How to change yourself and your life: two working techniques

If you've ever tried to embark on a journey of change, you've probably come across a hundred excuses: not enough time, money, energy, or motivation. We offer methods that will help you not to postpone your plans until better times.

Motivational interview method

Motivational interviewing is a counseling technique developed by clinical psychologists William Robert Miller and Stephen Rollnick.

The essence of the method is that with the help of open-ended questions, the "interviewer" helps a person to independently find their own motivation. Scientists who adhere to this concept view it as the sum of the desire to change, the readiness for it, and the availability of resources.

You can try the technique not only with a specialist, but also on your own. You will need enough free time, a pen and a notebook.

Stage 1: acquaintance

This stage consists in establishing a positive relationship between the "interviewer" and his interlocutor. In this case, both of these roles are played by you, so let's move on to the next point.

Stage 2: focus

Acknowledging a problem is the first step towards realizing what is the difference between reality and the ideal you are striving for. Think about what makes you unhappy or worried. If you have a reliable friend or a relative, brainstorm together. Just make sure that he helps you identify your own problems, and does not impose his ideas.

Focus on areas such as physical and mental health, work, relationships, social life, finance. For example:

• "I'm overweight."
• "I'm too anxious about trifles."
• "It's hard for me to control my expenses."
• "I want to stop yelling at my kids."

As a result, you will identify several problem areas. Give each of them a rating from 1 (rarely bothers) to 5 (significantly ruins life). For example, if you think about any of the items several times a day, put 5 in front of it, if every few weeks - 1.

Now focus on the highest-rated problems and consider why your life will be better after solving them. Let's take the examples above as a basis:

• "If I lose weight, my life will be better because it will help me feel more energized and reduce health risks. "
• "If I worry less about trifles, my life will be better because I will sleep better and be more productive."
• “If I stop wasting money unnecessarily, my life will be better because I can pay off all my debts and worry less about finances.”
• "If I learn to deal with my anger, my life will be better because it will make my relationship with my children happier."

Now that you have determined the point where you are now and where you would like to be, take a notebook and write down the real situation first, and then the ideal one. This will help you understand where the discrepancy lies on each issue:

Ideal: "If I am _____, my life will be better because _____."
Reality: "I am currently _____."

Then consider how big the discrepancy is. If it is small, you are unlikely to be strongly motivated to change. But if the difference is too great, it can be very difficult to get started. Ideally, at this stage, you need to identify a discrepancy that is “just right”: serious enough to bother you, but not enough to suppress the urge to start change.

Stage 3: Setting Priorities and Building Confidence

Regardless of what area of ​​your life your inadequacy falls, the next step is to choose the specific behaviors that you want to work on the most. To do this, the "interviewer" leads the person into a conversation about the readiness, desire and ability to change.

The idea is that the more clients talk about their desires, abilities, reasons and needs change, the more likely they are to make a commitment and take action to achieve their goals. Here are two exercises you can try on your own or with a trusted friend to improve your motivation.

1. Determine what is most important and why

Prioritize. One way to figure out how to do it right is to spend some time defining your personal values.

For each possible change that you identified during the focus phase, answer yourself the questions in the table. Try to think about the possible impact of each change on a different area of ​​your life. What it will mean for your physical and mental health, work, relationships, social life, finances, sexuality. Take a notebook and write down your thoughts in two columns:

Once you've compiled your list of arguments, consider: Why are these results important? What values ​​do you adhere to, what principles of behavior make this future change especially important? This can be, for example, honesty, family, decency, faith, health or responsibility.

Once you've identified your core values, think about how your current behavior (which worries you the most) is preventing you from living up to them. How will changes in you help you become closer to these values? Try to take your time with the exercise and come back to it a few days after completion: your point of view may change.

2. Build Confidence

The previous exercises helped you identify the specific problem or current behavior that is worrying you the most right now. But you may still feel unprepared for proactive change. On some days, you may have more confidence in your abilities, on others, less.

If you lack determination, you may underestimate the importance of change and feel like you want to give up trying. Usually at such moments thoughts arise like “This is too difficult”, “I don’t have time” or “I can’t do anything with this. to do».

To keep your confidence going, you need to spend some time reflecting on your strengths, past successes, and sources of hope and inspiration.

• Identify your strengths. The characteristics of people who are successful in changing their lives include creativity, resourcefulness, tenacity, and a penchant for adventure. You can ask loved ones for help and share what they think are your strengths. How can these qualities help you make the changes you want?
• Remember the times when you were able to change something in yourself. What steps have you taken to achieve this? How did you do it and how could you apply the same or similar strategies today?
• Don't forget about hope and inspiration. What gives you hope? What makes you feel optimistic about change? Visualization can help you with this: take a Whatman paper and stick images and quotes on it that motivate you. Or start a blog and post things that help you better present your goals. Also look for support in forums, communities and chat rooms on the Internet.

Stage 4: planning

Think about the "big plan" first. Imagine what life will be like when you achieve your goal. Your big picture may include more than one specific goals. For example, if you can be less annoyed with your children, your relationship will become warmer, you can spend more time together, and they will be happier in the future.

Then zoom in to develop and refine your specific change goal. It must be measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. For a general goal like "I want to feel better," it will be difficult to build a plan because it is too abstract. “I want to lose 5 kilos in the next 8 weeks” is much more specific.

Now think about the steps you can take to achieve your goal. Try to list at least 10 actions that will help you make progress. For example, in order to lose 5 kilograms in the next 8 weeks, you can make a list like this:

1. I will walk from the metro to my house instead of taking the bus.
2. I will buy healthy snacks to always keep them at hand.
3. I will measure the volumes to track progress every week.
4. I will try not to miss breakfasts.
5. I will take a subscription to the pool for a month, I will free up at least one evening a week for swimming.
6. I'll start keeping a food diary.
7. I will try to drink more water.
8. I will invite my friends to ride a bike on weekends.
9. I will take food from home with me so that there is no temptation to eat fast food during lunchtime.
10. I’ll find jeans that are difficult to fit at the waist and try them on once a week.

Then go through the list and rate each step from 1 to 5, where 5 is an action you can take and 1 is an action that is too complex, abstract, or impractical at the moment. Then try reworking the list so that all steps are as close to 5 as possible. For example, "I will eat fewer carbs and less fat" may turn into "I will eat 1,500 calories a day for the next eight weeks."

Include a support system as well. Think about which of your friends or relatives, if necessary, can help you financially, be a good listener, and inspire you. You can communicate in person or on social media with those who share the same interests or goals.

Creating a reward system will also help you stay motivated and drive positive change. Something tangible may be the reward, but don't forget to include meetings with friends, family walks or activities with your hobby alone.

The final part of the plan requires identifying likely obstacles and finding ways to overcome them. Some obstacles may require practical problem solving - this is where your support system and resources can help.

For example, during the first few days after imposing dietary restrictions, you may feel weak. In this case, it is worth revising the diet and giving up old habits gradually, without stress for the body. Other obstacles will be internal. For example, negative thoughts. Try to suppress them with positive ones: “I have already exercised self-control. I can handle it".

Gather all this information - the big picture, the specific goal, the 10 steps to it, the support system, resources, and obstacles - in writing and revisit frequently. Remembering your goal is the key to success.

Trans-theoretical model of behavior change

To keep track of where you are in change, you can use the transtheoretical model of behavior change, or "stages of change." Developed it psychologists James Prochazka and Carlo Di Clemente in the 1970s.

It consists of five stages through which people who decide to change go through. You can use this method in conjunction with motivational interviews for better results.

Stage 1: preliminary reflection

At this stage there are those who do not intend to change their behavior in the next six months. Such people fall into two categories: uninformed and demoralized. The uninformed do not want to accept the new behavior because they do not know that they need to change something. Going back to the motivational interview method, they haven't recognized the problem yet. The demoralized person made many unsuccessful attempts to change and decided not to try again.

If you are in the preliminary thinking stage, your goal at this point is to move from saying "I am not going to change" to "I will think about it."

Stage 2: contemplation

Contemplators are considering the possibility of change, but do not want to do it in the next month. At this stage, people realize that they have a problem that needs to be solved, but do not consider it a priority.

If you are at this stage, then it is important to believe that new behaviors will help you reap significant benefits with minimal disincentives. In this case, the goal is to move from saying "I'll think about it" to "It's important that I change this."

Focusing, setting priorities and planning a motivational interview can help you identify and remove potential obstacles. For example, you feel that increased anxiety is beginning to affect your standard of living. It becomes more difficult for you to carry out the usual duties at work, the leader does not like it and he asks you to understand the situation.

Stage 3: preparation

Once you decided that it was important to start making changes in the next 30 days, you moved on to the preparatory stage. This is where you can start small changes towards your ultimate goal. This will help you build the confidence you need to put the plan into action. Your goal here is to move from saying "It's important that I change this" to "I'm sure I can change that."

For example, you can download a book on the topic of dealing with anxiety, think about what triggers for you, talk about it with a loved one.

Stage 4: action

Once you have developed a change plan and started implementing it, you are in the action phase. You make changes to your individual plan - it is important that they are measurable and also produce tangible results.

It is also important at this stage to develop a plan that will help you cope with the rollback. habits. For example, if after a tough day you re-eat stress with fast food, analyze the situation. Consider that food didn't solve your problem. And also about how you can eliminate the cause of the anxiety, not its symptoms, and do not scold yourself for the "breakdown."

A motivational interview can help with this - go back to the focusing and prioritization exercises you did earlier to get another look at the need for change. Your contingency plan may also include rethinking your reward system, continuing to build your social support system, and re-evaluating potential barriers to change.

Stage 5: maintenance

After you have supported behavioral changes for six months that have brought significant benefits, you will enter the support phase. If you manage to reach this level, it is a fantastic success for which you can be congratulated. But don't stop, because failures can still happen, and you need to be prepared for this. Revise your change plan as needed.

It may still be difficult for you to figure out where to start - this is completely normal. Sometimes the discrepancy between where we are (reality) and where we want to be (ideal) seems too big. If this is the case, don't rush or push yourself - take the time to determine the minimum concrete steps you can take.

If possible, enlist the support of close friends and family. Also, don't be surprised if your confidence rises and falls at times. Motivation requires constant focus and reinforcement - try not to get discouraged if you have less hope on some days than on others. Feel free to seek professional help if needed.