Get started with your lasting change.
By Heather Cherry—
Making lasting changes is not easy. Regardless of whether the changes you want to make impact your personal or professional life, change takes substantial time and effort. Creating lasting change may require you to assess and adjust your habits—adopting positive practices and eliminating negative ones—which may be easier said than done. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit says, “Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. This time-saving initiative is derived from a three-step loop: cue, trigger, and reward. Over time, this loop becomes more automatic, and eventually, a routine is formed.”
When thinking about making lasting changes, habits are an essential part. But there can also be a disconnect between your intentions and actual behavior. Moreover, this disconnect may be influenced by the stage of change you’re in.
The Transtheoretical Model
The transtheoretical model suggests there are six stages of change: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination. This model was developed in the 1970s by researchers James O. Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente. The transtheoretical model was revolutionary in explaining how behavioral change begins and is maintained over time.
Despite its popularity, it has also gained much criticism. For example, PsychCentral states, “Research in the early 2000s questioned whether the transtheoretical change model was helpful because of its difficulty in pinpointing a person’s readiness to change. Another criticism was that the model excluded people who succeeded in making change abruptly.”
Experts say the transtheoretical model of change gauge’s a person’s readiness to change and analyzes the likeliness they’ll maintain the change. However, change is not a singular event. It requires decision-making and action—each of which requires its neurological counterparts relating to different regions in the brain. For example, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus are the most critical human brain parts for decision making.
And our brains are trained to favor familiarity. When change occurs, the brain’s sense of stability shifts. Part of the brain, the amygdala, can interpret change as a threat and move into “fight or flight”—a concept based on instinctual survival derived from our ancestors. This is the body’s way of protecting you from change it perceives as a threat.
Release old habits
Making lasting change can be difficult because you’re working against habits and your body’s scientific instincts. But the good news is that you can retrain your brain to adapt to change—understanding where you’re at in the transtheoretical model stages of change can help you make lasting behavior changes.
- Precontemplation: This stage of change is often marked by denial—individuals in this stage have not yet acknowledged problematic behavior.
- Contemplation: When an individual is considering a behavior change, you may visualize yourself making a change or deciding the next steps.
- Preparation: You might still be gathering information, but you’ve decided to make a change, and you’re ready to take action.
- Action: You’re actively making changes.
- Maintenance: This stage is when you’re focused on maintaining the changes you’ve established—keeping up the momentum.
- Termination: This is when you’re fully committed to your changes.
It is essential to note that the stages of change are not linear. Instead, they occur in cycles, and you may get stuck in a stage or revisit a stage multiple times before moving on to the next. But each phase must be completed to implement behavior change.
Additionally, according to the transtheoretical model, ten processes assist the progression between the stages of change.
- Consciousness-raising: Increasing awareness of positive behavior.
- Counterconditioning: Substitution of alternatives for negative behavior.
- Dramatic relief: Experiencing and expressing feelings about the negative behavior and potential solutions.
- Environmental reevaluation: Consideration and assessment of how the behavior affects the physical and social environment.
- Helping relationships: Trusting, accepting, and using others to attempt to make a change.
- Reinforcement management: Rewarding yourself or being rewarded for making changes.
- Self-liberation: Commitment to change.
- Self-reevaluation: Emotional and cognitive reappraisal of values.
- Social-liberation: Awareness, availability, and acceptance.
- Stimulus control: Control of situations and other causes that trigger the negative behavior.
Identifying the stage of change you’re in allows you to target interventions to be developed that resonate with your thoughts and feelings. For example, if you’re in the contemplation stage, it would be appropriate to discuss the pros and cons of the behavior and identify strategies to overcome the cons.
It’s also important to consider your change talk—general statements about your desire, ability, reasons, and need for change. Change talk differs from commitment language, which is often a more assertive declaration about commitment or actions to change.
What Influences Change?
Many factors influence your ability to change. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators can impact your ability to make lasting change. Extrinsic motivators arise from outside the individual, while intrinsic motivation comes from within. Research shows that each type has a different effect on human behavior.
Self-Efficacy
One important intrinsic motivating factor is self-efficacy—the belief in your ability to change. The concept of self-efficacy is central to Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory, which emphasizes the role of observational learning, social experience, and reciprocal determinism. Bandura says, “self-efficacy is part of the self-system comprising a person’s attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills.”
Bandura and other experts say self-efficacy is thought to predict the amount of effort someone will expend to initiate and maintain behavior change—determining what goals we choose to pursue, how we intend to accomplish these goals, and reflecting on our performance. Additionally, self-efficacy relates to your sense of self-control over your environment and behavior.
Regardless of the changes you hope to make in your life, understanding the stages of changes can help you get started and make a lasting impact.
Heather Cherry is a versatile writer and editor with 15 years’ experience creating content. She is well versed in providing solutions to clients through strategic, creative, and conversational messages. She published, Market Your A$$ Off, a marketing guidebook for small business.
