the truth and the values that are in your soul) and physical skill building are necessary to engage and persist through the change process. Whether or not your confident in learning your new driving skill will impact your performance on both driving tests. Change is complete when what you say that you want to do, IS what you do. Emotions impact your drive and can help or hinder your persistence through the change process.
Alasdair White, a British management theorist, details five stages of getting rid of the old and replacing the bad habit with something new; the first two steps are reflected in attitude and the last three in behavior, as depicted below (2008). A person can get stuck and/or give up in any one of these stages. It’s in these last two stages where you solidify your new habits. Relating it back to your recovery, attending and graduating from an addiction recovery center has helped you through the first three phases. The last two phases of White's change cycle, establishing your habits in a new environment and incorporating the behaviors into your normal routine, are needed to make change stick so you experience your vision. This is when you have achieved the goal of creating your new normal.
Another way to look at the phases of change are presented by psychologists James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente. They apply the stages to change directly to addiction recovery. This helps to explain why even the bad habits that you’ve determine to quit do not transform into new, more effective habits right away. In fact, during your recovery, relapses to alcoholism (or any ism) tend to resurface periodically until the new habit has been mastered and is incorporated into your new normal (Marlatt, G. A., & Donovan, D. M. (Eds.), (2005)). While undergoing this transformation process, there is a tendency for a struggle to take place between the old habit and the new. Emotions are a key variable in the tug of war that is taking place between the old habit and the necessary change to a new one. Fear pushes while love pulls.
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See Appendix 1N for more on the push-pull reality associated with the change process.
Note the word “relapse” in the recovery change process. The word relapse means you did manage to change your behavior for a while. Don't lose sight of this fact. Relapse can happen at any stage of recovery on the way to reaching “maintenance”. You might relapse again and again in the change process, but you will eventually get to the maintenance stage, if you persist. For a closer look at the push-pull reality in the change process, specifically as it relates to unhealthy addictive behavior, see: http://www.fsn.ie/resources/process-of-addiction/ and
Self-control is a word you hear associated with successful change. But it can be misleading. If not defined correctly in your mind, your actions will fail you as you are trying to break free from an all-consuming bad habit. The word self-control implies that you alone hold the power to change which, when breaking strongholds, is a deception. Christians have access to the Holy Spirit, an unfailing power source, that can pull them into the achievement of a new reality when the use of your limited resource of self-control gets depleted. Using the Christian faith means
to wait patiently and expectantly while acting on your trust in God's operational procedures as detailed in the Bible (Psalm 5:3, Hebrews 11:1, 2 Peter 1:5-7, Appendix 1G). Jesus uses the parable of the sower, and the Apostle Paul uses the soldier, athlete and farmer to show that in order to achieve the expected goal, the Biblical seedtime and harvest principle must run its course (Genesis 8:22, Mark 4:3-8, Luke 8:11-15, 2 Timothy 2:1-6).
This scripture can ring true in your life when you use a Christian perspective to solve problems and make decisions; "But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy.” Practicing Holy habits is how Christ can free you from the grips of addiction in spirit, soul, and body (Proverbs 3:13, Romans 5:3-5, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Thessalonians 5:19-23, 1 Peter 1:22-23). The ability to delay instant gratification is a discipline that must be mastered by all Christians who want to change their A, B, C’s! Break, don’t deny, bad habits! Be intentional and decide today to form new habits (in your emotions and thinking, A-attitude, and your B-behavior) that comply with the standards associated with a Holy, Just and Loving God, so together you can achieve the intended C-consequences of such behavior, D(A + B) = C .
Christians turn to the Bible to provide the standards, and, through prayer and faith, practice these standards until the behavior of Christian integrity becomes an ingrained habit that leads to productive goal achieval (2 Timothy 1:6-7, Hebrews 4:12, 6:10-12,Colossians 1:10-11, Ephesians 4:2, Ecclesiastes 7:8, Isaiah 40:31). Researchers Galla, B. M., & Duckworth, A. L. (2015) add this, “Beneficial habits, perhaps more so than individual acts of effortful inhibition, therefore represent an important though often neglected factor linking self-control to positive life outcomes.” Hope, faith and Godly obedience lead to the progressive implementation of holy habits that leads to Christlike behavior (Romans 6:13-14, 8:29, 1 Timothy 4:7-8, 2 Timothy 3:16, Titus 2:12, 1 Peter 1:13).
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Read more about understanding change in Appendix 1O.
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Read more on sustaining change in Appendix 1P.
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Keep hope alive! Read other articles to help your motivation to persist through the journey of creating your new normal in the "Still Anxious" tab.
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