Change is not possible in you until you realize there's a better way to accomplish something. When you accept and a truth because you believe or are convinced of it, you'll make the necessary adjustments to your thinking and behavior so you are cognitively consistent with that truth. That's how change is proven. That's because the word  change, much like the word love, can be used in a sentence as both a verb and an adjective. That means that the word change is frequently used as a descriptive word - a word without legs/motion. A true fact about change doesn't help you to change, unless you let it. You must be willing to make room for it, to implement it into your routine. Change is multidimensional; it's interconnected. It impacts not just your psychology, but your physiology and your sociology. In other words, change can be small or big, big enough to impact your lifestyle.

• When the awareness of a truth breaks through your defense mechanism and into your self-concept, you have a choice to make. Do you deny the fact and so do nothing different or do you accept the fact as true and incorporate it into your reality?

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Your reality will not change until an intentional decision is made to break into your old opinion and incorporate the truth so you change your output. If you change what you think or believe, you can change your words and deeds.  Aside from the obvious training your body will need to perform new skills, you need to rev up your soul with the benefits that will spark your motivation so you can pull through the skill acquisition phase (the transition process between unlearning the old skill and replacing it with the new skill). Take the process of learning to drive a car as an example. For a new driver, the process can be unnerving. It takes both the cognitive mind (written test) and different parts of your body (road test) to gain the skills to be qualified to drive, but you need a hopeful attitude to pull you through your temporary fears and doubts until you become a skilled, confident driver.

• Read the “Introduction” Tab for another example.

 

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 often 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. Emotions impact your performance drive/ambition and can help or hinder your persistence through the change process. 

 

Alasdair White, a British management theorist, details five stages of changing or replacing old habit for a new one; 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 of creating your new normal.

• Take a closer look at Appendix 1B to see the connection between fine tuning your new normal by helping someone else learn to take a new sidewalk. 

• Section 2 addresses the impact your personal changes can have in your social environment; see outline of topics in "Manage Self in a Social World".