How does Change work? An Strategic Approach
How do people change? What constitutes personal change, and what are the drivers that sustain it?
This is one of the most explored topics. From neuroscience to psychology and spiritual practices, our understanding of how humans create and break habits—as well as the different psychological and physiological mechanisms involved in their creation and maintenance—has deepened.
First, let’s begin with an important premise about the human condition: we are fully equipped to constantly change and adapt. Over millions of years of evolution, we have developed into living organisms in constant interaction with our environment, gathering information from the outside to adjust and adapt accordingly. As the saying goes: the only constant in human life is change. We are called to be in continuous self-actualization, as humans are in constant search for meaning and explanations about the world, and for self-improvement; we can, and do, change all the time.
And yet, we often find ourselves grappling with old habits and repeating patterns—doing the same thing and expecting different results. As Einstein wisely stated, this is the very definition of madness. But we continue because it is familiar and, mainly, because at some point in our lives, that action, behavior, or thought worked. It was an attempted solution that may have yielded positive results and helped us move forward. However, that strategy, that solution, may need to change; it may have become redundant and is no longer providing the outcome we desire. We get stuck. From a Brief Strategic Approach, our ways of perceiving and responding to specific realities may become rigid, operating within our homeostasis; what we are doing, thinking, or even feeling might be maintaining or worsening our situation.
The way these psychological mechanisms operate is not necessarily conscious. They often escape our rational mind. Most of the time, we are not choosing to be stuck with a problem, or to keep facing the same challenge, or to have difficulty creating a positive habit or abandoning a negative one. We are just human, grappling with these two opposing drives: the urge to change and the resistance and roadblocks that hinder that change.
In Strategic Coaching, change is seen as inevitable, but the work is in creating experiences strategically designed to serve as shields to maneuver the natural resistances to change. Through strategic dialogue, the use of metaphorical language, and assigning specific homework and tasks between sessions, we continue to facilitate change. Sustained change is not primarily the result of concrete reasoning and the over-involvement of our prefrontal cortex. Rather, the most effective lever is engaging emotions—by creating tasks or homework that short-circuit the usual pattern of perception and reaction, thereby enabling us to “feel” differently, and thus, to “behave” differently.
Progressively, this unlocks an alternative, richer, and more flexible belief that enacts the desired change. This is what we call an emotional corrective experience, which is the opportunity to emotionally experience something different. This then leads to a change in perception (level of beliefs), followed by a change in reaction (level of behaviors), and subsequently, the possibility to break a cycle of rigid, redundant, and dysfunctional beliefs and replace them with ones that are more flexible, adaptable, and positive.
Change is inevitable, it is constant and it is necessary for our own well-being; for our own self-realization. Let me guide you in this process of discovering your own potential with strategy, intention and compassion.
