Matariki month - the Māori New Year - has almost come to a close, and with it, we are reflecting on change, transformation and new beginnings.

This is the first in a three-part blog series about change in which we will cover: The Psychology of Change, a Practical Guide to Change, and How to Manage Change (in both yourself and others) while minimising negative mental health outcomes and optimising positive ones.

Change is a constant throughout our lives, and change can impact our mental, physical and emotional health in a myriad of ways.

The culture of change

In many cultures including Western culture, change is associated with positive transformation, overcoming obstacles, taming fear, and reaching new heights of achievement. Changing the self can be associated with enduring physical and mental pain in exchange for a positive outcome, and in many respects this can be problematic.

The notion of the Warrior-self embarking on a self-improvement journey (replete with dragons to slay) enables a culture of ableism and perpetual striving. Goal-seekers are admired and it is implied that anyone who doesn’t attempt to constantly work on themselves is lacking in some way or lazy. It also implies that because some people can do incredible things, everybody can do incredible things.

If you are a person who loathes exercise and just can’t get into it, there will always be someone gleefully regaling you with the successes of another person for whom exercising must be hugely more difficult and yet they manage. The same is true for diary management, waking up earlier, financial management and just about every other virtue under the sun.

If Frodo, a merely 4 foot 1 Hobbit can make it all the way to Mordor, surely you can tolerate setting your alarm 15 minutes earlier and going for a short stroll before breakfast? It will be good for your mental health! Think of the cardiovascular benefits! There’s no bad weather, only ill-suited equipment. Out the door you go!

I am here to tell you right now that:

you are worthy of taking up space in this world even if you have absolutely no ambitions whatsoever, or, you believe you fail at everything
you do not need to change
simply existing is pretty amazing. Swimming the English channel or running a marathon or baking a perfect tray of macarons are just things that some people have done. The value we put on these things is a bit like the value we assign to money. It’s only worth something because we say it’s worth something. In another time and another place, running a marathon would be thought of a sign of otherness, not a virtue (or a reflection of a person having the time and resources to train).

**Image credit:** Sarah Andersen, Sarah’s Scribbles

your hobbies don’t need to be attached to ambitions. You don’t need to perpetually self-improve to find joy in an activity. Celebrate singing poorly in the shower, doodling, baking cakes that flop in the middle, coming last in races and doing things for absolutely no reason at all. You can change something in your life WITHOUT needing to go through a self-transformational struggle and emerging at the other end as a butterfly. You can be content to remain a happy caterpillar.
let’s not forget that Frodo was single, able-bodied, rich by Hobbit standards, and accompanied by a wizard, a best friend, a troupe of warriors, and in possession of elvish magic. Any of us could accomplish anything under those circumstances.

**Artist credit:** Eylou, **HeyOKYay** - this is a very simple and clever way to illustrate that we are all different. Some things are simply easier for some people than they are for others.

All of the above said, sometimes, change is thrust upon you, OR, you wake up one day and decide that actually, you do want to become an astronaut even though you flunked high school maths when you were 15, or you would like to become a baritone and join the jazz-a-guys, or actually, training and completing a hideously masochistic sporting feat or finally finishing Ulysses really floats your boat.

In this instance it can be helpful to separate all of the cultural and mental clutter that surrounds goal-setting and behaviour change and figuring out how best to do it, when and how you want to and are able to, and not because an internet personality who exudes the scent of bran flakes while they do burpees at 5am makes you feel like you would somehow be a better person if you could force yourself into the same habits.

How to Change: according to Psychology

The Transtheoretical Model of change - also called the ‘stages of change’ model - evolved from work by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente in the 1970s, based on research they did into people who quit smoking on their own versus people who required further treatment to quit.

To summarise, what Prochaska and DiClemente noticed in the successful self-quitters was that they were ready to quit. The Transtheoretical Model, which includes self-analysis, education, and support strategies, may sound familiar to you - this is because the TTM framework is commonly applied to public health initiatives, particularly relating to addiction cessation and promotion of positive community health behaviours.

TTM has its flaws, but, it does provide us with a series of steps that researchers have observed successful ‘changers’ go through when they first consider, then implement and maintain, a change.

Change for Individuals

I’m going to demonstrate how the Transtheoretical Model can work for individuals by applying it to an example change: feeling more relaxed in the morning.

I’ve chosen this example because ‘feeling more relaxed in the morning,’ is not a behavioural change, it is a state of being. This is where people often go wrong when they plan to change.

They identify the state they want to be in e.g. ‘relaxed in the morning’ or ‘a really good singer’ or ‘a non-smoker’ or ‘someone who runs every day,’ without properly analysing what they actually want to change, how, and why.

TTM is about analysing each small step on our way to change, the obstacles we will face, and making a plan to overcome them.

‘Relaxed in the morning’ is who you want to be, it’s not what you need to do to get there.

Change is sold to us as a transformational magic that will occur when we dive head first into discomfort. This is a lie that writes page-turning novels and sells block-buster films (based on ‘the heroes journey.’), but rarely, actually helps us get things done.

In our regular hum-drum human lives, change is plain old self-analysis (figuring out why you are not relaxed), planning (working out how to change) and building an environment that makes change more likely to occur (support systems).

‘Change’ is more like gardening than it is like slaying dragons, and it is no coincidence that the true hero of the Shire was Sam Gamgee, the gardener. If you’ve ever killed a cactus or successfully grown your own potatoes, you will understand the plain old dirty hard work, knowledge and planning that goes into transformation (and yes, a little bit of magic, too).

The ‘Stages of Change:’

Note that while we call these stages, the change cycle is not linear. You may skip steps then go back through them again. You may spend three times as much time in one stage as another. Change is not a linear process.

Pre-contemplation: You are not seriously thinking of changing and may defend your existing behaviour.

‘I’m not too stressed in the morning. I’m a go-getter. I need to keep on top of my emails. I’m ‘always on.’ It’s just who I am.’ You may recognise this phase as ‘denial.’ People in this phase may feel pressure regarding their behaviour from loved ones or from negative outcomes that are occurring as a result of the key behaviour, but they aren’t ready to change yet.

Contemplation: You’re teetering on change but haven’t fully committed yet.

‘This stress probably isn’t good for me. Maybe I’d be more productive at work if I had a more relaxed morning routine. It might be better for my relationships if I didn’t start thinking about work as soon as I wake up.’

People can spend years in this stage and may never leave it.

Preparation / Determination: You have decided to make a change and you are researching and prepping to make the change effective.

When people ‘fail’ to stick at something new it can be because they have tried to skip this step.

In our example, in this stage you would be analysing your morning stressors, considering alternative behaviours that would make you feel more relaxed, planning how you would realistically put them into action and identifying what barriers you might face and how you would overcome them.

Skipping this step would look like simply getting out of bed early the next day and going straight out for a walk, without giving any thought to whether that is the best solution and how to make it stick long-term.

When change looks like this, we don’t usually keep it up.

Action: You are doing the thing!

This is the stage where you are putting your plan into action, but it doesn’t yet feel like a habit, or the ‘new you,’ and requires either willpower, or various techniques and support to sustain. You are open to help or tools to change and you may also be vulnerable to relapse.

You are getting up and going out on a morning walk first thing each day but every morning you have to ‘think’ consciously about executing this behaviour and it feels difficult to sustain. When you see your laptop you want to stop and ‘just quickly check your emails’ before you head out the door.

Maintenance: Hopefully, you reach this point. the ‘new you.’

Your new behaviour or thought pattern is embedded, but your old neural pathways that lead you off track to other behaviours still exist in your brain and can be triggered.

In this stage, it’s important to remind yourself of why you choose to maintain your new behaviour, and avoid relapse triggers. Analysis is helpful - think about how the new behaviour impacts your life positively and plan for how you can keep it up.

Getting up and going on your morning walk first thing feels like ‘just what you do.’ If you miss it, you feel like something is off about your day, like wearing shoes without socks or getting into bed without brushing your teeth. Your daily habit is strong enough to overcome bad weather - you just put on a jacket and go.

Relapse: This is the ‘sixth’ stage. A key project comes up and you need that extra time in the morning for work. Or a spell of really bad weather comes in, and you decide to check your emails early just this week… before you know it, you have quickly returned to your old behaviour.

To move away from the relapse phase: evaluate your triggers. Plan to avoid them. Assess why and how your planned new behaviour positively impacts your life. Control your environment to make the change easier (buy a better raincoat, be stricter about your work boundaries) and evaluate and improve your support system (plan to walk with a friend).

Consider ‘relapse’ as just a normal part of the change process. Rather than being a ‘failure,’ relapse is an opportunity for you to re-establish and re-invigorate your change with new and more effective support mechanisms. Every time you relapse you learn more about how to change.

I would like to suggest a new word for the ‘relapse’ stage, so from here-on, let’s call it ‘Re-kindle,’ because you are rekindling your desire and processes to achieve a change.

Change is a constant, but it doesn’t need to be a battle. Make peace with your dragons.

Remember, Sam Gamgee is the true hero of the Lord of the Rings (fight me), and he has the same shyness, love for potatoes, and perceived physical limitations at the start of the series as he does at the end.

His true strength, and what saves both Frodo and Middle Earth, is not the ability to withstand deprivation, or warrior-like athleticism, but self-knowledge and constancy. Sam understands his own strengths and weaknesses and he applies them to best suit his circumstances. He never loses sight of the true goal and he takes the easiest path to get there, picking himself up and setting off again after he faces a set-back.

Rather than walking through the fire, build an easier path, by applying a small amount of knowledge about the brain and human behaviour to ease your journey.

In our next blog, we will show you how.

**Artist credit:** Hector Janse van Rensburg, aka **Swatercolour**

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