When people look to change aspects of their lives, it's usually associated with a big upheaval of their current daily norms. New routines, new priorities and (from my experience at least) disappointment when the realisation hits that all these new plans are totally unsustainable after a few days. I was reading a book on habits - my current field of personal study - and I was totally blown away by the notion that making radical changes is actually facilitated much more easily when you keep many elements of your daily life and practices the same. I had to find out more!
Types of Change
Studies completed by Ackerman (1997) categorise changes in a number of ways. Firstly, change can happen in three forms: developmental, transitional and transformational. Developmental change works around existing situations and improves them. Transitional changes happen when you recognise the need to build a new course and then transfer over to it. Transformational change tends to be less planned and more spontaneous - a situation is thrown at you which requires radical changes, or a previous situation has failed and so you need that radical change to shake things up and have another go.
Change can also be thought of in quadrants defined by the level of disturbance and risk involved (Pennington, 2003). Core changes that would be deemed radical will come with higher risks and disruptions, whereas changes that happen in the peripheral of the situation and are incremental would offer lower risk and minimal disturbance to the norm.
Creating the right Environment
Facilitating change correctly is one of the trickiest elements to get right - how you set up will make the difference in your consistency towards achieving your new goal. It's important to consider that not only is your environment made up of your immediate surroundings and also the people immediately around you. Creating the right environment involves making sure that everyone around you (including yourself!) understands exactly what is involved, what the long term benefits are and what is expected of them. If everyone is going to be involved in this new goal then they should have played a part in it's planning. Meeting resistance from family, friends or colleagues is only going to create friction when you are trying to strive towards this new plan. For example, if you need to take time out of your Sundays to devote to this new change, but haven't warned your partner that they will need to do a football training drop off and make the kids some lunch, you're going to meet resistance.
Improving your environment is much easier to facilitate and involves taking time to study your current habits and routines. We'll come on to the neuroscience next, but essentially the more time your brain has to spend making simple decisions, the more power it's using up. Over half of our daily life is spent with our brains working autonomously to conserve energy. You want to be using your brain for the stuff that really matters! Simple, small habits to get into make the most difference. If meal times are a stress because you can't decide what to eat, consider sitting down at the end of each week and making a meal plan for the week. If you find that you spend lots of time on social media, set yourself allotted slots to scroll - my favourite times are if I'm waiting for a client or an appointment or waiting for my lunch to cook.
Why only change one?
Okay, here's the nitty gritty neuroscience I've been promising. Your brain will offer a limited amount of 'brain space' each day which it allows for conscious, focused practices. As I said earlier, around half of the day is spent with your brain working autonomously! Therefore, if your brain is running at full capacity, you want it to be working on the things that really matter - achieving this new goal - and not what you want for lunch or whether you can squeeze a gym session in before you're exhausted!
It's also easier for accountability and motivation; you've only got one thing to keep track of, focus on and keep yourself motivated to do each time. You are also only focusing on one end goal and 'big picture' at a time, too.
Radical change in action... but only one thing really changed!
I looked further into the label of 'radical' change and discovered that it had a lot of links to sports practices and techniques. I really enjoyed this step of my research because it gave me a great chance to understand the concept in more detail. Here's two sporting legends who changed the course of their respective sports forever, simply by changing one element of their technique.
Dick Fosbury - inventor of the Fosbury Flop; he actually sat down and worked out the physics behind his technique before applying the concept to his training. Only his takeoff into the high jumps changed, but the twisting motion he made that would take him over the bar head first and upside down meant that he was able to break world records and transform the way the high jump is executed today.
Michael Phelps - Michael knew he excelled at the underwater turn and restart at the beginning of each length, but also knew he was only allowed to swim underwater for a limited portion of the swim. He focused on improving his technique in that element (knowing he was already very good at it) and used this element of his practice to accelerate all the others; making him a high-achieving athlete in his field. At the time, many other athletes focused on their strokes rather than the underwater kicks (you were only allowed to use them for a few metres anyway) but Michael's focus on perfecting this small but powerful element of each length stood him out from his competitors. In today's up and coming competitors, much more emphasis is placed on these restarts recognising that they played such a big part in Michael's success.
So there you have it! Make radical change, but only by changing one thing! As long as you have made your immediate people and your immediate surroundings ready for change, you can then begin working on your one aspect that you want to improve. There is so much more I can look at in terms of facilitating changes, so if you're keen to know more - just let me know!
References
Inc - Melissa Chu
Jisc (academic references taken from their article)
MTD Training
Psychology Today - Susan Biali Haas MD
World Athletics
www.adamtank.co.uk